No One Is Accountable in Taryn Simon’s Detective Story
Hyperallergic reviews Taryn Simon’s exhibition Father Country I Do Love You at the Guggenheim Museum as a sprawling “detective story” that frames injustice as systemic rather than the result of individual wrongdoing. The show begins with two text panels: one recounting stories Simon heard from her father about an intelligence officer in Bangkok and other dramatic episodes, and another describing Simon’s decade-long contact with a retired FBI agent whose recollections anchor the project. The exhibition’s design references a teak-paneled replica of a Bangkok living room, and it combines vast numbers of photographs with sculpture and video to connect bureaucratic structures and historical events while keeping uncertainty in play. The FBI agent’s career is linked to events including the 1990 arrest of Washington, D.C., Mayor Marion Barry, the 1996 TWA Flight 800 explosion, the 1998 U.S. embassy bombing in Nairobi, the 9/11 Pentagon attack, and Bill Clinton’s impeachment.
From This Briefing
This story was covered in Museums Under Pressure, Markets Keep Climbing