9 Artists takes place in a contemporary moment that lacks the apparent clarity of the past. Nevertheless, the exhibition attempts to galvanize a temporary canon—to pretend the artists included constitute a movement, while recognizing the improbability of their actually doing so.

The show includes some of the most engaged and provocative artists working today. Rarely considered together, they each use their own backgrounds or identities as material, frequently in antagonistic or subversive ways. The artists follow individual and subjective tenets, and are less than amenable to being captured within a catch-all frame. They use a variety of strategies—from deep satire, nihilism, and a determined opacity to provocation, humor, and aesthetics of mediation—to avoid ideological positioning. Their loyalty is to the individual, but not the individual who exists in splendid isolation—rather one who acts within a community, even if this community has yet to be invented.

Artists include: Yael Bartana (b. Israel, lives and works in Berlin), Liam Gillick (b. England, lives and works in New York), Natascha Sadr Haghighian (see bioswop.net), Renzo Martens (b. the Netherlands, lives and works in Brussels and Kinshasa), Bjarne Melgaard (b. Australia, lives and works in New York), Nástio Mosquito (b. Angola, lives and works in Luanda), Hito Steyerl (b. Germany, lives and works in Berlin), and Danh Vo (b. South Vietnam, lives and works in Basel).

A catalogue accompanies the exhibition.

Walker curator: Bartholomew Ryan