Measure Your Existence

February 7, 2020–January 24, 2021
Rubin Museum
150 W. 17th St., NYC

Back of person kneeling at small wooden table, surrounded by three blue walls with rows of wooden rails holding small white boxes. — Lee Mingwei (b. 1964, Taichung, Taiwan; lives and works in New York City and Paris); *The Letter Writing*
*Project*; 1998–present; mixed-media interactive installation, wooden booth, writing papers, envelopes;
installation view at *Lee Mingwei and His Relations*, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, 2014; photograph by
Yoshitsugu Fuminari; image courtesy of Mori Art Museum, Tokyo

The fleeting, impermanent here and now—in all its destruction, regeneration, and intense immediacy—is the ultimate reality. Measure Your Existence questions and expands the Buddhist concept of impermanence through artworks by six contemporary artists who explore duration, survival, memory, fate, history, loss, disappearance, and reappearance.

In the original iteration of the exhibition, visitors were called upon to coproduce, participate in, and intimately experience the works of art on display. In compliance with New York State guidelines to prevent the spread of COVID-19, Felix Gonzalez-Torres’s installation Untitled (Placebo) is no longer on view. Lee Mingwei’s The Letter Writing Project emains installed, however onsite participation is currently suspended, and visitors can contribute to the project from home.

Despite these changes, the exhibition continues to invite reflection on ephemeral moments and meaning, inspiring personal recollection and reminiscence.

CuratorCurator

Measure Your Existence is organized by guest curator Christine Starkman and produced by the Rubin Museum of Art, featuring artworks by Tehching Hsieh, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Lee Mingwei, Shilpa Gupta, Meiro Koizumi, and Taryn Simon.

Christine Starkman is a contemporary art curator interested in the global, transnational, and transcultural histories of modern and contemporary art between Asia, Europe, Latin America, and North America. She has been a curator at the Art Institute of Chicago, Cleveland Museum of Art, and Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. She has an MA in Japanese art and architecture from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and did PhD coursework in art history at Rice University.