SPOILER ALERT: Spoilers ahead include, but are not limited to, sixth commission winners and the show’s grand prize.
MTV The Exhibition: In Search of the Next Great Artist is officially over, with the final episode of the reality show airing tonight, Friday, April 7. the jury selection bias that unwittingly leaned into the very issues the show was trying to address.
The sixth commission asked artists to do a self-portrait, which is expected of any art-focused reality TV competition. Baseera Khan crushed their faces in a scanner and made a five-by-five foot collage of the enlarged printed scans. “I give a lot of myself through my artistic practice because my story is something people need to hear,” Khan said over footage of them with their faces against the scanner glass for the latest. piece which was titled after their solo presentation at the Brooklyn Museum, I am an archive (2021).
“I represent a large group of people who are invisible in the United States – I feel like I carry the weight of a lot of people, so my success is the success of so many others,” they added.
I had to ignore that statement… Yes, I agree that Khan’s story needs to be heard – I would say that’s true for most artists in historically disenfranchised bands. But I don’t really appreciate Khan’s self-appointment as a spokesperson for America’s marginalized and diasporic bodies, especially through the “mascoting” of their faces and bodies in their artwork. throughout the show. If they want to work on themselves, that’s amazing and worthwhile and I wholeheartedly endorse that. But it is not necessary to say that their success is the success of others.
It was Frank Buffalo Hyde who finally got his flowers for the latest commission with a black self-portrait acknowledging the multitude of missed opportunities as a symptom of the routine marginalization of Indigenous peoples. What I really appreciate about having Hyde on the show and exploring his practice is his role and not the face of Native survival, but rather as a messenger and participant who wants everyone to recognize the broader “Indigenous Renaissance” within the framework of contemporary art. And one artist who surprised me this week was Clare Kambhu, who painted a diptych of the birthmark on her cheek and a chemical burn scar on her leg from a medical procedure, celebrating those ‘imperfections’ and her relationship. positive with her body rather than characterizing it as evidence of trauma.
After that, however, was the revelation that only three of the competing artists were invited to create a Freestyle Commission for the 2022 Hirshhorn Gala in preparation for the $100,000 grand prize and exhibit at the Hirshhorn Museum. But not before Kenny Schachter attempted to whistle to celebrate the end of the competition in sight, only to fail spectacularly and hear the sound of a parakeet with goiter.
Unsurprisingly, the three artists selected were Clare Kambhu, Baseera Khan, and Misha Kahn (who never won any of the competitions despite her incredible technical prowess on all possible materials). Of course, Hyde’s victory was forgotten in light of the trio’s selection for the final round, literally demonstrating the points he addressed in his self-portrait and the rest of his work on the show. Yeah.
Kahn, Khan and Kambhu (…🥴) were given two months to create their freestyle commissions to present at the Hirshhorn Gala in honor of…Kaws, who Melissa Chiu described as “a wonderful artist”. Tells you everything you need to know about the show, honestly. Kambhu stuck to her conceptual examination of institutions, but won me over with an oversized painting featuring a meticulously rendered textural richness. Kahn, who simply refuses to be stuck or boxed, actually unpacks the pain and release that comes with said feelings in his duo of virtual reality and traditional painting and sculpture. Khan 3D-printed their bodies in fragments, mimicking the pose of the Buddhist female deity Naro Dakini, whose sculptural rendition is in the Smithsonian Institute Collection.
Victorious in the end, securing the $100,000 prize and the solo exhibition, was Baseera Khan. “I can’t wait to open my show at the Hirshhorn,” said Khan, who had a solo show at the Brooklyn Museum about a year ago, ending that contrived competition.
At the end of the day, Khan, Kahn, and Kambhu seemed like the only three real contestants on the show, while Frank Buffalo Hyde, Jennifer Warren, Jamaal Barber, and Jillian Mayer felt pigeonholed only as supporting characters. Even the way the judges spoke of Jennifer Warren, who I myself was critical of throughout the self-portrait commission critique session, felt extremely condescending as they acknowledged she was a self-taught artist and dwelt on how her confidence has grown. throughout the season. I just felt like Warren and the others never really had a chance, and looking back I had a subconscious feeling that it would be Kambhu or Khan walking away with the prize.
