No One Is Accountable in Taryn Simon’s Detective Story
In her ambitious exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum, injustice seems purely systemic, not the result of individuals behaving badly.
Taryn Simon’s ambitious show at the Guggenheim Museum, Father Country I Do Love You, begins with two text panels. One recounts a story told to her by her father, of an intelligence officer he met in Bangkok who died under mysterious circumstances — either eaten by a tiger, or kidnapped by the Chinese. It goes on to talk about her father’s penchant for taping his prized photos in plexiglass box frames. “Each came with a dramatic tale — delivering suitcases of cash to generals in Cambodia, yakuza threatening to break his arm in a door, having tea with his kidnappers in Lebanon, and starting the Thai stock exchange. I never got the full story,” reads the text.
The second panel features Simon’s own terse account of meeting a retired FBI agent a decade ago and listening to his stories, meted out via phone calls, text messages, and meetings. He would become the main character of this sprawling show, his recollections offering impetus for her painstaking research.
These introductory texts are set against teak paneling — a replica of a replica of the living room of the Bangkok spy that Simon helped her father build in their own family home when she was a child.
Introductory text panels in ather Father Country I Do Love You
Via hundreds, maybe thousands, of photographs, as well as sculptures, video, and an exhibition design that suggests that replica living room with brightly-colored walls and heavy drapery, this exhibition purports to present information that might sound like conspiracy theories but are in fact facts. It connects stories and people and historical events and bureaucratic structures in ways that are both improbable and utterly realistic. But by prefacing it with her father’s tales which she could never confirm (“I never got the full story”), Simon keeps doubt, always, in play.
The FBI agent’s work put him in the orbit of some of the most consequential events of his lifetime: the explosion of TWA Flight 800 in 1996 (he was one of many agents who had to analyze the remnants), the 9/11 attacks on the Pentagon (he was assigned to sift debris), al-Qaeda’s bombing of the United States embassy in Nairobi in 1998 (he was deployed there along with 900 other agents), the arrest of DC Mayor Marion Barry on drug charges in 1990 (he babysat the children of the model sent to entrap him), Bill Clinton’s impeachment (he set up the evidence room), and more.
