Page 188 - The 60.Venice Biennial & MoMA issue of WOA Contemporary Art magazine

taken over the last 30 years from different sites in the US,
WORLD-CLASS ART between land politics, law enforcement, and the histories of
Vietnam, and France. Highlighting the complicated relationships

migration, the installation deconstructs the totalizing vision
proffered by 19th-century painted cycloramas. Fourteen
Views attests to the artist’s long-standing consideration of the
cinematic dimensions of photography and war.

On view for the first time, the exhibition presents Somebody
Else’s War (Gangbang Girl #26) (2016–23), a group of
handmade embroideries depicting sexually explicit scenes
that are transformed into an exploration of the interwoven
nature of intimacy, desire, politics, violence, and power.
These embroideries are installed alongside the artist’s
rarely seen 2016 photographs of erotic sculptures and wall
paintings excavated from the ruins of Pompeii at the National
Archaeological Museum in Naples. The largest gallery in
Between Two Rivers will highlight more than 40 works from
Lê’s expansive, ongoing series Silent General (2015–present).
Unfolding like a travel narrative, the photographs in this series
take visitors from the Southern and Southwestern United
States to California, New York, and Washington, DC, bringing
together markers of contemporary political rifts and reminders
of unresolved historical conflicts. A frieze-like installation
of Trap Rock (2005– 07) concludes the exhibition, bringing
together scenes of extraction and industrial machinery on
An-My Lê. General Robert E. Lee and General P.G.T. Beauregard Monuments, Homeland the Hudson River, close to the United States Military Academy
Security Storage, New Orleans, Louisiana, from the series Silent General, 2017. © and the mines that supported the Continental Army and
2022 An-My Lê, courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery
the Union Army in the Revolutionary War and the Civil War,
respectively. This photographic series is a meditation on the
Civil War site in Virginia. Small Wars is shown alongside a
encounter between humans and nature, and the alterations
recent installation, dô-mi-nô (2021), which is comprised of a
to the landscape brought about by wars on US soil.
collection of hand-etched, jumbo versions of the Zippo lighters
used by American GIs during the Vietnam War, reflecting the
cultural meaning of these objects as symbols of both protection
and violence. Merging real wars with staged locations, the
third gallery presents a selection of photographs from 29
Palms (2003–04) alongside the rare presentation of a two-
channel video installation of the same name. In this series,
Lê deliberately uses the camera’s supposed ability to capture
reality to create visual confusion, capturing a replica war
zone in California’s High Desert used for training US soldiers
preparing for war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Between Two Rivers includes a selection of color photographs
from Events Ashore (2005–14) that documented noncombat
maritime and coastal missions aboard battleships, aircraft
carriers, and nuclear submarines, in outposts and bases across
seven continents. The survey also features the world premiere
of Fourteen Views (2023), a site-specific, immersive cyclorama An-My Lê. Black Cats, Fuck Communism, from the series dô-mi-nô, 2021. © 2022
with 10-foot-tall photographs of landscapes and waterways An-My Lê, courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery 

188 WORLD of ART