Artist: Daniel Lie
Exhibition title: Unnamed Entities
Curated by: Bernardo Mosqueira
Venue: New Museum, New York, US
Date: February 17 – June 5, 2022
Photography: All images copyright and courtesy of the artist, New Museum, New York and their respective copyright owners
From February 17 to June 5, 2022, the New Museum presents Unnamed Entities, a new commission by Indonesian-Brazilian artist Daniel Lie (b. 1988, São Paulo, Brazil). “Daniel Lie: Unnamed Entities” is the artist’s first solo exhibition in the United States.
Since 2010, Lie has been using organic materials to create largescale pieces that simultaneously grow and decay. Unnamed Entities (2022) is an expansive installation created specifically for the Museum’s Lobby Gallery. The work incorporates traditional terracotta ceramic vases, jute hemp fabric, natural fiber ropes, straw hay bales, mud with spores and seeds, and thousands of cut flowers. These materials will evolve and transmutate throughout the exhibition as they rot, mold, sprout, and change shapes and hues in unpredictable ways. Lie understands their works as living entities endowed with awareness and agency, and considers the process of rotting as a way to complicate the binary opposition between life and death.
Building on legacies of migration and queer studies, Lie’s work demonstrates how abjection can be a tool of subversion and expansion. Their practice celebrates natural cycles of transformation and the many interdependent exchanges that structure ecosystems. A fundamental aspect of Daniel Lie’s practice is their desire to develop works which de-center human agency and subjectivity. Working in collaboration with forces they term “other-than-human beings,” such as bacteria, fungi, plants, animals, minerals, spirits, and ancestors, Lie creates site- and time-specific works that can be experienced through multisensory channels. By giving visibility to materials that transmutate, decay, and evolve, Lie’s ecosystems highlight the intimate yet expansive coexistences among diverse beings, acknowledging our shared and continuous participation in the processes of living, dying, and rotting. Unnamed Entities provides a space for meditation about time and exalts experiences of surviving, remembering, and mourning.
“Daniel Lie: Unnamed Entities” is curated by Bernardo Mosqueira, ISLAA Curatorial Fellow, New Museum.
Daniel Lie (b. 1988, São Paulo) lives and works in Berlin. They have had recent solo exhibitions at Kunstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, Germany (2021); Casa do Povo, São Paulo, Brazil (2019); Jupiter Artland, Edinburgh, Scotland (2019); Performeum/ Vienna Festwochen, Vienna, Austria (2017); Change – Change, Budapest, Hungary (2016); Kampnagel, Hamburg, Germany (2016); and Centro Cultural São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil (2015). Their work has been included in group exhibitions at numerous venues, including Museu de Arte Moderna, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (2021): Atonal Festival, Berlin, Germany (2021); Berlinische Galerie, Berlin, Germany (2021); Solar dos Abacaxis, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (2020); Cemeti Institute for Art and Society, Yogyakarta, Indonesia (2020); Valongo Festival, Santos, Brazil (2019); Osage Foundation, Hong Kong (2018); 14th Yogyakarta Biennale, Yogyakarta, Indonesia (2017); Frestas – Art Triennial, Sorocaba, Brazil (2017); MuseumsQuartier, Vienna, Austria (2017); Centro Cultural do Banco do Brasil, Brazil (2021, 2016); and 34o Arte Pará, Belém do Pará, Brazil (2016).
“Daniel Lie: Unnamed Entities,” 2022. New Museum, New York. Photo: Dario Lasagni
“Daniel Lie: Unnamed Entities,” 2022. New Museum, New York. Photo: Dario Lasagni
“Daniel Lie: Unnamed Entities,” 2022. New Museum, New York. Photo: Dario Lasagni
“Daniel Lie: Unnamed Entities,” 2022. New Museum, New York. Photo: Dario Lasagni
“Daniel Lie: Unnamed Entities,” 2022. New Museum, New York. Photo: Dario Lasagni
“Daniel Lie: Unnamed Entities,” 2022. New Museum, New York. Photo: Dario Lasagni
“Daniel Lie: Unnamed Entities,” 2022. New Museum, New York. Photo: Dario Lasagni
“Daniel Lie: Unnamed Entities,” 2022. New Museum, New York. Photo: Dario Lasagni
“Daniel Lie: Unnamed Entities,” 2022. New Museum, New York. Photo: Dario Lasagni
“Daniel Lie: Unnamed Entities,” 2022. New Museum, New York. Photo: Dario Lasagni
“Daniel Lie: Unnamed Entities,” 2022. New Museum, New York. Photo: Dario Lasagni
“Daniel Lie: Unnamed Entities,” 2022. New Museum, New York. Photo: Dario Lasagni
“Daniel Lie: Unnamed Entities,” 2022. New Museum, New York. Photo: Dario Lasagni
“Daniel Lie: Unnamed Entities,” 2022. New Museum, New York. Photo: Dario Lasagni
“Daniel Lie: Unnamed Entities,” 2022. New Museum, New York. Photo: Dario Lasagni
“Daniel Lie: Unnamed Entities,” 2022. New Museum, New York. Photo: Dario Lasagni
“Daniel Lie: Unnamed Entities,” 2022. New Museum, New York. Photo: Dario Lasagni
“Daniel Lie: Unnamed Entities,” 2022. New Museum, New York. Photo: Dario Lasagni