February 19–August 23, 2026
Goodman Gallery
Stanya Kahn (American, born 1968), still image from No Go Backs, super 16mm film transferred to 2K video, color with sound. ©2019 courtesy of the artist.
Shot on Super 16mm film with an original score and no dialogue, Kahn’s No Go Backs (2020) is an allegorical epic about an entire generation that must make a new way forward in the face of global catastrophe. The film follows two teenagers (Kahn’s teenage son, Lenny Dodge-Kahn, and his real-life best friend Elijah Parks) who flee the city of Los Angeles for the wild, only haphazardly prepared. In the precarity of a collapsed world, the kids travel in dreamlike states of distraction, malaise, and resilience. Traveling north into the monumental landscapes of the Eastern Sierra, they cut an arduous path along sites of California’s historic water wars. As they encounter other kids along shared roads, the film becomes a vision of tenuous survival, the prospect of camaraderie in facing the unknown, and the power of the natural world. Completed just before the start of the pandemic, No Go Backs appears as an urgent premonition amidst ongoing devastations.
The Museum’s Video Art Series is made possible by the generosity of Francie Bishop Good and David Horvitz.
Image at top: Stanya Kahn (American, born 1968), still image from No Go Backs, super 16mm film transferred to 2K video, color with sound. ©2019 courtesy of the artist.