KEEPING QUIET AND SPEAKING OUT

The Whitney Biennial 2022 is only partially successful in addressing forms of control and exclusion present in American society and life, observes Rohini Iyengar.

- Rohini Iyengar

This year's Whitney Biennial has a subtitle that rouses sufficient curiosity: Quiet as It's Kept. Colloquially, this phrase is used prior to something that is to be kept a secret. Derived from its use by novelist Toni Morrison, artist David Hammond and Jazz drummer Max Roach in their works, it might refer to the unassuming approach of the show by the curators David Breslin and Adrienne Edwards. Well, does it also indicate the silencing of loaded and raging questions about contemporary realities in the United States like racial discrimination, hate crimes, the predicaments of immigrants, among others?