Alum Martine Syms Celebrated at Hammer Museum

Martine Syms (BFA 2007) is one of the most recent community members to make a major splash on the Pacific coast. Her video piece She Mad is a part of the Hammer Museum's third biennial, titled Made In L.A.

The Los Angeles Times interviewed Syms in preparation for the exhibition, detailing the thought-provoking nuances of the installation. "Based on the 1907 silent film short Laughing Gas, starring African American actress Bertha Regustus," the paper writes, "Syms' piece follows an L.A. graphic designer and aspiring artist named Martine Syms who makes a comically ill-fated trip to the dentist. Syms plays the lead character who may or may not be based on herself, as is the Seinfeldian tradition."

"A lot of my work, the subject is film and television itself, and history, and how that kind of coincides with larger cultural history and memory," Syms says, describing the intersections of pop culture and social justice that comprise her work.