Martine Syms: She Mad

Edited by Axel WiederTexts by Jadine Collingwood, William Pym, and Axel Wieder Works by Martine Syms explore how mass media shapes and frames identities and cultures. Drawing from early cinema, television, the internet, social media, and ambient footage produced by phones and surveillance, Syms addresses the ways in which representations of black identity and gender appear in the public imagination. She Mad gathers materials and documentation on Martine Syms’ seminal episodic project of the same name. Each episode of this series takes a different format, using various narrative formats, from sitcoms to TikTok videos, and includes filmed footage as well as research materials. Each episode revolves around a protagonist, also named Martine – an overachieving, stoner graphic designer who lives in Hollywood and wishes she were an important artist. The first episode Pilot for a Show about Nowhere (2015) merges a semi-autobiographical account of Syms’ own life as a young black woman with a vi