At the Washington Project for the Arts, NoMüNoMü Confronts The Current Sociopolitical Climate

At the Washington Project for the Arts, NoMüNoMü Confronts The Current Sociopolitical Climate

KRISTON CAPPS

 MAY 12, 2017 1 PM

Give credit where it’s due: NoMüNoMü has taken over the art scene. The brainchild of artists Joseph Orzal and Nora Mueller, the scrappy collective—or is it a brand?—got its start a few years back with some one-off outings at unofficial spaces. Their contributions to area shows have only grown since then. A dozen or more efforts later, including a spoof of museums at Transformer, Now More Than Ever is NoMüNoMü’s most official project yet. That’s a mixed blessing.

Now More Than Ever is ultimately a straightforward group show at Washington Project for the Arts by a bunch of like-minded artists who are sick of it all. It’s one of just a handful of D.C. art shows to thematically confront President Donald Trump’s election, or rather, (less) specifically, the sentiments that swept him into office. Ani Bradberry’s “Loom” (2017), for example—a rectangular neon form suspended over a rug of the same shape on the ground—suggests the noumenal potential of a faith that the Trump administration is struggling to travel-ban out of the United States entirely.

Similarly subtle, Billy Colbert’s “Psalm Before the Storm” (2016) is a handsome, protest-driven Pop Art painting. Its atmospheric backdrop suggests clouds of tear gas, a floral print, and a silhouette of rowhouses all at once; in the foreground, scattered black demonstrators struggle against an unseen antagonist. Snippets of postcard text appear superimposed over the painting (“Save ⅔,” “8⁵⁰,” and “BUY LEMONS”), as does the incongruous figure of a marching-band drummer—juxtapositions that gesture at a critique of neoliberalism or late capitalism or something trendy like that. But Colbert’s punchy painting holds back, stopping just short of being didactic.

Not so with several other works in the show. There’s Justin Poppe’s “Never Had a Chance To Grow” (2017), a bouquet of pale white flowers in which a flag, planted like a greeting card, reads “City of Flint Water Dep’t.” Okay—straightforward. Same goes with Orzal’s “TL;DR” (2017), a sculptural installation of granite tombstones screen printed with racist D.C. housing ads from yesteryear for white-only homes. Check—got it.

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Courtesy of Washington City Paper