Double bind | rhea anastas and leigh ledare

Double Bind pivots around an extensive conversation between artist Leigh Ledare and art historian Rhea Anastas concerning Ledare’s project of the same name. As an installation, Double Bind puts in play a series of overlaying comparative structures: over one thousand photographs of the artist’s ex-wife (half taken by Ledare, the other half by her current husband, according to a script conceived by Ledare) and an ample collection of printed mass media. Through a critical and wide-ranging dialog, Ledare and Anastas probe the complexities of the viewing experience of the work and the consequences of its provocations. Ordered according to six sections, the conversation addresses key concepts and methodologies that structure the work: viewing, systemic conditions, enactment, installation and mass media, genealogy, and affect. Taken by Ledare exclusively for this book, installation views of the New York exhibition (Mitchell-Innes & Nash, 2014) foreground the subjective experience of the work and anchor the coauthors’ testing of models of aesthetic and social critique within an ethics of actually looking. The dialogue also appears with an introduction by Anastas, a preface by Ledare, and a chronology of Double Bind exhibitions and publications to date.

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