Page 53 - Contemporary Art and Old Masters

Wu Tsang,
Anthem, 2021. Color video, with sound, with fabric and carpet,
dimensions vary with installation. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum,
New York, Commissioned with funds contributed by the Asian Art Circle
and Susy and Jack Wadsworth and through prior gifts of Thomas Messer,
James J. Hanafy, John G. Powers Fund, Alice Crocker, Nina Bleiberg-Rudel,
and Dr. Vance Kondon 2021.4 © Wu Tsang. Rendering by Lucie Rebeyrol
WU TSANG: ANTHEM

New York - The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum Conjuring an alluring and reverberant aura, Anthem
A New Film Installation Commissioned by the Guggenheim weaves Glenn-Copeland’s music into a larger tapestry of
and Conceived by Wu Tsang in Collaboration with the other voices and sounds placed throughout the museum’s
Legendary Musician Beverly Glenn-Copeland circular ramp, building a soundscape that wraps around the
space. Working in collaboration with the musician Kelsey
Lu and the DJ, producer, and composer Asma Maroof,
Wu Tsang: Anthem will be on view at the Solomon Tsang developed this arrangement of sounds as a series
R. Guggenheim Museum. It is the final project in Re/ of improvisatory responses inspired by the call of Glenn-
Projections: Video, Film, and Performance for the Rotunda, Copeland’s voice. Visitors are encouraged to traverse
a series of four distinct presentations that reimagine the upward from the bottom of the museum to the top of the
Guggenheim’s rotunda as a space for navigating tensions building, and vice versa, and explore how Anthem ascends
between collective and individual experience. and descends along the spiral path.

A new work by artist Wu Tsang commissioned by the The title of this exhibition, Anthem, draws from lesser-known
Guggenheim Museum, Anthem (2021), was conceived in histories of the word, which then meant antiphon, a style of
collaboration with the legendary singer, composer, and call-and-response singing associated with music as a spiritual
transgender activist Beverly Glenn-Copeland and harnesses practice. Unlike a conventional anthem, which amplifies the
the Guggenheim’s cathedral-like acoustics to construct what power of a song through loudness and uniform sound, this
the artist calls a “sonic sculptural space.” This site-specific installation enhances the call of Glenn-Copeland’s voice by
installation revolves around an immense, eighty-four-foot combining it with ambiguous vocal timbres, changing tints of
curtain sculpture suspended from the oculus. Projected ambient sound, and other heterogeneous sonic and visual
onto this luminous textile is a “film-portrait” Tsang created textures. Within this lush yet complicated auditory environment,
of Glenn-Copeland improvising and singing passages of Tsang’s Anthem also cultivates moments of quiet, rest, and
his music, including original a cappella melodies and his reflection, reimagining the rotunda as a compassionate
rendition of the spiritual “Deep River.” atmosphere for collective listening and looking.

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