Something like a Phenomenon

phenom.jpg

Mejor Vida Corp was a non-profit enterprise created by Mexican artist Minerva Cuevas that freely offered hard to procure items. Writing a grant proposal? Get a letter of recommendation from London's upscale Lisson Gallery through MVC. Want to visit MOMA but don't have the 2$0 entrance fee? MVC can get you student ID cards enabling access to the world's cultural institutions at a fraction of the cost. The MVC is only one example of how Cuevas uses new media to inhabit various personas, spaces, and conceptual frameworks. For her latest exhibition at Kunsthalle in Basel, Cuevas this time uses 'old media' to inhabit the worldview of the 19th century scientist. A monkey in a jacket sitting in a tree, meteorites from natural history museums, and found footage of behavioral psychology experiments are presented on antique optical devises and projectors. Titled Phenomenon, the show takes its name from Immanuel Kant's distinctions between phenomena ('beings of sense') and noumena ('things in themselves'). Putting us in the position of the colonial observer Cuevas uses these various viewing apparatuses to amplify not only what we see, but how we see.