Its focus then shifts to individual moments of exchange, pennies passing hand to hand at a time when every touch has its risks. In footage filmed during the pandemic in New York, where Magid lives, the film also finds haunting echoes with the refrigerated morgue trucks that appeared outside hospitals. Mint and coin distribution networks, as huge volumes of pennies are packaged and sent out into the world in armored cash-in-transit trucks. Grounding the exhibition, Magid’s new film, Tender Balance, begins behind the scenes at the U.S. Thinking about different forms of vulnerability and various traces left behind, the works in the show bring out hints of absence and loss as they follow the flows of circulation on both a small and large scale. Reflecting her unique approach as an artist, the exhibition has aspects that are intimate and poetic while also observing broader systems around us, in this case the intertwining of the economy and the lives of individual people. Against this backdrop, she began developing a project that would take multiple forms, all centering on the circulation of pennies, but unfolding with different durations and degrees of visibility.įeaturing the premiere of a new film and other new works, Magid’s exhibition Tender: Balance follows the movement of pennies and some of their afterlives.

Magid was especially struck by the way public figures weighed the loss of human lives against the supposed costs for the economy. In a way, she becomes a stand-in for any person trying to navigate something much larger than themselves.Īs the pandemic began, the complex relationships between individuals, groups of people, institutions, and deeply rooted systems quickly came into stark relief. Gaining access through existing loopholes or contact with people on the inside, she follows the rules of engagement with each institution and draws out their internal logics. In each of her in-depth projects, Jill Magid becomes intimately involved with different systems or structures of authority, whether government bureaucracies, a secret service agency, or the guardians of other artists’ estates.

Renaine circulation