Agathe Snow: All Access World

Agathe Snow's work balances visions of apocalypse, rebellion, and social breakdown with an earnest belief in the redemptive power of human ingenuity and community. Her performances and sprawling, multimedia installations expand outwards from intricately imagined narrative frameworks and are frequently activated by the direct participation of the viewer. Snow's longstanding interest in the complex strands that bind people to places has inspired her latest body of work—the sixteenth commission in an ambitious series launched by Deutsche Bank and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation in 1997 as a platform for major projects by contemporary artists.

Agathe Snow: All Access World takes as its subject the world's monuments, landmarks, and historical sites, focusing on the ways they shape collective memory and serve as potent touchstones of national identity. Snow sets out to explore how these iconic structures could jettison their didactic aspects in favor of a new flexibility that would increase their relevance to contemporary life and make them vessels of cultural exchange. This utopian ambition is articulated through her establishment of All Access World, a fictional corporation with the stated aim of promoting "a more democratic approach to monument ownership and distribution." Within this conceptual realm, monuments are subjected to an irreverent process of reinvention whereby they are transformed into consumer products that have the potential to reflect individual tastes, interests, and experiences. Exemplifying the artist's multivalent creative approach, the installation immerses visitors in a vividly realized environment that encompasses mobile sculptures, large-scale wall collages, and a suite of video works.