Elizabeth Colborne at the Whatcom Museum

Elizabeth Colborne Lumber Mills of Puget Sound

Seattle art historian David Martin’s exhibition at the Whatcom  Museum is a perfect partner to the late summer days we are experiencing. We can empathize both with Colborne’s delight in the forests of the Northwest, her close up drawings, paintings, and prints, as well as her later work which suggests the devastation that those great forests invited. As in the image above, she always maintains a distance, and does not incorporate any critical comment. She only presents the fact of the lumber mill in Bellingham with amazing technical dexterity. The wood blocks with multiple subtle colors demonstrate her command of the medium. But more than that, she has suggested both the beauty and the tragedy of the Northwest forests. Another work of 1933 Cedar Blocks

as well as this one

 

Cedar Logs for Shingles

show us the consumption of the resource in which the Northwest was so richly endowed.

Colborne’s early work is an example of late nineteenth century children’s book illustrations,  a genre full of detail, delicate color and a sweetness that has disappeared from children’s books almost entirely. I have recently been reading an early illustrated version of Raggedy Ann to my grandchildren and the illustrations are a wonder to behold, compared to later editions of the same work which are highly simplified.

Colborne also did paintings that suggest her deep immersion in the woods, she seems to be standing in the very midst of the forest as she painted these works. We enjoy standing there with her.

Finally, as an end of summer image, I give you this clam digger, an image of people in an activity which I saw out of the train window on the way to the museum.

Elizabeth Colborne Clam Diggers 1900

The Sister Peaks of the Cascades 1925

That gave me a satisfying sense of continuity with the past.

Of course it also reminded me that this was the era of those depressing images of the native peoples of the Northwest that are on many of our ferry boats, the dispossessed native peoples on the shore harvesting the bounty of the Northwest in the midst of their new poverty.

Natives in the early 1900s

Protesting Greed

Backbone launch of inflated sculpture

The Backbone Campaign has completed another Summer Action Camp which culminated in the launch of this sculpture powered by helium balloons and kayaks and floated on Lake Washington in full view of the Paul Allen helicopter port off Mercer Island. The launch of the “mooning” sculpture was accompanied by a second banner declaring the disparity between the top one percent and the rest of us

Getting these banners in the air was not easy. Making these banners at the Action Camp on Vashon was fun, but it helped to be with experts.

First we figured out what we were going to say. Then we projected giant letters ( 8 feet high) onto Tyco fabric painted orange, then we cut it out and sewed it onto a netting. The giant pant sculpture required a lot of sewing on an industrial sewing machine and two huge inflated balloons to hold it up.

Even with a lot of help and skill and knowledge, the project was subject to the whims of nature, as currents and winds, gravity and heat, all created unexpected events. But the protest came off! It concluded with songs, speeches, chants and dances ( The bare ass review).

Backbone Bare Ass Review protesting greed

But the camp lasted for eight days and during that time there was both skills taught like kayaking and tree climbing, as well as protest art making and in depth programs presented by groups like Vida Urbana who are actively protesting evictions of both owners and tenants in Boston

Vida Urbana use the sword and shield to protest evictions in Boston

These highly effective organizers give advice to people who have received eviction notices letting them know what their rights are and what the procedure is. They also show up at auctions of houses and heckle buyers.

The United Workers group are calling publicly exposing the abuses of day laborers in Baltimore. They also have brilliant strategies and tactics and are realizing a lot of success in getting better wages for exploited hourly workers who can’t belong to unions. The stories of exploitation among stores on Baltimore’s Inner Harbor in national chain restaurants like Cheesecake Factory, Hooters, Pier 9 and Phillips Sea Food are mind boggling. ESPN Disney shut down with one week warning. Unitedworkers.org  organized a protest to demonstrate that developers were getting all the money from taxpayers.

This chart demonstrates that respect for human rights, sustainable practices and public benefits are intersecting actions that lead to a better situation for everyone.  These intersections can replace the current top down, divide and conquer approach of corporate developers

In the evening I did a presentation about my book Art and Politics Now, Cultural Activism in a Time of Crisis as well, showing these political activists how effectively artists use art in so many different ways to address political issues. This is my current focus, supported by funding from the Puffin Foundation.  See the rest of my website to learn more.

And that was only part of the program for one day! Anyone that attended the whole camp had an intense education in tactics, strategies, and techniques for activism. There were people who had traveled from all over the country to carry ideas back to their own campaigns. That is the idea of “Localize This!” the name of the action camp.

And speaking of organizing, on August 29 in Pioneer Square there was a protest of the Tar Sands with a march to President Obama’s office to ask him not to approve the Keystone pipeline.

Here are some pictures from that event.

Tar Sands Protest Banner going from Seattle to DC

I first heard about Tar Sands at last years Backbone Action Camp and did a blog about it then. Do really educate yourself on it read Tar Sands by Andrew Nikiforuk. But try to find a protest right after you read it or you will be really down in the dumps. He covers every aspect of the ecological disaster, human disaster, planet disaster.

Last summer at the Backbone Camp we heard from courageous young activists who were planning on blocking the giant trucks from driving from Lewiston to Alberta. Apparently they had a hundred people lying in the road in Moscow Idaho to continue that protest last week. All across the country people are furious and protesting. Here is a video about the Megaload arriving in Idaho on scenic Highway 12.

Greed must be stopped. The rape of the planet must be stopped. If not we will be stopped by nature. Tornadoes, floods, hurricanes, nuclear spills, oil spills, take your pick. The planet will win in the end. What kind of a future are we giving our grandchildren.

Porgy and Bess and The Help

Scene from Seattle Opera’s production of Porgy and Bess, August 2011Gershwin Opera

The Gershwin Porgy and Bess, all too briefly playing at the Seattle Opera, is stupendous. I read a lot about the history of the opera, the debates about whether it was a musical or an opera, the complaints about the stereotyping of blacks, the protests by blacks during the Civil Rights era that Gershwin’s language as well as the use of “Negro spirituals” and other popular music forms was disrespectful and poorly understanding the spirit of the original.

Forget it all! It is a magnificent story, opera, and staging. The stage is obviously influenced by 19th century American genre artists like Eastman Johnson and Winslow Homer who depicted black life in America ( there are books full of this type of imagery). The setting is a small black enclave on the sea set in the early 20th century. The Gershwin estate requires that the entire cast be African American, the only whites are the policemen, as is appropriate. So one of the reasons the opera isn’t performed more frequently is that if an Opera company has a resident group of singers they are usually mostly white.

So I purposely didn’t read the story before hand and just in case there are other people who don’t know it I won’t give it away. But one shocker is that a  New York production is changing the ending to a “Happy” ending for Broadway audiences . The ending, I think, is already happy, it is about love, about hope, about a lot of real life ambiguities, between home and life. The characters, who are accused by the NY production of being one dimensional are far from that, they are layered, contradictory, and full of dignity and passion. Human nature is on full display here also in a community of people that both stand together and display petty prejudice ( against a cripple or a prostitute, or having a good time, for example), who are cowardly and loving, protective and bold. The community has vendors passing through who sell fresh crabs, strawberries and honey on the comb. ( A recent article pointed out that poor people can no longer afford pricey organic food- well poor people produced organic food until recent changes in agriculture).

Also, there are many star singers, in addition to the leads, all of the arias were magnificently done, the choreography was stunning. In “It Ain’t Necessarily so” a piece that might have been choreographed as an almost minstrel piece, the dancing was brilliantly subtle.

All of the singers were passionate and profound in their emotional range, their demeanor and their enactment of the story.

But above all, I loved the Gershwin score: it contained the characters, the drama, the love, the hope, in the music itself. It was transcendent.

I can’t imagine what the NY production will do for music for a different ending since the music is absolutely matched to the story now.

At the same time the movie The Help has just been released. I read the book this summer and thought it was arrogant but intriguing- a white woman taking the voices of black maids, and their stories as the basis of a novel she is writing. It is set in Jackson, Mississippi during the Civil Rights Era. In the movie  it is one of the black maids who is the voice over throughout, she becomes the star, shifting the tone. The black actresses do a brilliant job, you can sense they are way more than the sum of the parts of this rather shallow effort of a novel.

The underlying premise of the Help is a white woman recording the stories of black maids in Mississippi in the 1960s. It is an absurd premise. No black maid would have talked openly to a white women at that time.Or even today for that matter. The result is that the stories are sugar coated, the events seem idealized, particularly the ending when Abiline (Viola Davis) loses her job and walks slowly down the street with the plan of becoming a writer. As one friend of mine said, what about the reality of losing a job, of having no money. It is a white woman’s fantasy that walks down that street.

Abilene(Viola Davis and Minnie (Octavia Spencer)

The two stars Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer celebrating the publication of the book The Help to which they contributed anonymously.

I think the author should donate her proceeds to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Comparing to Porgy and Bess, also a story written by a white writer in the South, it comes off a distant second in terms of empathy. While no white person can possibly be able to understand an African American experience and the ongoing racism in our society, at least in Porgy and Bess, there is a sense of believable humanity. The black maids, as projections from a white mind, are definately much less insightfully drawn. If there were an opera of this story, it would be quite limited in scope. I have been trying to find out if the author ever actually talked to any African Americans maid or otherwise about their experiences. Here is one good review.

In spite of all this Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer are brilliant and compelling. They add a depth that was absent from the novel.

October 19: I am amending this entry because I just read Anne Moody’s Coming of Age in Mississippi. It was published in 1968. It is an astonishing autobiography of the realities of being black in Mississippi in this same time frame.  The murder of Medgar Evers in the midst of the civil rights activism of the early 1960s is in both the Help and Moody’s book. In Moody’s account, there were several marches, confrontations with police, people put in jail by the hundreds. Her book is indispensable reading for anyone who wants to understand the incredible courage of the people who participated in the early sixties Civil Rights actions in Mississippi. She herself was part of the historic Woolworth Sit In, and an active organizer with NAACP and CORE. Her book should definately be the movie that is made!

Mary Ann Peters “Poor Liberty” Series at James Harris Gallery

Mary Ann Peters series “Poor Liberty” is based on her outrage, as she stated,  at  the “cavalier use of the word ‘liberty’ ” by politicians.” Each of the 12 images responds to an article she read in the newspaper. Here is the whole series as installed at the James Harris Gallery until this Saturday:

Mary Ann Peters Poor Liberty 12 panels, watercolor and gouache on clayboard, 24 x 12"

The images all have  the Statue of Liberty as a point of departure, and each print refers to a different violation of the real meaning of the idea of Liberty.

They include censorship-scarecrow , decoy(pictured)  target (pictured) , wired, belly dancer (pictured), gagged and bound(pictured) ,  Jacked,  crucified, the committee, frozen, robot, and mummy.

Some of them are very specific, as in “wired”, a reference to the publicized tortures at Abu Ghraib, and elsewhere,”gagged and bound,” another reference to torture, others are more general, as in “Jacked”, a Jack in the Box, the idea of liberty being stuck in a box and popped out at someone’s whim, or”mummy” – the mummification of the true spirit of liberty. “Crucified”  refers to the loss of the constitutional separation of Church and State, an idea that seems to have been completely lost sight of today, “the committee” refers to devils and angels at a moment  in a moral decision.

Mary Ann Peters Belly Dancer

The belly dancer is covered in oil, the pursuit of oil is drowning the Middle Eastern culture.

poor liberty ( gagged and bound)

poor liberty (decoy)

Decoy refers to the stories early in the Iraq war of soldiers sent into war with inadequate equipment.

poor liberty (crucified)

The entire series is executed in subdues tones of browns with gouache and watercolor on a slick hard surface that allows some movement of the washes, but they don’t soak into the surface. Peters technique is unusual, her choice of close valued sepia related tones is one of her distinctive characteristics. In this case the combination of her fluid technique on a resistant surface seems to exactly correspond to her subject, the manipulation of ideas on a hardened background. It creates certain results that are on the surface of our political world for all to see. But those ideas can also be misinterpreted, misunderstood, underanalyzed, and lacking in depth.

Mary Ann Peters consummate handling of watercolor and gouache allows us to see these twelve images as both extraordinary works of art individually, and a collective statement about our current social condition.

I hope she resumes the themes she included in this 2004 series,  because all of the conditions continue to exist and even worsen. For example, target, refers specifically to the targeting of people of Arab descent after 9/11, but the arbitrary targeting of both Arabs and people of color in general  for arrest, illegal internment, and deportation is an ongoing concern that I would like to see more artists representing.

Mary Ann Peters, poor liberty (target)

Carletta Carrington Wilson’s “Poem of Stone and Bone”

Entrance to the Installation and the Conclusion of the experience with prayers hung on tree by participants

Carletta Carrington Wilson at the beginning of her tour of her installation at the James Washington House at the place where Washington received his stones

Carletta  Carrington Wilson’s installation at theJames Washington House in Seattle, in May was  provocative and moving.  Carrington is a poet, a visual artist, a librarian, an African American, an historian, a writer, and a spiritual person who deeply connected to the spirit of the James Washington House.

“Poem of Stone and Bone” was installed in the garden, the greenhouse, the house, and the studio. In her tour of the installation, Carrington elaborated on the meaning of the various subtle interventions that she created in these places.

First there was the red  Bloodline of Time passing through the garden stones and stumps, leading through the garden and into the studio

Tracing the Bloodline of Time through the stones of the garden to the studio

The Bloodline of Time

Then there was the greenhouse turned spirit house, The House Stands Firm, filled with installations of wood and stone.

Installation with the artist explaining

On the ceiling were rubbings of 19th century embossed books from some of the many books in the library at the Foundation.

Roof with rubbings of the embossed covers of books from James Washington library

Installation in  The House Stands Firm, detail

In The House Stands Firm were stones and wood found on the property, some of them had been partially worked by Mr. Washington. The egg shells refer to two primary images in James Washington’s art, the bird and the egg.

Next there were soles/souls, a reference to both Washington’s metier as a shoemaker for many years, as well as his spiritual commitment to life beyond the physical world. In his earliest years, his mother apprenticed him to a shoemaker, work at which he immediately excelled and which in some ways forecast his work as a sculptor. because he went on to specialize in orthopedic shoes.

Soles Souls outside the Greenhouse

Blue Bottle tree

A blue bottle in a tree, referring to the blues, and also warding off evil spirits, was barely visible  as we left the garden to go into the studio.

Inside the studio, the model of a slave ship that Washington had collected was given a central position, along with the slave chains that surrounded it – these were key catalysts at the house for the artist long before she began her residency.

We Have Eaten the Forest : Model of Spanish Galleon slave ship at James Washington House

The ship, a 15th century Spanish galleon is, according to the artist, ” the key element highlighting the tremendous changes wrought on humans, animals and nature stemming from the West African trade in slaves.”

The artist also enhanced  pieces of furniture like the piano with an installation of stones, or bones.

Piano with intervention

On the way to the lower studio were photographs of Washington with quotes from his autobiography

Carletta  Carrington Wilson installation, detail quotes from James Washington

Carrington recited her poem consisting entirely of the titles of James Washington’s books in his library

Carletta Carrington Wilson reading Poem of Stone and Bone

Finally, there were her collages based on Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Weekly‘s images of various scenes of the Civil War combined with subtle  fabrics.

Here is an example including an image  set in the principal square of Savannah, Georgia a year before the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863

Carrington Wilson, Hannibal Prince Among Slaves, December 21, 1861 media collage

Carletta Carrington Wilson deeply explored Washington’s  books, his stones, his garden, his home, his studio, and enriched our experience of all of these dimensions of both his life and his legacy. Yet, she was also absolutely herself as she explored, adding her own responses and feelings, her own aesthetic sensibilities with color, shape, words, and objects. We were left with a sense of drifting back and forth in time from the Civil War to the present, from Emancipation to our current world. Carletta  Carrington Wilson gave us continuity with the past and a step into the future. Her installation also gave us a sense of peacefulness and hope, at a time when they are sorely needed.

Remember Me: Voices of the Silenced in Colombia: Art Exhibition

This exhibition is created by people who are on the front lines of violence in Colombia. The exhibition is being circulated by Witness for Peace Northwest  in collaboration with Lutheran World Relief.

“The artists are families and friends of those who lost their lives in the violence. Despite the fact that much of the violence has been fueled by billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars sent to the Colombian military over the past decade, few people in the United States know much about it.” from the brochure

Image from book about young boy who was forced into military under false pretenses

detail of Quilt created by families of disappeared

Deatil of installation with hundreds of photographs of disappeared and missing

The "game" is to use the wooden scoop to shovel the photographs in the box

Small cut out photographs of families of disappeared

Sculpture showing children pulled into the process of violence

Paintings by children about the violence

Some of the products using palm oil, a crop that is devestating the jungle

The exhibition had the following categories: The Disappeared, the Displaced, the War and Women, Massacres and the Cruelty of War, A precious Resource at Risk (Children), The War and Children, Silencing the Voices of Change, Assassinated Leaders and Plan Columbia. It concluded with an analysis of Plan Columbia and the sources of violence, as mentioned above in the multi billion dollar “drug war” and other devastating actions like the free trade agreements. There is  currently a new Colombia Free Trade agreement on the table that will further “put corporate profits ahead of people and the environment” . Why is this so familiar. But we can at least be educated and resist here in the US. The small farmers and Afro Colombian communities are losing their land and extra judicial killings are carried on with impunity.

While the artists who created the art works in this exhibition are children and adults who are largely working directly from their emotions with only minimal training, famous artists like Fernand Botero have also addressed the same issue as in his painting “Massacre” Also Beehive Collective has made an amazing print about the Plan Colombia. I discuss both of these artists in my book Art and Politics Now, which you can read about on this very website.

“Social Security” An art exhibition engages the world

The exhibition Social Security, curated by Deborah F. Lawrence in collaboration with Jayme Yahr, director of the Kirkland Arts Center, is an exhibition that addresses politics from several different directions and in many media. Right at the entrance is a confrontational glass work by Lauren Grossman called Rocker. Two big red heads face off on high poles on a base that rocks back and forth. The open mouths poised in debate or argument, it is hard to say, but since they are red, we can assume , they are vociferous! Just as political debate ought to be in this country.Back in the day that we had political debate.

Lauren Grossman Rocker 2010 glass steel iron and lead 82x36x27"

Nearby are John Feoderov’s sardonic paintings Emergence no 3 and 4. Odd shaped heads back to back, mouths open, but not communicating. They are coming out of cesspool like slime,  framed in a snake, probably a cobra who has swallowed a rabbit. His other Emergence painting is equally dark in its world vision, painful to view.  These people are anguished and barely surviving.

John Feodorov Emergence 4 2010 acrylic and canvas, 72 x 72

John Feodorov Emergence 3 2010, acrylic on canvas, 72 x 72

Another compelling work in the exhibition is Pam Keeley’s Trust Me Here is another  large head (Obama’s) with the words Trust Me sealing its mouth,  surrounded by a sea of struggling people. Keeley is referring to the election of Obama and the huge sense of betrayal that many  people  feel over his failure to act on the principles he declared during the election.

Pam Keeley Trust Me 2008 - 2010 acrylic ink and graphite on paper 44 x 36"

detail

Bill Whipple’s wooden sculptures that we can manipulate, such as .CEO, were amusing. As we turned the wheel a cog  controls the bent over bodies of two workers:  the elite are controlling their oppressions. This theme which can be traced back to Rivera’s Detroit murals of the Ford Motor Company, and other artists, is  a Marxist image, although it is little too gimmicky for such an urgent subject.

Bill Whipple CEO 2002 - 2010 fireboard, paint hardware, 32 x27x4

Charles Krafft creates porcelain weapons and security cameras, sinister and seductive, precious and threatening. See Ai Wei Wei posting for another security camera, that one in marble.

Charles Krafft Grenades handpainted slip cast earthenware

Charles Delft CCTV Camera hand painted slip cast ceramic

Kevin Wildermuth 27.7 billion dollar bill which lays out the cost of war for Washington State  is a straightforward statement that ought to be on a billboard and every Metro bus. I was disappointed it was the size of an actual dollar bill, given how strong the statement is.

Bell Wildermuth 27.7 billion dollar bill archival ink jet print, 17 x 16 x1

Of course Deborah Lawrence’s commanding collages were one of the highlights of the exhibition. Her shredded flag series on old high school maps are potent both politically and aesthetically. Speaking of scale, this is a great scale for her. Lawrence always combines astute critique with a way forward, which is a crucial dimension. Her New Preamble to the Constitution offers what we ought to be doing now, like “sign the Kyoto Treaty,” “Renounce the Drug War”  “Ban Racial Profiling” “Provide Health Care for All”

Deborah Lawrence New Preamble 2008 acrylic paper and fabric collage on recycled paper and map on recycled canvas map

Also upstairs is the subtle and beautiful work of Lou Cabeen. Cabeen seduces us with aesthetics, drawing us into “Too Late in Asking: A Litany of Loss” about Mountain Top removal. It records the names of places lost in a green canvas book. The accumulation of loss is deeply moving and underscores the catastrophe of Mountain Top Removal. Although Rainforest Action Network, Beehive Collective and other strong art groups are opposing it, it is still expanding, most recently to Eastern Wyoming, the Powder River Basin. The plan is to export the coal through coastal cities in the Northwest to China in hundreds of railroad cars.

Lou Cabeen Too Late in Asking A Litany of Loss, 2010, hand dyed, painted, and discharged cotton, artist book 16.25 x 38.5

Also included in the exhibition was The Game of Life, several board games that focused on “privilege” “immigration” and  racism in a game called “urban ghetto.” Each of these games was provocative and obviously done by artists who really thought about the issues. There were a lot of details. I wish we could have played them and they could be marketed. Although it was fun to look at them, I think the impact of actually playing each one would be much greater.

Jessie Wilson Fresh off the Boat edition

detail

Lara Kaminsky Urban Ghetto detail

Tina Russell Game of Life Privileged Edition

The glitzy privileged edition of course was the most magnetic, which is why elites in society are  so drawn to greed and more and more money.

The show demonstrates yet again how many choices and possiblitites there are for artists who wish to address social issues, humor, sarcasm, games, and just plain political statements framed with aesthetics to make them more powerful.

Venice Biennale Part 5 Bengladesh

This pavilion was adjacent to the Iraqi pavilion on Via Garibaldi also in the Foundation Gervasuti. Five artists are included. Each is using a different medium and addressing an entirely different subject. These artists are the contemporary heirs to a long tradition of art in this part of India, as explained in the curatorial statement by Mohamed Mijarul Quayes Those familiar with the history of art in the last century will be familiar with the Tagore family during the late Raj. Bengali artists turned to a new synthesis of early Indian art traditions, rejecting the academic art styles brought by the British colonizers.

The five artists in the Bengali pavilion today are far removed from those years, but they also show a willingess to depart from accepted norms, to reinvent new ways of thinking about old ideas. Perhaps most dramatic is the installtion by Mahbubur Rahman’s I was told to say the words

The installation is shocking even horrifying, you may wonder why I even included it: an image of pigs covered in the skin of cattle and goat,  inside cages of barbed wire. He is addressing the attitudes to domestic animals in Bengladesh, cows are domesticated, but not pigs. The installation confronts us with a horrifying vision of animals trapped in the skin of another, the contradictions of our perceptions of one animal and another based on social or religious conventions. These animals are projections of prejudice and social acts, they are symbols of ideas that do not make any rational sense, or which cannot conform with civilized perspectives. 

Rahman I was told to say these words

Tayeba Begum Lipi has two works,  I wed Myself, shows the artist dressing for a wedding as both the male and the female ( I show only one side here)

Tayeba Begum Lipi I Wed Myself

The other is a room size installation of oversize bras made of razor blades. Both address gender issues and the contradictions in all societies betwen constructed identity, traditional attitudes to women and the realities of women. The razor blades are threatening anyone who encounters them, an armor of protection to any woman who wears such a bra.

Tayeba Begum Lipi Bizarre and Beautiful

The Utoipan Museum by Imran Hossain Piplu imagined the finds of a future archeological excavation of our contemporary culture which he refers to as the Warassic Era from 1600 – 2000 AD in which all the artifacts were different type of munitions. But in his imaginary excavation the guns themselves have skeletal remains. So anyone who is reconstructing our society will recognize our main obsession with weapons, but they will also be relics of a past age. When they are discovered they will all be obsolete and unknown so the artifacts will have to be deciphered as carefully as today’s archeologists decipher the fossils of ancient geological eras. The combination of science and war with art was provocative.

Imran Hossain Piplu The Utopian Museum

Wartopia "fossils" of weapons

 These were the artists who were the most striking in the installation. In addition it included a photograph installation by Promotech Das Pulak Echoed Moments in Time, photographs of ruined sites of historical signficance in which the artist has inserted himself.

Promotesh Das Pulak Echoed Moments in Time

and the work of Kabir Ahmed Masum Chisty, a video, drawing installation related to the theme of Medusa 

Kabir Ahmed Masum Chisty Quandary

Kabir Ahmed Masum Chisty and Imran Hossain Piplu

One of the pleasures of the Venice Biennale is to meet artists from all over the world. It reminds me of the fact that living in the US we are incredibly self absorbed and narrow in our daily thinking. When we think of the rest of the world it is almost inevitably in terms of war and terrorism. The Utopian Museum by  Imran Hossain Piplu reminds us of that fact, while the other artists provide intersections with concerns of cultures everywhere, gender, history, and myth.

Venice Biennale Part 4: The Future of a Promise Contemporary Art from the Arab World

Untitled (Arabes)

What a wonderful name for this pavilion at this point in history. And the name was created before the Arab spring in December according to the curator Lina Lazaar. But the pavilion definitely has a sense of exhilaration in many of the works. There is no theme that ties the work together, although several of them address travel and borders.  But what is obvious is that contemporary art from the Arab world can go in any direction as suggested by the signpost by Ziad Abillama with every sign pointing to “Arabes”. The artists are from many countries, and have as many trajectories. Another underlying fact is that contemporary Arab art is a hot commodity, driven by galleries and auctions, as well as collectors based particularly in Saudi Arabia, Qattar, and Dubai, and other wealthy emirates. The current exhibition is funded by a group called Edge of Arabia which is going to publish a book of the same name on the contemporary arts of Saudi Arabia.

The  Future of a Promise is an aesthetically compelling show, for the most part not confrontational. Two Palestinian artists make acute work about housing issues. Taysir Batniji in particular created a riveting photographic installation, GH 0809, an abbreviation of Gaza Houses 2008 – 2009 (right after the Israeli invasion of winter 2008-09). He co- opts the format of real estate advertising to present listings of houses in the Gaza strip, many of them ruined, with comments like “building on stilts… beautiful exposure, inhabitants 27 people.” His subtlety makes one aware of both the absurdity of the listing, as well as the ruinous situation in Gaza, where materials for reconstruction have been blocked (although that is finally changing following the Egyptian change in government).

Taysir Batniji

Yazan Khalili’s Colour Correction adds bright colors on the buildings of the Al-Amari Refugee Camp located as he says “inside/beside/outside Ramallah City.” He speaks of the “unbearably unstable relationships between Palestinians and their surrounding landscape.” By adding day-glo pink, turquoise, purple,green, orange, on the buildings he is suggesting both the tragedy and the possibilities for a better future.

Another artist who dazzles us with an enormous work based on personal trauma and embedded in Middle Eastern culture is Lara Baladi.

Lara Baladi Rose with the artist standing in front

As her father died of cancer, she documented the residue in coffee cups from visitors to the family in order to predict the future. Rose is a large abstract work that includes representations of six months of these residues. The large scale and specific imagery give it resonance.

Raafat Ishak

Several of the artists addressed travel: Emily Jacir’s Embrace, appears to be a circular luggage conveyor that moves as you approach it, but which, in its emptiness, suggests futility; Raafat Ishak’s  Responses to an immigration request  from one hundred and ninety four governments.in 194 panels includes the flag of each state rendered in intentionally insipid pastels, with a summary of the repetitive responses ( or a blank if there was no response).  The homogeneity of bureaucracy around the world and its ability to obstruct individual freedom is the theme. Third, and most offbeat is Manal al Dowayan’s Suspended Together. 200 fiberglass doves frozen in place in the installation. Each one is covered with the document required for Saudi women to travel (with a male relative), underscoring that no matter how powerful women become, the restrictions on their travel in the Arab world still exist everywhere. (It is intriguing that the Saudi pavilion has two women as the artists, with an emphasis on their world wide travel.)

Manal Al-Dowayan Suspended Together

And of course as painters, Ayman Baalbaki with his extraordinary surfaces depicting just the faces of freedom fighters wearing the characteristic keffiye and Ahmed Alsoudani’s frightening images of disaster, are entirely different in technique, but equally compelling as art.

Ahmed Alsoudani

Lina Lazaar in front of the painting by Ayman Baalbaki

Altogether there were 22 artists each addressing a different topic in a different medium. The real message of the show was to demonstrate the sophisticated range of art from the Arab world, carefully not called “Arab art.”   Some of these artists have been expatriots for decades, others are still living in their country of origin, some are in places of conflict, others in cities of great wealth. Some are religious followers of Islam, others are Christian. All of the works are understandable to an uninformed viewer who is not Arab. Is this therefore simply contemporary art that happens to come from artists who have Arabic roots, and marketable in the international market since it does not challenge or obscure. There are many many artists who could have been included. Why were these chosen?

The curator, Lina Lazaar, poses the question “Can visual culture . . . respond to both recent events and the future promise implied in these events?” The future promise is the demands of the recent protestors in the Middle East for democracy, freedom to speak their minds, freedom to participate in their countries, to replace authoritarianism with governments responsive to the people, to have economic opportunity, even just employment. Do these works address that?  Sometimes. Is the repression of those desires what lies in the future. In some cases. Is that indicated here? Occasionally.

It is intriguing to compare this to the Iraqi pavilion (and Alsoudani appears in both), in which the artists’ anguish comes through clearly as does a coherent and urgent subject, in equally successful art. The shift in the relationship of art to politics is subtle. At what point are artists willing to push us further? At the point of events such as the complete tragedies in Gaza and Iraq.  At the point of the urgency of the young media artist Ahmed Basiony killed in Tahrir Square. At the point of Ai Wei Wei’s exposure of the arrests of Chinese intellectuals on social media. He has been courageously standing up for everyone else who is silent. Thank goodness he has been released. He stands as an example of what is necessary for the future promise to be realized. To stand up for what we believe in. The young workers of the Arab world have been doing just that. Let us hope that artists can be real partners in these hoped for futures as often as possible.

Photograph of Resistance in Bahrain( not in the exhibition)

Venice Biennale Part 3: Egyptian Pavilion honors Ahmed Basiony Artist and Activist 1978-2011

Ahmed Basiony Avant Garde artist

As a direct connection to the popular surge of demand for democracy in the Arab world, the Egyptian pavilion honors young media artist/activist Ahmed Basiony ( 1978 – 2011).

He was brutally murdered in Tahrir Square on January 28^th, 2011 as he was filming the uprisings. The day before he had been beaten, but had decided to return.

Basiony was a radical in his art and his politics. He was a pioneer in experimental digital media, an unusual field in Egypt because of the lack of courses and the lack of resources.  He was also a tireless teacher and crucial inspiration among the younger generation of Egyptian artists

Basiony footage in Tahrir Square and his performance piece

He had been filming for four days in Tahrir Square. His last postings on his facebook page are “Please O Father, O Mother, O Youth, O Student, O Citizan, O Senior and O more. You know this is our last chance for our dignity, the last chance to change the regime that has lasted the past 30 years. Go down to the streets, and revolt, bring your food, your clothes, your water, masks and tissues and a vinegar bottle, and belive me, there is but one very small step left . . . If they want war, we want peace, and I will practice proper restraint until the end, to regain my nation’s dignity.”

In the Egyptian pavilion Basiony’s footage from Tahrir Square alternated with his art work 30 Days Running in Place from a year ago. It shows the artist running in a transparent sweat suit with sensors on the soles of his shoes and his body, that translated into a visual diagram. He did this performance for one hour a day for 30 days. It expresses an incredible frustration and sense of futility. See this discussion about it. Also here is an outstanding  Nafas that gives an overview of all aspects of his career.

30 Days Running in Place

The sense of futility and entrapment in the work, its abstract purpose, contrasts entirely with the alternating images of the crowds in Tahrir Square that he photographed in late January. On the day he was killed, his camera was taken away and has never been recoverd. His body was missing for three days. When it was finally found, it was evident that he had been intentionally shot by a sniper and his body intentionally run over. Many members of the media were killed on the same day.

So the pavilion is dedicated to this young and brilliant artist, we see the idea of his pent up frustration in his Running in Place work, and the idea of action and resistance in the footage from the square. I think his heartfelt call for action explains that he was indeed wanting the government to fall so much, for the future of his children (he leaves behind a young son and a one year old daughter) and for all the children of Egypt. Their goals were realized, the government fell. We hope that the new government will respect the wishes of the young and organized people from all aspects of Egyptian society who brought this about. It is not at all clear that they will.