Catherine Sullivan’s Triangle of Need premieres August 23 in Minneapolis

2007 artist-in-residence at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, and featured artist in the upcoming fourth season of Art in the Twenty-First Century, Catherine Sullivan premieres her new video installation at the Walker this Thursday. In this work, Catherine Sullivan: Triangle of Need, Sullivan orchestrates complex sets of ideas and participants to weave a nuanced story about evolution, class, wealth and poverty, and the inequalities and injustices in our global economy.

The story unfolds in two main locations: Vizcaya Museum and Gardens in Miami and a nondescript apartment in an American city. In these two starkly contrasting sites, Sullivan situates what she calls “vestigial narratives,” one involving a wealthy industrialist trying to force the last remaining members of a hominid species to reproduce, and the second, a series of reconstructions of scenes from the catalogue of Pathescope Films, the company from which Vizcaya owner and turn-of-the-century American industrialist James Deering ordered silent film reels for screening at Vizcaya. Also involved to varying degrees are Nigerian cinema aesthetics and email scams, figure skating choreography, and a complex performative language called Mousterian taken from theories of Neanderthal speech.

Art21’s profile of Catherine Sullivan, featured in Season 4’s Paradox episode and premiering on November 18 at 10 p.m. on PBS (check local listings), will play continuously in the Walker’s Orientation Lounge, beginning September 13 (the day Sullivan gives a talk at the Walker) and running through the duration of the exhibition.

Triangle of Need is on view through November 18, after which it travels to A Foundation in Liverpool in October and Vizcaya in December.

Read more info and view additional images here.