Kerry Tribe: The Elusive Word

The Cantor Arts Center will be presenting two films by Los Angeles-based visual artist Kerry Tribe. The first, Critical Mass (2013), on view from February 23–April 29, features a live, performed reenactment of a couple’s heavily edited argument taken from Hollis Frampton’s experimental 1971 film by the same name. Tribe offers modern viewers a fresh look at the struggle to find the words to express how one feels.

The second film, Afasia (2017), on view from May 3–September 30, pairs the verbal journey of Christopher Riley, a photographer and friend of the filmmaker who struggles to speak after experiencing a left-hemisphere stroke that left him aphasic, with Tribe’s own narrated effort to relearn the Spanish language. Engaging in repetition and vocalization, the two friends find commonalities in a mutual curiosity about life at the limits of language.

During her residency on campus, as a guest of the Stanford Arts Institute, Tribe will teach two courses, one during the winter quarter titled Art in the Age of Neuroscience and the other during the spring quarter titled Practice and Critique. Tribe’s films and installations have been exhibited widely including at MoMA, Tate Modern, and, most recently, they were the subject of a solo exhibition at SFMoMA. 

A companion exhibition is on view at the Anderson Collection at Stanford University, February 28 through July 29, 2019.

This exhibition is organized by the Cantor Arts Center. We gratefully acknowledge support from the Lynn Krywick Gibbons Gallery Exhibition Fund.