Nina Katchadourian’s Mile High (Art) Club

This photo, titled Topiary, is from Nina Katchadourian’s very clever “Seat Assignment” series. It’s now on view at the Brooklyn Museum in its “Crossing Brooklyn” survey of that borough’s art. Katchadourian’s series has a lovely limiting premise: All the stills and videos in it are shot in planes, using only the available props around her. (For her cell-phone videos, Katchadourian lipsynchs famous pop songs—very very quietly, in the airplane lavatory, with her normal clothes twisted and tucked and repurposed as outlandish stage costumes.) In Topiary, the props are a few peas from the artist’s snack, plus a magazine from the “seat pocket in front of you” that’s mentioned in endless flight attendants’ spiels. There’s an escapist vibe to the montage that’s a lovely counterweight to the escape-proof setting it was shot in. The entire “Seat Assignment” project also points to the current life of the successful 21st-century artist, likely to spend as much time in the air as in the studio. Uniquely, Katchadourian decides to elide the distinction. (Image courtesy the artist and Catharine Clark Gallery, © Nina Katchadourian)

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