The Lab is collaborating with KADIST to present two works as part of the Open Bodies public programming related to their exhibition Makeshift Memorials, Small Revolutions (on view October 7, 2024 - February 15, 2025). Admission to the exhibition is free during The Lab’s gallery hours (Thu-Sat, 12pm - 5pm).

Open Ears considers the social and political dimensions of sound as pathways of resilience, through the toppling of monuments and rematriation of looted museum objects.

Renowned Iraqi-American artist Michael Rakowitz’s Behemoth II (2024) (co-commissioned by KADIST and San Francisco Art Fair) is an inflatable sculpture mimicking the form of the Ulysses S. Grant statue in Golden Gate Park that was toppled in 2020. The sculpture invokes recent global movements to “redact” controversial, colonialist monuments by shrouding them in black tarps. The work is also juxtaposed with sound artist Asha Sheshadri’s video Portmanteau (2021), which takes the form of a virtual museum tour set in empty pandemic-era museums, focusing on the looted objects they housed. Set to a distorted soundtrack that recalls the sonic impact of the toppled monuments, Behemoth II cycles through “inflated” and “deflated” sounds. The commission returns to San Francisco after presentations at the San Francisco Art Fair, Seattle Art Fair, and the Blaffer Art Museum, Houston in 2024. 

The works will be open for free public viewing at The Lab from Thursday through Saturday, on Nov. 7-9 and 14-16, from 12pm - 5pm.