MOCA Artist Film Series: Martine Syms
The African Desperate, 2022, 97 min.

MOCA Artist Film series is an active and dynamic platform for the presentation of artist films. Inspired by film and video works in MOCA’s renowned collection, the series will offer engaging and notable screenings and live programs with MOCA collection artists and beyond. With presentations in the Ahmanson Auditorium, screenings and Q&As will feature artists, historians, and critics in dialogue with special focus on experiments in long-form, narrative or feature-length films. Centered in the cinema capital of the world, these programs will explore the critical issues of our time and our place.

MOCA presents a screening of The African Desperate followed by a conversation with artist Martine Syms and writer/curator Essence Harden.

The electrifying feature debut from renowned artist and MOCA collection artist Martine Syms, The African Desperate brings her razor-sharp satire and vivid aesthetic invention to a riotous coming-of-age comedy. The film tracks one very long day for Palace Bryant (an expertly deadpan Diamond Stingily), a newly minted MFA grad whose final 24 hours in art school become a real trip. Palace is not going to the fucking graduation party! She hates the woods. If this were a reality show, she would be the person who was not here to make friends. Palace needs to get home, back to Chicago from upstate New York. But that means surviving a hazy, hilarious, and hallucinatory night-long odyssey, stumbling from academic critiques to backseat hookups.

Writer and Director Martine Syms has earned wide recognition for a practice that combines conceptual grit, humor, and social commentary. She has shown extensively, including solo exhibitions at The Museum of Modern Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and Tate Liverpool. She has also done commissioned work for brands such as Prada, Nike, Celine, Kanye West, and NTS Radio, among others. She is a recipient of the Creative Capital Award, a United States Artists Fellowship, the Tiffany Foundation Award, and the Future Fields Art Prize.

Essence Harden is a visual arts curator and program manager at the California African American Museum and an independent arts writer. Essence is a contributor to The Los Angeles Times Magazine: Image, SSENSE, Art21, Contemporary Art Review LA (CARLA), Artsy, LALA, Cultured Magazine, Performa Magazine, and SFAQ: International Arts and Culture.

MOCA Artist Film Series is organized by Clara Kim, Chief Curator & Director of Curatorial Affairs, with Brian Dang, Programming Coordinator, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.

MOCA Artist Film Series is presented by The Edward F. Limato Foundation.