Laughing Gas
Artist:
Martine Syms
(American, born 1988)
Date: 2016
Dimensions:
Video: 6:50 minutes loop
Credit Line: Purchased with funds provided by the Brown Foundation Contemporary Art Acquisition Fund
Object number: 2018.2
Copyright: © Martine Syms
Label Text
Laughing Gas is a unique installation that includes an immersive four-channel video (SHE MAD: Laughing Gas), painted wall text (IS YOU IS OR IS YOU AIN’T), and a laser-cut acrylic wall piece with artist’s clothes (Bertha Cut-out). Laughing Gas is the pilot episode of a situation comedy titled SHE MAD, a television series that Syms initiated in 2015 as a semiautobiographical account of a young black woman trying to “make it” as an artist in Los Angeles. Syms uses Edwin Porter’s 1907 silent film of the same title as a starting point. Her protagonist is inspired by Bertha Regustus, the African-American actor in Porter’s film whose character’s infectious laughter, triggered by a dentist’s administration of nitrous oxide, affects everyone she encounters. Following that premise, Syms cast herself in the role of “Martine” in a series of largely improvised scenes. After being given nitrous oxide at the dentist’s office for a tooth extraction, she is told her insurance does not cover the surgery and she must pay or leave. Like Bertha, Syms ends up walking alone in public, often laughing and confused. Throughout the looped video are references to visual styles that reflect the evolution of cinema into recent forms such as television, the internet, and surveillance and body cam footage. With Laughing Gas, Syms continues her explorations of the film industry as subject and producer of values, ideas, and ideology.
(Suzanne Weaver, 2018)
(Suzanne Weaver, 2018)
Not on view
In Collection(s)
The San Antonio Museum of Art is in the process of digitizing its permanent collection. This electronic record was created from historic documentation that does not necessarily reflect SAMA's complete or current knowledge about the object. Review and updating of such records is ongoing.
This resource has been made possible in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities: Exploring the Human Endeavor.
