Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego

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Eleanor Antin and My Barbarian
Black and white image of rubber boots staged diagonally from lower left to top right on a rectangular picture. Ducks are walking toward the opposite direction.

September 21, 2023 to April 14, 2024

Formerly On view at MCASD

Fifty years ago, celebrated San-Diego-based artist Eleanor Antin staged and photographed 100 Boots on their cross-country trip from Solana Beach to New York City. A foundational series for Antin, the epic visual narrative took more than two years to complete. Included in MCASD's exhibition are the 51 postcards that document the boots’ journey as well as pieces featuring Antin's alter ego, the King of Solana Beach.

Also on view is work by the collective My Barbarian (Malik Gaines, Jade Gordon, and Alexandro Segade), whose layered performances continue Antin’s spirit of social critique and playfulness. Their theatrical work often references the legacies of California’s countercultural era , drawing on a multitude of sources to establish the richness of matrilineal creative inheritance. Two of the collective’s members, Malik Gaines and Alexandro Segade, are faculty in the University of California, San Diego’s Department of Visual Arts.

Still from video showing three people (two of them with their fists up)

My Barbarian, Universal Declaration of Infantile Anxiety Situations Reflected in the Creative Impulse, 2013

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Top: Eleanor Antin, 100 BOOTS Move On, 1971 - 1973