HA-252 Introduction to Contemporary Art Final Artworks

Betty Beaumont, Ocean Landmark, 1978–1980

• Anthropocene

Greer Lankton, Candy Darling at Home, 1987

• Queer and Trans Aesthetics

Rirkrit Tiravanija, Untitled (Pad Thai), 1990

• Relational Aesthetics

Beau Dick, 22 Masks from Atlakim, 1990–2012

• Visual Sovereignty

  • Indigenous control over representation.

• Survivance

  • Active Indigenous presence, not just survival.

Damien Hirst, The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, 1991

• Young British Artists (yBAs)

  • Artists from 1990s UK scene focused on shock, spectacle, and media.

Mel Chin, Revival Field, 1991–1993

• Anthropocene

Jaune Quick-to-See-Smith, Trade (Gifts for Trading Land with White People), 1992

• Land Back Movement

  • Indigenous land reclamation & sovereignty

• Visual Sovereignty

  • Indigenous control over representation.

• Survivance

  • Active Indigenous presence, not just survival.

Rick Lowe, Project Row Houses, 1993–present

• “Socially Engaged Art”

  • Community-based, infrastructural work

• Centers collaboration, social uplift, collective authorship

• Treats art as a catalyst for social justice, affordable housing, community empowerment especially pertaining to the black community in this instance 

• Community-based art project transforming an abandoned block of houses in Houston’s Third Ward into spaces for housing, art installations, community support programs, and small businesses. Reimagining what a “Shotgun house” is/means, making it a habitable space.

• Uses art as a platform for neighborhood revitalization and social engagement rather than as a discrete aesthetic object.

• Social sculpture

• Joseph Beuys

Keith & Mendi Obadike, Blackness for Sale, 2001

• Capitalocene

Santiago Sierra, Wall Enclosing a Space, 2003

• Site specific

• Immigration

• Globalization consequences and features

Andrea Fraser, Untitled, 2003

• Whitney Biennial, 2019 (“Tear Gas Biennial)

  • Focused on state violence, surveillance, and institutional critique.

• Nan Goldin, PAIN (Activist Art Context)

  • Pharma accountability & museum activism.

• Capitalocene

Thomas Ruff, JPEG Series, 2007

• Poor Image (Hito Steyerl)

• Compressed, low-res, circulated digital imagery.

• Post-Internet Art

  • Art shaped by online circulation, digital culture, and screens.

  • Art made from images and videos accumulated from the internet and was created with the culture of the internet at the time in mind. 

Ai Weiwei, Straight, 2008–2012

• Venice Biennale

  • Focuses on politics, identity, and global crisis.

• Steel rebars that were obtained from demolished schools caused by a earthquake in China. (90 tons of rebar)

• Criticism of the Chinese (failed to maintain safety and censored information)

• Venice Biennale

• Minimalism in the interest of industrial materials with specific political significance.

Random International, Rain Room, 2012

Camille Henrot, Grosse Fatigue, 2013

• Post-Internet Art

  • Art shaped by online circulation, digital culture, and screens.

  • Art made from images and videos accumulated from the internet and was created with the culture of the internet at the time in mind. 

• Video art created using pop up images of random pictures and videos. 

• Film uses the internet as a common space to explore the evolution of life 

• Mix of high and low culture through use of ancient texts to random pop-up images

• Relationship between internet for repository of images and museums storing.

Ai Weiwei, S.A.C.R.E.D., 2013

• Venice Biennale

  • Focuses on politics, identity, and global crisis.

Chris E. Vargas, Museum of Trans Hirstory of Art, 2013–present

• “Socially Engaged Art”

  • Community-based, activism, infrastructural work

• Queer and Trans Aesthetics

Anicka Yi, Grabbing at Newer Vegetables, 2015

• Post-Humanism

  • Human + nonhuman + machine relationships.

• Part of the post-humanism movement, which explores questions of the dividing line between the human and non-human/more-than-human. The movement also explored humanity’s place in the earth’s web of life.

• Challenging boundaries and perceptions of women by using the bacteria from swabbing them

• They took swabs from body parts of 100 women. The piece fermented for 5 weeks during exhibition

• “Bacterial graffiti”

• Chthulucene

Simone Leigh, The Waiting Room, 2016

• Venice Biennale

  • Focuses on politics, identity, and global crisis.

• “Socially Engaged Art”

  • Community-based, activism, infrastructural work

• BLM (Black Lives Matter) (not to sure)

  • Work directly tied to Black liberation and anti-racist activism.

• Whitney Biennial, 2019 (“Tear Gas Biennial)

  • Focused on state violence, surveillance, and institutional critique.

Arthur Jafa, Love is the Message, The Message is Death, 2016

• Post-Internet Art

  • Art shaped by online circulation, digital culture, and screens.

  • Art made from images and videos accumulated from the internet and was created with the culture of the internet at the time in mind.

• Poor Image (Hito Steyerl) (not to sure)

  • Compressed, low-res, circulated digital imagery.

• BLM (Black Lives Matter)

  • Work directly tied to Black liberation and anti-racist activism.

Cannupa Hanska Luger, Mirror Shield Project, 2016

• “Socially Engaged Art”

  • Community-based, activism, infrastructural work

• Land Back Movement

  • Indigenous land reclamation & sovereignty

Forensic Architecture, 77sqm_9:26min, 2017

• Investigative Aesthetics

  • Data, architecture, and human rights investigations.

Pope.L, Flint Water Project, 2017

• “Socially Engaged Art”

  • Community-based, activism, infrastructural work

• BLM (Black Lives Matter) (not to sure)

  • Work directly tied to Black liberation and anti-racist activism.

• Took place in the What Pipeline Gallery, Detroit

• Pope.L, Flint Water Project, 2017

• Response to Flint Water Crisis in 2014

• Storefront that had contaminated water from flint

• You could buy this polluted water that was placed in a signed or unsigned bottle

• Also an information center that held info on issues of water pollution across all of Michigan including Flint

• Sales from this were given to organizations that helped with the crisis in flint and other groups in detroit

• Methods of mass production but with a key social and economic intervention involved

• Absurdity of bottling something you cannot drink - readymade aspect, poetic

• Related to readymade with water bottle mass produced but supports community instead of art work in which Marcel's bicycle wheel did

• Politically addresses government for not caring of its community or the environment - Socially Engaged Art

• Form of activism

• Gallery in Detroit converted into store front.

• Purchasable water bottles.

Trevor Paglen, Vampire (Corpus: Monsters of Capitalism), 2017

• G.A.N. (Generative Adversarial Networks)

• Post-Internet Art

  • Art shaped by online circulation, digital culture, and screens.

  • Art made from images and videos accumulated from the internet and was created with the culture of the internet at the time in mind. 

• Investigative Aesthetics

  • Data, architecture, and human rights investigations.

• Capitalocene

• Post-Humanism (not to sure)

  • Human + nonhuman + machine relationships.

• Part of the post-humanism movement, which explores questions of the dividing line between the human and non-human/more-than-human. The movement also explored humanity’s place in the earth’s web of life.

Cameron Rowland, MoCA Real Estate Acquisition, 2018

• Whitney Biennial, 2019 (“Tear Gas Biennial)

• “Socially Engaged Art”

  • Community-based, activism, infrastructural work

• Whitney Biennial, 2019 (“Tear Gas Biennial)

  • Focused on state violence, surveillance, and institutional critique.

• Nan Goldin, PAIN (Activist Art Context)

  • Pharma accountability & museum activism.

• Capitalocene

Kent Monkman, Welcoming the Newcomers, 2019

• Survivance

  • Active Indigenous presence, not just survival.

• Venice Biennale

  • Focuses on politics, identity, and global crisis.

• Land Back Movement

  • Indigenous land reclamation & sovereignty

• Visual Sovereignty

  • Indigenous control over representation.

Beeple (Mike Winkelmann), Everydays: The First 5000 Days, 2021

• Poor Image (Hito Steyerl) (not to sure)

  • Compressed, low-res, circulated digital imagery.

• Made a picture from start to finish everyday for 13 years

  • Started May 1st, 2007 and ended on January 7th, 2021

• This piece captures the first 5000 days of that time period 

• The power of practicing image making

• Viewers get to experience the evolution of the artist’s visual journey 

• Everyday includes pieces of political satire involving Trump and Militarism

• Is a part of the NFT (Non-Fungible Token) digital era that was controversial amongst people

• Shows how art functions in an era defined by screens, and algorithms

• Also acts as a collection/symbol of Global happenings as Beeple often made things representing events happening in the world

• The tensions between digital images and value

• Sold at auction for $69.3 million

Ani Liu, The Surrogacy (bodies are not factories), 2022

• Post-Humanism

  • Human + nonhuman + machine relationships.

• Part of the post-humanism movement, which explores questions of the dividing line between the human and non-human/more-than-human. The movement also explored humanity’s place in the earth’s web of life.

Precious Okoyomon, To See the Earth Before the End of the World, 2022

• Anthropocene

• Chthulucene

Cassils, Movement III: Etched in Light, 2024

• Queer and Trans Aesthetics

• Post-Humanism

  • Human + nonhuman + machine relationships.

• Part of the post-humanism movement, which explores questions of the dividing line between the human and non-human/more-than-human. The movement also explored humanity’s place in the earth’s web of life.