Whitney Biennial 2019 | Art & Artists

Floor 6

Born 1973 in Whiteriver, AZ
Lives in Brooklyn, NY

Musician, composer, and artist Laura Ortman experiments with cross-disciplinary, genre-bending approaches to music and performance, drawing on both her classical violin training and Indigenous musical traditions. Using a four-track tape recorder, Ortman layers a range of instruments—including violin, electric guitar, Apache violin, and piano—with field recordings she has collected, often taking inspiration from ambient environmental sounds. Alluding to the four elements, My Soul Remainer captures Ortman energetically playing the violin in a lush mountain landscape, with ballet dancer Jock Soto (Diné) variously adopting the roles of audience and respondent. Footage of Ortman performing alternates with impressionistic close-ups of the scenery, as if to suggest a direct dialogue between her music and the surrounding environment.