In Praise of Other Worlds: Your Curated Art Crawl

Janet Biggs

I could pull a cheap trick here and talk about V-Day, but I think we’ve exhausted ourselves whining over PDA and the unoriginality of expensive flowers paired with shitty chocolate. For those of you who want to step back because the coming stockpile of engagement announcements on Facebook is like the end of the world, ease up—we still have the ends of the earth. See what I did there?

In celebration of invented, alternate universes in which we can find solace in solitude, here’s what you should check out in the coming weeks. I’ve never taken an art history class. Trust me?

Janet Biggs: Somewhere Beyond Nowhere at Smack Mellon

Selected for the Arctic Circle residency program in 2009, Biggs was brought to Svalbard, an archipelago between Norway and the North Pole, where there’s midnight sun, polar winter, and a population just short of 3,000. Somewhere Beyond Nowhere, befittingly installed in a darkened room, pours forth the extremity of isolation with a two-channel video installation. Referencing the failed (and tragic) expeditions of nineteenth century polar explorers, in addition to notes from her own journal, Biggs accompanies the visual magnitude of place/space with wistful narration, underlining the “destabilizing” force of nature and solitude. This one’s for wanderers. Part of the Brooklyn/Montreal Exchange; through February 24.

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