ART560A Midterm Art Review

Alighiero e Boetti, Map of the World, 1989

• Traced map, colored with flags, embroidered by unnamed Afghan women

• represents unstable, constantly changing borders, different perspectives

• presence of USSR makes it outdated

Allan Sekula, Fish Story series, 1989-95

• Documented lives of ships, transportation of products across ocean

• makes visible a system that globalization tends to make invisible

Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Untitled (Passport), 1991

• blank paper reminds us that mobility is unequal and highly regulated by government

• passport is an infrastructure, governs the circulation of people, free mobility does not exist

Zhang Hongtu, Quaker Oats Mao, Long Live Chairman Mao Series, 1987-1995

• grew up during Maoist period, images of him everywhere in China

• China integrating into global capitalism

• position of someone moving between China and the US, belonging to more than one place

Do Ho Suh, Seoul Home/L.A. Home/New York Home/Baltimore Home/London Home/Seattle Home/L.A. Home, 1999

• recreated childhood home in Seoul in full scale using translucent silk, fragile, weightless

• described as a home that can be folded into a suitcase, speaks to the idea of transnationalism, attachments

• for someone who has traveled across borders, home is no longer just a place

• globalization allows for more mobility, but no promise of belonging

Coco Fusco and Guillermo Gómez-Peña, The Couple in the Cage: Two Undiscovered Amerindians Visit the West, 1992

• Fusco and Gómez-Peña dressed up as “authentic guatinaus” and put on a show

• the people they are presenting to have no real knowledge of cultures in that area, only have stereotype image

• they have this fascination at the idea of introducing “less civilized” people to modern concepts and technology

• Audience is accepting/integrating a “foreign culture,” loosely based off real people, because they are interested in their exoticism clashing with “modern society”

ASCO, Spray paint LACMA, 1972

• in direct response to LACMA curator saying Chicanos are not included in the museum because they only made graffiti

• asking why they were excluded, questioning institutions power to decide what counts as art, who counts as artists, and who decides what art is supposed to look like

Juan Capistran, The Breaks, 2002

• Capistran is remixing Andre’s Titanium Squares by dancing on top of it, also challenging how people are supposed to interact with art

• post chicano approach to identity, related to artist’s relationship to multiple identities

  • Was undocumented until grade school

Laura Aguilar, Will Work For #4, 1993

• “Axcess” = dyslexia, contrast of her temporary cardboard sign vs permanent sign of gallery

• literally outside the gallery, showing the gap between the art world’s celebration of culture and diverstity vs who actually gets to partake in that celebration

Mario Ybarra Jr, Belmont Ruins, 2004-06

• not relying on immediately recognizable style to Chicano culture

• bringing items, art from local spaces to the institution

• commemorating abandoned LA trolley tunnel, used by local Graffiti artists, was threatened by redevelopment plans

Alma Lopez, Our Lady, 1999

• reconstructs traditional symbol to contemporary image, queer Chicana feminist perspective

• tension in cultural identity itself, means of policing on who has the authority to represent their culture

• depicting herself, like putting herself on a pedestal, defying the purity of the Virgin Mary

• photo image, feels more vulgar because it’s real

Roger Shimomura, Shimomura Crossing the Delaware, 2010

• parody of Emanuel Leutze, Washington Crossing the Delaware, 1851, Shimomura replaces Washington, but still carries the American flag

• flat colors, foreshortening, planar because everything important is in the front

• distinctly positioning himself as Japanese American

Yong Soon Min, Defining Moments, 1992

• connects own body to historical events related to Korean American people, treats her own body as a historical map

• 1992 LA Riots, killing of young black American girl, shot by Korean Americans who thought she shoplifted, addresses anti-black racism

Danh Vo, We the People, 2011-14

• full scale replica of copper skin of statue of liberty divided into 300 components, never intended to be assembled, scattered, displayed around the world

• during same period France gave statue of liberty to US, was establishing colonial rule in Vietnam, where artist is from

• complicates relationship between migration, intersecting histories, sense of belonging

Adrian Piper, Calling Cards, 1986

• handed out cards in response to racist, derogatory comments

• Adrian Piper’s article “Ideology, Confrontation and Political Self-Awareness”

  • insistence to believe in something even though it’s false

  • someone might try to defend their ideology even though they’re not true

MA Liuming, Fen-Ma Liuming’s Lunch II, 1994

• when he was applying for citizenship after immigration, was mistakenly identified as female

• created alter ego representing as neither male or female, staging a body that doesn’t conform to gender specific beauty standards

• Arrested for being naked in public, not for sexual performance

Lorenza Bottner, Untitled, undated

• trans artist and performer who lost both arms as a child, beauty usually represented as non-disabled people, challenged assumption that beauty is neutral or universal category

• makes the body active, expressive, difficult to contain in conventional gender or body categories

Mickalene Thomas, I'm Not the Woman You Think I Am, 2010

• comparison to Manet’s Olympia, which was based off Titian’s Venus of Urbino

• she IS sexualized but has agency over it, not meant for male gaze, based off a trans woman, presenting the body, different kinds of beauty standards

• challenging what the power relationship is between the one being gazed, though supposed to be hung on a wall to see while having sex, create beautiful children

Hannah Wilke, Intra-Venus Series, 1991-93

• went through chemo, photographed her body as it went through changes, does NOT transform illness into inspirational story

• what it means when institutions remove these images from public view, hiding the ugly

Wafaa Bilal, 3rdi, 2010-11

• surgically attached a camera to the back of his head, captured 1 image per minute, sent to his computer, uploaded to website

• complicated idea of photography as personal act of looking, anti-photography, removes influence of artist

• camera created a way to reconstruct memory, form of surveillance, random snapshots of your life

• migration, memory, and the archive of things that have been lost

Huong Ngo, And the State of Emergency Is Also Always a State of Emergency, 2017

• explores personal memory through larger histories of colonialism, refugee displacement, living in Hong Kong refugee camp for 18 years

• gives us a fragmented recreation of the refugee camp, makes certain experiences materially present: bed frame, plaster caps of Spam cans, cyanotypes of sand

  • childish, suggest a way a child might remember aspects of the past

• tension between the preservation method, which needs to sit still for a long time, and the material, sand which constantly changes

Walid Raad/ATLAS Group, Notebook, volume 38: Already been in a Lake of Fire, 1991

• made a fake archive of notebooks and papers, including facts and fiction, about Dr. Fadl Fakhouri, a fictional Lebanese historian

• challenges idea that archival evidence gives us objective information of the past

• surviving evidence does not give us the whole past, what happened outside the frame

• archive does not represent an objective truth or past, someone organizes it, filters it, chooses what is shown

Jonathan Herrera Soto, In Between/Underneath, 2019

• violence that state of Mexico deliberately deploys on its journalists, corruption, murders and disappearance

• stencils printed with mud on floor, not hung, as people go through gallery, pick up pieces of the portraits and take pieces of the people when they leave

• uncomfortable relationship between viewer and the portrait, contributing to the disappearance of these people, not just observing