Brilliant Ideas Episode #19: Diana Thater

'The Sympathetic Imagination', the title of the solo exhibition of the artist held in Los Angeles County Museum of Art (hereinafter LACMA), is from Elizabeth Costello a novel by John Maxwell Coetzee. The leading character Elizabeth Costello, who is profoundly concerned with animals and animal protection, says in the novel, "There are no bounds to the sympathetic imagination," which Thater quoted. The sympathetic imagination refers to an ability to imagine a relationship in which one can share senses with other human beings in the world; the artist considers it as understanding of living things other than human beings.
To Thater, her works are subjects of research. Every time the artist creates a work, she publishes a book about how the work is installed and how it is completed, while even giving a thought to technologies that may change depending on the situation and environment. If there are changes in technology, she introduces the newest technology, discarding the existing method. Regarding her own work as a digital material today when everything is digital, Thater sensitively responds to new changes and technologies.

‘Knots+Surfaces(2001)’, where the subject is the honeycomb, the architecture of honeybees, is also known to be about a discussion on human architecture, as it reminds us of both animal and human architecture at the same time. One of the recent works, ‘Life is a Time-Based Medium’, is set in a Hindu temple in Jaipur, India, which is offered to the Hindu god Hanuman (monkey god) and is also a habitat for wild monkeys. Interested in the temple, Thater went through a lot of research, staying in the temple for 7 days filming the monkeys and the buildings to finish her work. A temple, a theater, and a facade of an art museum appear in the video, which induces visitors to view and think in a certain way.

Works of Thater’s, who concentrates on specific subjects and applies a numerous processes, are exhibited at LACMA until April 17th. This exhibition, part of the ‘The Hyundai Project: Art + Technology at LACMA’ made possible by the partnership between LACMA and Hyundai Motor, is meaningful for the audience as a Thater exhibition of this spectrum is rare even in LA though she is in fact an artist from LA. Based on the key words of art and technology, Thater may be put under the label of a media artist. However, Lynne Cooke, a curator of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, who has researched Thater’s art for a longtime says for sure that “The evolution of Thater’s works is the history of film video, but the high technology isn’t that much important to artist. She never excites about technology.” ■ with ARTINPOST

Born in 1962, Diana Thater is a video and installation artist who works from Los Angeles. Through various sources - literature, animal behavior, mathematics, chess and sociology - the artist explores relationships such as how humans have constructed complex relationship with nature. For the artist, art works are subjects of research. Every time the artist creates a work, she publishes a book about how the work is installed and how it is completed, while even giving a thought to technologies that may change depending on the situation and environments.
Thater presented her works at Kunstmuseum, Stuttgart in Germany, Museum of Natural History in London and Dia Center for the Arts in New York and her works are held in the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Whitney Museum of American Art and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art(hereinafter “LACMA”) and numerous museums all around the world. In 2015, Thater held the exhibition The Sympathetic Imagination as a part of The Hyundai Project at LACMA. Under the slogan of “innovation in technology and art”, the exhibition has shown her best-known works including Delphine(1999) and one of her recent, Life Is a Time-Based Medium(2015).