Editor’s Notice: This story is a part of Newsmakers, a sequence the place we interview the movers and shakers who’re making change within the artwork world.
In late April, MoMA PS1 opened its marquee exhibition for the season, “The Gatherers,” a sweeping group present that considers the psychic and materials “burdens” of local weather change, globalization, and neoliberalism.
That includes 14 artists working throughout sculpture, video, assemblage, and set up, the exhibition connects wide-ranging practices the world over—from the Democratic Republic of Congo to Lithuania—which might be unified by an pressing consideration to a world outlined by overproduction, waste, and failing infrastructure and techniques.
But “The Gatherers” is way from a lecture. For curator Ruba Katrib, who has served as PS1’s chief curator and director of curatorial affairs since 2017, it was necessary to let the works “communicate for themselves,” by way of kind, materials, ambiance, or repetition.
“The artists have methods of pulling from, extracting, and intervening that they use to discuss sure points, however it’s actually by way of the language of artistic observe,” Katrib informed ARTnews in a latest interview. “However these artists do one thing extra than simply inform a narrative.”
On view by way of October 6, the ensuing present sprawls throughout PS1’s third ground as an immersive, sound-rich exhibition that invitations viewers to interact deeply with the discomfort, dislocation, ambiguity, and—at occasions—quiet hope embedded in every artist’s observe.
ARTnews spoke with Katrib in regards to the conception of “The Gatherers,” how artists are rising to and decoding our present second, and the boundaries of what artwork can do.
This interview has been edited and condensed for readability and concision.
ARTnews: This present opens amid international upheaval—from worsening local weather change to financial precarity and the return of Trump. How did at this time’s socio-political second inform the curatorial conception of “The Gatherers”?
Ruba Katrib: I’ve been engaged on the present for a few years now and, in fact, it’s not responding to this actual second because it’s been in formation for a while. However I did wish to make a really up to date present, with artists of not the very same technology, however of the same technology. And all of the work has been made in the previous couple of years, with some exceptions.
It additionally got here out of the aftermath of the pandemic interval. ..It took a minute to see what artists had been actually doing and responding to at that second. We are able to’t anticipate all the pieces that’s occurring—notably now as we’re in such risky occasions—however I believe these artists are responding to a second by which we’re on a precipice of kinds. Loads of the themes that the present is coping with are fascinating to many artists, not simply the 14 artists [in the show], however I felt that these artists are rising to the second in a selected approach that I noticed as related.
Emilija Škarnulyté, Burial, 2022, set up view, in “The Gatherers,” 2025, at MoMA PS1, New York.
Courtesy MoMA PS1/Picture Kris Graves
Was there one thing explicit in regards to the post-pandemic second that you just assume precipitated quite a lot of artists to step again and take a look at precisely how these techniques are working?
The pandemic shook up the narrative. Loads of issues fell by the wayside, and quite a lot of issues had been interrupted. After which quite a lot of artists had a clearing to step out and change into extra energetic. The pandemic additionally represented a giant international change that was additionally about sure failures in society and tradition. I started on the lookout for historic parallels. Emilija Škarnulytė’s 2022 movie Burial, for instance, is in regards to the decommissioning of a nuclear energy plant thought-about a sister to Chernobyl. I used to be fascinated. Chernobyl was not solely a wide-reaching catastrophe with international impression—despite the fact that it was remoted to a area—however it additionally revealed failures within the authorities and infrastructure and scientific development that precipitated the autumn of the Soviet Union. It pulled again the curtain to disclose the fallibility of so many constructions and establishments that had been presumed infallible earlier than that. And, in fact, that modified the route of all the pieces. We’re in a type of occasions now the place, one way or the other, something is feasible, each good and dangerous.
After I take into consideration Chernobyl, I see it additionally as a second by which optimism collapses. Nuclear energy was presupposed to be a saving grace and Chernobyl, not directly, completely killed enthusiasm for it.
There’s an fascinating hyperlink with Zhou Tao’s 2024 movie The Axis of Massive Knowledge, which is a few information middle in China. The information middle that Zhou is speaking about is just not powered by nuclear, however hydraulic energy, due to the place it’s constructed. However the movie is in some methods about returning to issues from a special period and utilizing them to meet a brand new technological goal that has quite a lot of implications and penalties, each optimistic and destructive. I see parallels between the twentieth century’s technological shifts and the twenty first century’s.
Each of these movies, after which a few the sculptures in “The Gatherers,” appear to be as a lot about the best way by which there’s not likely a transparent line between the commercial and pure worlds.
There’s a blurring and flattening that’s occurring [in many of the works]. There’s this pressure between issues which might be falling aside and changing into outmoded, with the issues which might be changing them. And there are quite a lot of applied sciences within the present which might be slowly being outmoded or have been forgotten, or objects which might be fading away after which changing into trash. An artist like Tolia Astakhishvili may be very fascinating as a result of her works act nearly like a sieve that catches all these things. However lots of the artists within the present aren’t taking a look at supplies or objects as typologies, actually, and even classes. They’re extra usually taking a look at how classes and typologies get flattened when all the pieces turns into waste or junk.
Tolia Astakhishvili’s 2025 blended media set up darkish days within the foreground, Jean Katambayi Mukendi’s 2023 work on paper Doorways within the background, on view in “The Gatherers” at MoMA PS1.
Courtesy MoMA PS1/Picture Kris Graves
The title, “The Gatherers,” appears to recommend that, for a lot of of those artists, the tactic or the fabric is sort of extra necessary than the tip product of their course of.
To me, it’s extra about amount. The title nods to a couple issues, however particularly it references The Gleaners, the 1857 portray by Jean-François Millet, after which Agnes Varda’s 2000 movie The Gleaners and I. There’s this concept of gleaning, which occurs on the perimeters of society or economies, the place individuals choose up the scraps. However nowadays, it’s extra like heaps. The present is admittedly about this incomprehensible mass of stuff. Every artist has such a special methodology, however many have comparable methods for making an attempt—by way of artwork—to gesture at one thing that may be very exhausting to precise, which is that this bodily mass of stuff. The works aren’t actually informational, however in regards to the psychic burden connected to [dealing with the mass]. There’s this nice quote about nonetheless lifes that is essential to me by artwork historian Norman Bryson, “Nonetheless life is the world minus its narratives.” It’s this concept that issues proceed in another life cycle or existence that we will’t actually think about. Many of those objects and supplies will simply proceed on for a whole lot, if not 1000’s, of years or longer. We don’t actually know what the tip of the story is in any respect.
There’s a sort of hope embedded in that. We’re all suffused in local weather doomer-ism. However quite a lot of the work appears to simply recommend that really, life is simply going to maintain going and altering and mutating into no matter it does.
It jogs my memory of one thing that somebody not in artwork as soon as stated to me. We had been speaking in regards to the local weather, and we had been actually pressured about what’s happening, which, in fact, may be very worrying. However they had been like, the Earth will proceed. There’s all this discourse in regards to the Anthropocene and human impacts, but in addition, we’re irrelevant inside it too one way or the other. We must be frightened about ourselves, however projecting outward is perhaps not understanding the true calamity.
One other touchpoint for the present is Michel Serres, who wrote Malfeasance: Appropriation By way of Air pollution?, which is a small however fascinating ebook that argues that property [as a concept] claims and marks area by ruining and soiling issues. A manufacturing facility dumping poisonous waste in a river primarily claims that river by making it repellent to different beings. In that sense, the thought of property is inherently harmful: so as to take over areas of the planet, it entails destruction one way or the other. However Serres broadens the argument in methods which might be related to the present the place he talks about how a billboard which you can see from a mile away can be interfering into all these areas and realms. He additionally talks about graffiti in an fascinating approach, as a extra ad-hoc minor approach of claiming area, in comparison with extra systematized, detrimental methods of claiming area.
Selma Selman. Flower of Life. 2024. Set up view of The Gatherers, on view at MoMA PS1.
Courtesy MoMA PS1/Picture Kris Graves
The artists in “The Gatherers” are nearly claiming objects—like Klara Liden’s repurposed freeway indicators or Nick Relph’s reproductions of city ephemera—as public items.
They’re objects which have been forgotten too. Klara’s work is so fascinating as a result of she’s taking municipal objects that serve functions, just like the junction field, or bus signage, however they’ve been taken over, not solely by individuals—the little graffiti or doodles—however the plaster of flyers on them which have been peeling for nevertheless a few years. After which they been deserted, or they’re not likely observed. That’s one thing that’s necessary within the present. It’s a few kind of anti-spectacle, as a result of it’s in regards to the issues we don’t actually see, or discover, or the flows and techniques which might be largely invisible or exhausting to visualise.
As I walked by way of the present, I assumed loads about Minimalism—a motion rooted in industrial supplies and manufacturing strategies, the place artists usually imposed strict formal logic on their supplies. In distinction, the artists in The Gatherers appear to critique that impulse, favoring salvaged or degraded supplies that resist simplicity and order.
One other contact level of the present is a 1961 exhibition at MoMA referred to as “The Artwork of Assemblage,” which showcased dozens of artists who had been engaged on this new thought of assemblage. Assemblage had manifested previous to that, however it was this concept of the on a regular basis and pulling issues from the road, and utilizing non-traditional artwork supplies, and mixing supplies. However that was additionally in a selected time by which it was extra novel and the issues that might be discovered on the road had been altering due to the postwar consumerism. And so now, even when works look comparable aesthetically, it’s very completely different as a result of what these items imply and what system they’re part of, and what they discuss with, [has changed]. It was necessary to me that this present was much less in regards to the aura of any single object, and extra about how every factor is a part of a much bigger community.
The 14 artists within the present are fairly unfold out throughout completely different components of the world. How necessary was it to you to signify completely different components of the world? What had been the resonances that you just had been discovering throughout the completely different areas, and the way do you signify all that with out flattening the very particular context that every artist represents?
I didn’t wish to deal with one area or one place, essentially. The objective was to indicate how there are shared issues throughout international contexts, however that they’re particular and primarily based on the place individuals are, the place they’re working, and what their state of affairs is. Loads of the artists within the present have an actual proximity to problems with extra and waste, or some private relationship to the supplies they’re working with, like Selma Selman or Jean Katambayi Mukendi. There’s a number of examples of that. But it surely’s additionally about interconnected financial and circulatory connections. A lot of the artists are working in locations which have had explicit transformations over the previous couple of a long time, and they’re actually pondering by way of the Nineteen Nineties and the 2000s. There was the tip of the Soviet Union, which signaled the tip of 1 economic-social mannequin. That was changed by international neoliberalism, which then didn’t actually work in the best way it was meant, and now we’re in another state of affairs.
The artists who’re working in China, for instance, have seen quite a lot of change by way of a brand new globalized financial system that has materials impacts. For me, that was very fascinating, as a result of in the event you grew up within the ’80s and ’90s, there was a selected approach the long run has been introduced or framed over the latter half of the twentieth century. Now we’re seeing how its really enjoying out. I really feel like we’re in a brand new time the place we will grapple with that and never maintain again. Now we have to let go of the comforting narratives that now we have been informed as a result of they’re not actual. The earlier we do, the extra we will handle what’s actually at hand. For the present, I didn’t wish to placed on the burden of any political context, as a result of issues must emerge out of the artists and their works. Loads of exhibitions, notably group exhibitions, could be over decided. For me, as a curator, I usually have a thesis or a query, however you wish to enable the trail to emerge [organically] and to observe it as a lot as you direct it.
Tolia Astakhishvili and Dylan Peirce, so many issues I’d prefer to let you know, 2025, set up view, in “The Gatherers,” 2025, at MoMA PS1.
Courtesy MoMA PS1/Picture Kris Graves
You talked about this new second that we’re in proper now. Do you see these artists, and their practices, as marking this new paradigm by way of creating new narratives or coming to new understandings in regards to the second had been in?
These artists are all very open eyed, and they’re actually fascinated with how artwork and aesthetics and sensibility can talk. That comes straight out of research-based or narrative practices. We’re in a time of not solely an abundance of waste, however an abundance of data. It’s not like we essentially want extra notifications about all the pieces that’s occurring. It’s extra about how artwork can unpeel layers and create a sense that helps us perceive the place we’re. They’re doing that.
This present is a spatial, experiential exhibition. You don’t see a lot set up or huge sculptures in exhibits anymore, and making a spatial narrative was necessary to me. Within the present, there’s quite a lot of sound that connects and bleeds in. There’s one thing palpable that emerges. There’s the sound of the scanner [in Tolia Astakhishvili and Dylan Peirce’s 2025 two-channel video work in so many things I’d like to tell you]], the sound of the development claw [in Selma Selman’s 2024 sculpture Flower of Life], after which, each 4 minutes, Klara Liden’s signal [the 2024 sculpture Untitled (Haltestelle)] rotates. There are machine sounds which might be additionally repetitive in a selected approach that creates this evocative rhythm. The sounds communicate to a high quality that’s exhausting to place into language, however which is one thing that exhibitions and artwork can do.
It appeared just like the area actually permits the works to breathe, and that there’s not an overabundance of textual content. Was that an intentional selection within the curation?
There are lots of artists that may very well be on this present, however [these 14 artists] was additionally an necessary scale for me by way of this being a giant present, with substantial works and funding made in these works. However I additionally wished there to be room [for audiences] to know particular person practices too, and to have area to method these practices. There’s hopefully area for a significant encounter with every of those artists. And it was necessary that the works within the present are impactful, not illustrative of concepts. They communicate for themselves. Context can be necessary. Whenever you work on any present, you recognize in regards to the artists’ work and, for a number of the artists, I’ve really labored with them beforehand, or I’ve been following their practices internationally [for years]. There aren’t many [opportunities] to essentially dig into particular person practices typically and I believe there’s a that means that emerges if you see these works in context.
Earlier you talked about that there’s an abundance of not simply waste, however data. And there may be in fact quite a lot of artwork nowadays that’s explicitly political. But it surely appeared just like the works in “The Gatherers” aren’t essentially political, even when their context is, and so they merely demonstrating or illustrating a state of affairs.
I believe that artwork is at its greatest when it responds to and displays qualities of a time in ways in which different medias and codecs don’t or can’t. It’s necessary to keep up that. So, by way of the political, there’s quite a lot of other ways you could possibly method that. The artists [in “The Gatherers”] have methods of pulling from, extracting, and intervening that they use to discuss sure points, however it’s actually by way of the language of artistic observe. There are methods that may be compelling or not compelling. However these artists do one thing extra than simply inform a narrative.
They do one thing that solely artwork can do.
I really feel an increasing number of adamant about that, as a result of there’s quite a lot of expectation for artwork to do issues that artwork perhaps by no means has actually executed and it doesn’t essentially result in something that nice or fascinating. It’s like asking all literature to function in a single particular approach. Artwork could be extremely legitimate, highly effective, reflective and thought upsetting and we, as viewers, want to permit area, room, and a few kind of generosity to permit that to occur. Artwork can open views in ways in which aren’t essentially so literal. In any other case, it will get boring.
