Artist Liliana Porter Finds Beauty in the Absurd

A cheeky bit of chaos has descended on the Hamptons this summer, courtesy of the artist Liliana Porter. Her new installation, called The Task, takes up the ground floor of the Dia Art Foundation’s space in Bridgehampton. In her theatrical arrangement of miniature figurines amid detritus, tchotchkes, and other found objects, Porter creates one surreal scenario after another. There is no unifying size, context, or era among the curio. Taking the whole thing in feels like watching a hundred tiny comedic plays all at once.

“It starts with a woman sweeping all these things,” Porter, 82, tells me as we sit in her backyard in Rhinebeck, New York, ahead of the Dia opening. “And then as you get closer, there are these sub-narratives. Somebody’s painting. The scales are not consistent. That’s one of the things I’m interested in: things that don’t belong together.”

Liliana Porter, The Task (detail), 2024. Dia Art Foundation. © Liliana Porter.Photo: Don Stahl. Courtesy Dia Art Foundation.

Other incongruous scenes of The Task include a miniature gardener watering the painted flowers on a porcelain plate; a face-off between two figurines of men, one 10 times the size of the other; and a toy soldier firing his weapon into a mirror. These kinds of absurd chores are a theme in Porter’s ongoing Forced Labor series. “It seems impossible to fulfill, but at the same time, the person, they look relaxed. They have faith that it will get done. They are thinking, This is normal,” says Porter. She pauses. “I think that’s what we all do in our life.”

Born in Buenos Aires in 1941, Porter has been making Pop-tinged conceptual art that deftly balances humor and emotion for the last six decades. She has worked in a wide variety of media, including printmaking, photography, drawing, painting, installation, theater, and video. She has exhibited all over the world, and her pieces are in the collections of museums like the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Tate. She often collaborates with her partner, the artist Ana Tiscornia; a film of the play they co-directed at The Kitchen in 2018, called THEM, is screening at Dia Bridgehampton. (Several other video works by Porter are playing at Dia Chelsea until July 20, 2024.)