NEW YORK – The New Museum announces the 2021 Triennial, “Soft Water Hard Stone,” on view from October 28-January 23, 2022. Installed throughout all of the Museum’s galleries, the fifth iteration of the Triennial brings together works across mediums by forty artists and collectives who are living and working in twenty-three countries. The exhibition is co-curated by Margot Norton, Allen and Lola Goldring Curator at the New Museum, and Jamillah James, Senior Curator, The Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (ICA LA).

Among the artists is Athens, Greece-native Iris Touliatou who lives and works in Athens.

The title of the 2021 Triennial, “Soft Water Hard Stone,” is taken from a well-known proverb in Brazil: Água mole em pedra dura, tanto bate até que fura (Soft water on hard stone hits until it bores a hole). The proverb can be said to have two meanings: that if one persists long enough, the desired effect can eventually be achieved; and that time can destroy even the most perceptibly solid materials. The title speaks to ideas of resilience and perseverance, and the impact that an insistent yet discrete gesture can have in time. It also provides a metaphor for resistance, as water— a constantly flowing and often underestimated material— is capable of eventually dissolving stone— a substance associated with permanence, but also composed of tiny particles that can collapse under pressure.

In this moment of profound change, where structures that were once thought to be stable are revealed to be precarious, broken, or on the verge of collapse, the 2021 Triennial recognizes artists reimagining traditional models, materials, and techniques beyond established institutional paradigms. Their works exalt states of transformation, calling attention to the malleability of structures, porous and unstable surfaces, and the fluid and adaptable potential of both technological and organic media. The works included in the exhibition look back toward overlooked artistic traditions and technological building blocks, while at the same time look forward toward the immaterial, the transitory, and the creative potential that might give dysfunctional or discarded remains new life.

“Soft Water Hard Stone” follows the previous installments of the New Museum Triennial, “Younger Than Jesus” (2009), “The Ungovernables” (2012), “Surround Audience” (2015), and “Songs for Sabotage” (2018). This edition will present new and recent work by a majority of artists who are exhibiting in a U.S. museum for the first time.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue co-published by the New Museum and Phaidon Press Limited. The catalogue is designed by Elizabeth Karp-Evans and Adam Turnbull of Studio Pacific and includes contributions from Jamillah James, Margot Norton, Karen Archey, Eunsong Kim, and Bernardo Mosqueira, and features original interviews with all forty artists and collectives participating in the exhibition.

ABOUT NEW MUSEUM

The New Museum is the only museum in New York City exclusively devoted to contemporary art. Founded in 1977, the New Museum is a center for exhibitions, information, and documentation about living artists from around the world. From its beginnings as a one-room office on Hudson Street to the inauguration of its first freestanding building on the Bowery designed by SANAA in 2007, the New Museum continues to be a place of experimentation and a hub of new art and new ideas.

More information is available online: https://www.newmuseum.org.