WYD RN

Wyd rn? accompanies the exhibition Incense Sweaters & Ice by Los Angeles-based artist Martine Syms. Wyd rn? is an augmented-reality (AR) phone application named for the acronym "what are you doing right now" that is used in the incessant lexicon of electronic communication and social media. When focused on the surface of the posters in the installation, the app activates the AR features—GIFs and videos—expanding the content of exhibition and bringing the narrative full-circle back to the film.

Martine Syms (b. 1988, Los Angeles) uses video and performance to examine representations of blackness. Her artwork has been exhibited and screened extensively, including presentations at the Museum of Modern Art, Hammer Museum, ICA London, New Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, and The Studio Museum in Harlem, among other institutions. She has lectured at Yale University, SXSW, California Institute of the Arts, University of Chicago, Johns Hopkins University, and MoMA PS1, among other venues. Syms’ recently presented exhibitions include Projects 106: Martine Syms, Museum of Modern Art; Borrowed Lady, Simon Fraser University Galleries, Vancouver; Fact and Trouble, ICA London; COM PORT MENT, Karma International, Los Angeles; Vertical Elevated Oblique, Bridget Donahue Gallery, New York. From 2007-2011 she was the co-director of the Chicago artist run project space Golden Age, and she currently runs Dominica Publishing, an imprint dedicated to exploring blackness in visual culture. She is the author of Implications and Distinctions: Format, Content and Context in Contemporary Race Film (2011). Her first US solo museum exhibition Projects 106: Martine Syms, premiered at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in May of 2017. She is a faculty member in the School of Art at the California Institute of the Arts.

Incense Sweaters & Ice premiered at The Museum of Modern Art as part of the Elaine Dannheisser Project Series in 2017.

wyd rn? was created by Brent David Freaney at Special—Offer.