Off-Modernism
Aria Dean and Courtney J. Martin

Leading voices in contemporary art and critical theory, artist and writer Aria Dean and foundation director and art historian Courtney J. Martin engage in a critical exchange that reframes legacies of modernism from within. Through the lens of Dean’s research and her forthcoming performance The Color Scheme (Performa Biennial 2025) they consider how contemporary practices can intervene in, and complicate, inherited aesthetic and ideological structures.

The dialogue will be introduced by Simon Castets, director of strategic initiatives at LUMA Arles, where he co-curated an expanded presentation of Sensing the Future: Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.), which tells the story of the groundbreaking collaboration between artists Robert Rauschenberg and Robert Whitman and Bell Telephone Laboratories engineers Billy Klüver and Fred Waldhauer in the 1960s. 

Aria Dean is an artist, writer, and filmmaker based in New York City whose work across moving image, writing, sculpture, and installation mounts a critique of representational systems, examining the structures of individual and collective subjectivity in relation to aesthetics, political histories, and technology. She has exhibited widely in the U.S. and internationally; recent exhibitions include Facts Worth Knowing at Chateau Shatto (Los Angeles), Figuer Sucia at Greene Naftali, New York (2023), Abattoir, U.S.A! At the Renaissance Society, Chicago (2023); Quiet as It’s Kept: Whitney Biennial 2022 at The Whitney Museum, New York (2022). Bad Infinity, a volume of her collected writings is out via Sternberg Press. Her most recent publication, a catalog for Abattoir U.S.A, was published in April 2025. Dean’s new theatrical work, co-commissioned by Hartwig Art Foundation and Performa, will premiere in New York this fall.

Courtney J. Martin is executive director of the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation. Martin was previously the Paul Mellon Director of the Yale Center for British Art (YBCA), where she oversaw a major renovation and developed exhibitions on artists such as Bridget Riley. Prior to joining the YCBA, Martin was the deputy director and chief curator at Dia Art Foundation, where she curated an exhibition of works by the painter Robert Ryman and oversaw the long-term display of works by Dan Flavin, Sam Gilliam, Jacqueline Humphries, Blinky Palermo, Dorothea Rockburne, Keith Sonnier, and Andy Warhol. A specialist in twentieth-century British art, Martin has written extensively on the artist and editor Rasheed Araeen, and has organized major exhibitions such as Minimal Baroque: Post-Minimalism and Contemporary Art at Rønnebæksholm, Denmark (2014) and Drop, Roll, Slide, Drip . . . Frank Bowling’s Poured Paintings 1973–1978 at Tate Britain, London (2012). She sits on the boards of the Chinati Foundation, the Center for Curatorial Leadership, and the Henry Moore Foundation.

Simon Castets is a French-American curator. Since 2022, he has served as the director of strategic initiatives at LUMA Arles, France, and was the director of Swiss Institute, New York, from 2013 to 2021. Castets serves on the boards of the Ballet National de Marseille and Swiss Institute, and is an advisory board member of The World Around and AFIELD.