Patricia and Philip Frost Art Museum, Florida International University, Miami, United States
June 10, 2023—September 10, 2023
After Metamorphoses (2015–16), is a five minute animated video, developed during Amy Sillman’s residency at the American Academy in Rome. Drawing occupies a central role in Amy Sillman’s multimedia practice, and After Metamorphoses explores this with layers of drawings produced on paper and on iPads. The forms, rendered with an economy of line, morph and change quickly throughout the animation. These playful, transformative drawings derive from the artist’s interest in Metamorphoses (8 CE) by the Roman poet Ovid (43 BCE – 17 CE).
Ovid’s epic narrative, comprised of fifteen books of poetry, emphasizes constant destabilization as it tells an expansive history, beginning with the creation of the world. Themes include love, jealousy, fantasy, corruption, and brutality. To respond to such a historic and sweeping text, Sillman focused on the moments of shape shifting that occur in Ovid’s work. Just as Ovid describes one being morphing into another, the iconography in the video reinforces constant change—a leitmotif present in Ovid’s opus as well as a pervasive reality of contemporary life.
After Metamorphosis was previously on view at the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri in 2021, the Buffalo Albright Knox Gallery in 2017, and at the Drawing Center in New York in 2017.
Learn more at the Frost Art Museum.