Meg Onli was appointed the curator-at-large at the Whitney Museum of American Art last June. Onli is also a cocurator, with Chrissie Iles, of the 2024 Whitney Biennial. Below, Onli discusses artworks invested in narrative and sound, along with related interests.
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Los Angeles Plays Itself (2003)
Image Credit: Courtesy Everett Collection I was born and raised in Los Angeles and recently came back after being gone for almost 20 years. The landscape of LA has shifted so much. The 2003 film Los Angeles Plays Itself is a video essay by Thom Andersen comprising clips from Hollywood films. Andersen really plays with the idea that Hollywood has shaped our imagination of LA and our understanding of the city’s geographic landscape. I’ve been thinking about this film as a way of getting to see the LA that I remember or the way my parents remembered it, but also as a challenge to my own perception of the city.
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“The Sound-Sweep” (1960)
Image Credit: Courtesy Rick McGrath I started reading J.G. Ballard because I was interested in the failure of 1960s architecture and city planning. I really enjoy his economy of language, and his ability to get straight to the point speaks to me as a curator with an often limited word count. His writing has been coming up a lot during studio visits for the Whitney Biennial. One 1960 short story, “The Sound-Sweep,” deals with a world without sound. A young boy who cannot speak is vacuuming up all the remaining sounds in the world when he befriends an opera singer who’s living in an abandoned recording studio. I’m interested in how the story heightens the visual in a way that we often prioritize and value within contemporary art.
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stanley brouwn
Image Credit: Courtesy Wiki Art The exhibition I’m most excited about is “stanley brouwn,” curated by Ann Goldstein and Jordan Carter, at the Art Institute of Chicago and Dia Beacon. One thing that really strikes me is that there is no press statement or documentation of the show. There’s something admirable about curators following the artist’s wishes: in the end, brouwn wanted his artwork presented without any interpretation. Not only is he such an important figure within conceptual art, but his projects around impossibility that couldn’t be realized but exist in this ephemeral space are interesting to me. I love the tension at play.
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Patricio Manuel
Image Credit: Photo Sye Williams via Getty Patricio Manuel, the first known trans masculine professional boxer and my baby brother, is my forever obsession. Working on the Whitney Biennial has had me traveling all over the country, but I’ve been able to fly back to see his fights. I’m interested in watching him box, but being a spectator of combat sports is not necessarily easy when it’s one of your family members. He’s talked a lot about boxing as a form of realizing himself and understanding the masculinity he wants to embody.
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Background and soundtrack music
Image Credit: Courtesy Radio Garden As I’ve spent increasing time in interstitial spaces like airports and planes, I’ve become interested in background and soundtrack music. There’s an app called Radio Garden where listeners can tap into different digital stations all over the world and listen to things such as junior-high basketball games or small town news. Seeburg 1000, a Los Angeles–based station that I enjoy, originally played nonstop background music for doctors’ offices and waiting rooms. Music can be distracting to me, but this fades into the background and helps me focus.