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Taryn Simon: A Living Man Declared Dead and Other Chapters I-XVIII

The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles presents the first U.S. museum to present the entirety of Taryn Simon’s(American, b. 1975) photographic project A Living Man Declared Dead and Other Chapters. This powerful, elaborately constructed photographic work was produced over a four-year period (2008-11), during which the artist travelled around the world researching and recording "bloodlines" and their related stories. In each of the "chapters" that make up the work, the external forces of territory, power, circumstance, or religion collide with the internal forces of psychological and physical inheritance. The subjects Simon documents include victims of genocide in Bosnia, test rabbits infected with a lethal disease in Australia, the first woman to hijack an aircraft, and the living dead in India. This exhibition at MOCA is organized by Rebecca Morse, Associate Curator, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.