MoMA's 'Signals' Explores Video Art's Political Power

MoMA's largest media exhibition to date, 'Signals: How Video Transformed the World', features over 70 transmission-based works spanning half a century, from the 1960s to the present. The show argues that video's unstable, constructed nature makes it a potent tool for protest, highlighting how rogue signals persist across time and geography. Key works include Mona Hatoum's 'Measures of Distance' (1988), which uses intimate photographs and a letter from her mother to explore patriarchal censorship and separation during the Lebanese Civil War; Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz's 'Hole in Space' (1980), a satellite broadcast connecting New York and Los Angeles; Dara Birnbaum's 'Tiananmen Square: Break-In Transmission' (1990), excavating clips from the 1989 pro-democracy demonstrations; Tiffany Sia's 'Never Rest / Unrest' (2020), documenting the 2019 Hong Kong protests on an iPhone; and Fujiko Nakaya's 'Friends of Minamata Victims – Video Diary' (1972), which used a battery-powered monitor to play back footage at a protest. The exhibition also includes Stan VanDerBeek's 'Movie-Drome' (1964–65) and Martine Syms's 'Lessons I–CLXXX' (2014–18). Absent are Vito Acconci, Lynda Benglis, and Bruce Nauman. The show runs through July 8 at MoMA, New York.