Break the Silence Mural Project

Image Wars and Zones of Conflict

Other than Hirshhorn who is addressing the artist’s own position, the works expand our understanding of what is going on inside of an environment in which military attacks are destroying if not your own building, then the one next door, or in another part of the country (Lamia Joreige). Do you go and look, do you stay home and drink tea. Lamia drove nearby.

Other artists are also telling us what happens with the people who are on the ground, but not actually shooting, what happens to memory, what happens to you? Ghaith Abdul-Ahad is an Iraqi photographer and journalist who was next to a US shoot out of civilians in Iraq. His image of a screaming child in his fathers arms, which I have on my desk, is haunting beyond any image I have seen. It interrupts us entirely. We cannot avoid it. These artists are telling us that conflict is a long, wide and deep place. Ghaith Abdul-Ahad was also part of an exhibition and book called Unembedded. The photographers did work for mainstream media, but they are free lance, and the book includes a lot of work that they couldn’t get published.

Given the crisis in Gaza, I have been focusing on that in my own writing. In the New York exhibition, Demos included Emily Jacir and Ahlam Shibli, both of whom fall into the category of reinventing documentary photography. But I also found this statement by Anjalika Sagar and Kodwo Eshun a pair of artists in one of the London symposia. They comment on the difficulty of representing Palestine, when it is non existent. How can it be made visible they ask? How has it been made visible? They use as the example the Jenin Refugee Camp, a place where the residents have been repeatedly asked to represent themselves, the artists ask if the refugees could be represented as other than victims? or other than witnesses?

Gloria Bornstein Some New Art

Gloria Bornstein had a small showing of her new work recently. This is what she said about it

“The title of the grouping of Rorschach tests and queens is: “you’ve been confirmed as queen”. I heard a voice saying this in a dream.

The artworks are part of a series exploring the perceptual gap between the eye as optical instrument – and the gaze of the unconscious.

Like Rorschach tests and dreams, the artworks play with objectivity, subjectivity, and the illusionary space in-between.

The artworks developed from one of many dreams I document daily, a continuing practice begun 1974″.

After reading Frank Rich in the NY Times yesterday I realized how apropos the mirrors are to the current financial hall of mirrors capitalism is mired in. The queens represent anything you project on them but Madoff (& sub-prime mortgages) are a perfect example of elation/deflation we find in dreams – awake and not). “

These evocative works are eerie, as seen in this suggestive photograph where they are reflected in a window at dusk. They come out of Gloria’s Bornstein’s subconscious. We love Gloria’s subconscious. When I need a jolt in my head I talk to Gloria, who is a private person who rarely shows personal work. But talking to her is always a treat. That is why we were so lucky to have this momentary showing ( or was it a sighting?)

The pieces were in two parts, the Rorschach drawings and the metal “crowns” based on those drawings are set on wooden heads from dummies. This is a great metaphor, a crown coming from the subconscious is placed on a dummy head. It suggests the inversion of the order of things, an accidental person becomes queen.

Since Gloria is so deep, the pieces also connect to Lacan, mirror stages, and dreams. Queens seem like a subject that doesn’t come easily in a dream. But a tiara on a wooden dummy head, this is pure comedy, pure outrageous defiance of expectations. I wish more people dared to be this ridiculous and beautiful. Life in the contemporary art world of Seattle would be a lot more interesting!.

Gloria also has a public side: She has done a lot of incredible public art. Here I will mention only the Sentinels at the Fire station in the International District. This is what she told me about them:

“Inspired by forms found in Asian Art, architecture, folk craft, and public safety, the multi-sculptural environment represents the guardians of the city. Just as the staff of Fire Station 10 Center in the Chinatown-International District is responsible for the public safety of the city, the surrounding Asian community has been standing watch over the interests of their neighborhood. I wrote the art plan “Different Voices, One Community” after interviewing the folks that make up the tapestry of Seattle‘s Asian community. Basically, the firefighters of Seattle‘s oldest station in Pioneer square-have a historic relationship with the community that goes back 100 years. At that time, the city had laws prohibiting firefighters from putting out fires in “Chinatown“. The firefighters helped change the laws. When large buildings were condemned, they arranged for neighborhood residents to work round the clock to bring them to code & meet city deadlines.”

Is this not wonderful information. These sentinels bring together art history, political, cultural connections, and Seattle‘s history of racism. Looking at these red sentinels we see iconic forms, a little like pieces on a game board, they interrupt the dreary area of Seattle where the fire station is. They declare themselves, they say stop, here are people who are going to suddenly rush out to help us in an emergency. Here are sentinels!

What is amazing about Gloria’s public art is that every piece is different. See her website to know what I mean.

Gaza, MLK and Obama

Last Saturday hundreds of people turned out to protest the massacre in Gaza. It was really a heavy and sad demonstration, but it was important to be there. We walked around a big double block in downtown Seattle, chanting.
The desperate situation of the Palestinians in general is what made it so sad. If you look below the completely biased US news coverage, the actual situation is that every major city is an outdoor prison, the wall is strangling the Palestinians movement and psyches, the military occupation is pervasive, and probably the other cities like Ramallah, Bethlehem, and Nazareth are thinking, we are next. The brief hiatus in the killing is just that.

Then the next day we had the MLK march, the best march of the entire year because it brings together everybody in a spirit of unity.Here I am with my grandson. We were also singing with the raging grannies. This is Max’s second MLK march. Last year he was only two months old. This year he went the whole way in his stroller, walking, and in my arms. It is the march above all others that I feel gives us hope.

Of course this year it was overlapped with the inauguration of Barack Obama the very next day, a supremely exhilarating day. It is hard to believe that we are actually rid of those crooks. Let us hope for the best. So far so good. But if Obama doesn’t really redefine the discourse in Israel/Palestine, which is almost impossible to do given the bias and ignorance in the US, the situation will be that we continue to fund Israel’s obliteration of Palestine. But many groups are working to try to help Obama to understand that a “better world is possible.” He has told us we all need to be activists. He cannot change the world alone. WOW, what a relief!! I want to feel this way for awhile.

clowns and laughter

The all day celebration of the Feast of the Kings meant there were non stop clowns performing in the town square. These are just two groups. Here the man with the red hat.asked people to volunteer to get up on stage and do as he asked them to do. They volunteered to be various animals, monkey, giraffe, lion.
Everyone had a good laugh. It was really great. If only the US sponsored culture that allowed people to laugh instead of so much military hardware, the whole world would be a better place. It was a big weight lifted off to be outside the US and its pressure to have arms, security, and war.

Mexico Part III The Yucatan

I thought it would be a let down to go to the Yucatan after being in the jungle in Chiapas at Palenque and Yaxchilan, but it was also thrilling. Merida, the Spanish capitol, was full of art. It had multiple celebrations going – its 466th birthday, the Feast of the Kings, and its weekly celebration of the heart of Merida. I went crazy in the zocolo buying gifts of embroidered clothes for everyone I could think of. There were so many kinds of music performed in the streets that we couldn’t keep track, groups of beautiful male singers in harmony performing with only a few instruments, female singers, popular Yucatan singers- Sergio Esquivel and Maria Medina, and of course Mayans with a horn and a drum trying to pick up a few pennies. The heritage of the city as a segregated place under the Spaniards was evident in the impoverished wandering Maya women selling textiles. I watched one eleven year old girl packing up her goods for twenty minutes, then she reappeared in front of our hotel. I had to buy a scarf from her. In this picture is Gabriela who had one of the stands that appeared overnight and disappeared the next morning.
Here is one of four groups who were playing in a small stage set up in the street on a single night, each one distinctive.
We also saw an amazing dance performance by a group called the Compania Kaambal that goes all over Mexico learning contemporary indigenous/folk performances. These performances combine rapid dance steps with extraordinary costumes and often spectacular headdresses.

They were also celebrating the feast of the Kings, when the children get presents in Mexico. It is my favorite holiday in Mexico. Lots of young people dress up as Kings and everyone eats a special cake that has prizes in it. You can see the big cake on the table here.

We visited late classic Uxmal with its huge structures, and Chichen Itza with its huge crowds and overwhelming tourist souvenirs that almost eclipse the structures. But the pyramids and the other buildings are still impressive. These are late examples of Maya culture, as is Tulum. Tulum has the added advantage of the story of Guerrero, a Spaniard who went native when he was shipwrecked on the coast of the Yucatan and then taught the Maya how to defeat the Spaniards, apparently this is the source of the word “guerrilla” We also learned in Tulum that this coast of Mexico was very close to Cuba, so the lolling masses in their bathing suits are right across a short stretch of Caribbean from Guantanamo. It reminded us again of the mindlessness of the masses as untold suffering occurs outside their consciousness. Of course we were also briefly sitting on the same beach, but we are not beach culture people. It only lasted an hour.

In the Government Palace in Merida is a series of over twenty large scale murals by Fernando Castro Pacheco that show the history of the Maya in the Yucatan pre and post Conquest. The Maya resisted colonization for decades, and then in the 19th century there was a Caste War that again fought the Spanish. They were tough fighters. It includes Guerrero as one of the subjects.This image is the Eagle and the Serpent.

Mexico Part II Jungle Walks and Yaxchilan

Near Palenque in the jungle is the forgotten temple. We went there with our guide Edgar (here is in the green shirt). It was covered with lichen and crumbling into the jungle. As we sat on the front steps we saw a family of howler monkeys. But what is really evident is that the jungle is heavily impacted by humans. It was nothing like what I expected. Jungle means to me inpenetrable forest, so lushly overgrown that you can’t pass through. This jungle had small trees and lots of light. That suggests that it isn’t that old.

We went through the jungle easily, but it was still beautiful. Edgar said that the area around Palenque has lost its designation as a bioreserve because a very high percentage of the jungle is lost to development, particularly cattle. That means all of us eating meat, all the Mexicans eating meat are affecting the jungle. We have always heard about Burger King and Brazil, this jungle is closer to home. We saw an exhibit about the jaguar hiding deep in the forest, but its shrinking habitat is threatening it with near extinction. But the connection wasn’t made to eating meat.

When we went to Yaxchilan we went on a motor boat on the Usumacinta River, the border with Guatemala. It was quite easy and accessible, but Yaxchilan is deeper into the jungle, the setting is even more lush and beautiful than Palenque. We went through a dark dark labyrinth when we arrived: that was a place for the king to get in touch with the cosmic gods. He stayed in the ninth level down for nine days, then re emerged with new powers.

Yaxchilan (it means green place) was a commercial trading center, but it had rituals and ceremony also. Carolyn Tate has analyzed it as a ceremonial city. It traded jade from Guatemala to Palenque. It has many steles and lintels showing such subjects as penis piercing, and the blood dropping into a bowl. This was another way of gaining power and of nourishing both the king and the earth. It had a feminist site, representation of a queen doing tongue piercings (stingray needle and rope passed through her tongue leading to hallucination, the best stele of this is in the British Museum, stolen by an early explorer) that also represent gaining power. The ball court was also prominent, and reliefs of ball players. This game was real, symbolic, political, impossible to play, and metaphorical of life and death. The ball game figures prominently in the Popol Vuh the early post colonial record of the Mayan creation story. Once there were 12,000 people living here. The main leaders are Bird Jaguar and Shield Jaguar.

After Yaxchilan we stayed in a Lacandan village. The Lacandan are the smallest Mayan ethnic group ( there are 13 different ethnicities today).When the Spaniards came there were 68 different cultures and 24 million people. After the Conquest they were reduced to 4 million. The Lacandan were traditionally living deep in the jungle until roads invaded it in rather recent years, the mid 1990s. Now their life style is also threatened. But they have a village where they put up tourists and take them on a walk through the jungle. We walked for five hours across rivers on logs and rocks, helped by our Lacandan guide who reached out for us, told us about medicinal plants and was generally charming. When I asked him about Bush and Obama, he said the Mexicans booed Bush when he came to Mexico and he likes Obama. There deep in the jungle we had this conversation. He also led us to a Mayan temple in the jungle, a small structure crumbling in the woods. There are hundreds of unexcavated temples.
Bonampak is in the Lacandan area of the jungle. It is a site with murals that are disappearing as people stand in line to look at them and breath on them.

Mexico Part I Palenque, Chiapas

Here we are in Palenque in front of the Xibalba Hotel with the owner Marco. Xibalba means underworld in Maya. But this hotel is perfect for the traveler who doesn’t want fancy accomodations, but warm people, good food, and joy. There is nothing underworld about it.

My friend Carolyn Tate who is an expert on the site of Yaxchilan told us about it. See the next post to learn about her book.

The Maya sites of Palenque, Yaxhilan, and Bonampak, are amazing. No one I have talked to has ever heard of them! In comparison Chichen Itza is only about architecture with much less surviving art. The reason is that in Palenque as well as Guatamala and Hondurus are the sites of early Maya culture.
Chichen Itza and Uzmal are much later. They are more familiar to people because they are near Cancun, the beach culture and therefore more accessible.

Palenque (Las Ruinas) has impressive temples, palaces, and other buildings that rise in the midst of the jungle.There are a total of 1453 structures, 24 have been restored between 1940 – 1979, we see the seven biggest. It was first discovered in 1786 by the Spanish. The site was built in the 600s ( according to our calendar, the Mayas used three different calendars for dating- they were obsessed with time among other things).
The Maya King Pakal was an amazing person, he lived twice as long as usual ( to 80 years old) and built himself a secret underground tomb that wasn’t discovered until 1952.

On the lid of his sarcophagus is one of the amazing works of classical Mayan art.
This is a photo of the replica of the lid at the Xibalba Hotel, made by Marco’s family. It rises three stories through the courtyard of the hotel. It shows King Pakal dying and descending into the underworld (shown as big jaws of a snake with a n incense burner in his open mouth at the bottom) , but the great part of the story is that when King Pakal goes into the underworld he nourishes the tree of life, which is in the center of the lid with a huge magic bird on top, so it is showing death and regeneration based on the Maya creation myth. In the middle of the tree is a two headed snake, an umbilical cord connecting different worlds ( it appears on a staircase at Chichen Itza).
None of these many details are visible in this image, but take my word for it, that is just the beginning of what the lid tells us and what the Maya believed.The lid was never seen for hundreds of years until it was discovered. But the original still sits deep under ground ( nine levels to be exact, the nine levels of the underworld).

The complexity of the belief systems of the Maya is staggering, cosmology, astrology, measurement of time in millions of years, the idea of zero, mythology, agriculture. Then there are the inventions, we saw a toilet, a steam bath, and a septic tank, in the palace.
The caricatures of the Maya that tourists are fed at Chichen Itza are entirely made up according to Linda Schele in her book the Code of Kings.

The Ball Game, seen here at Yaxchilan, seems to have been a metaphor of life and resurrection, the main theme of Maya culture. The Ball Park was a crack in the earth that connected to the underworld. The ball players could only hit the ball with their hips and elbows, they wore stone yokes and huge padded outfits. Kings had to take authority by playing the cosmic game. On the right are two dwarfs. The squares around the ball game are all glyphs telling exactly when this is taking place, dating back symbolic eons. The Kings took their power by connecting to the earliest cosmic dieties, as well as through their knowledge of astronomy. Of course if we compare that to rulers today of supposedly democratic countries, a divine connection is still being invoked, and power is from secret knowledge and languages not shared with the rest of us.

Palenque also has the group of the cross, three temples that face each other and create together another reference to death and resurrection through the underworld and return to the earth. This photo shows us after we have completed the cycle and are standing on the temple of the Foliated Cross. All of these temples have stunningly complicated low relief sculptures showing various stages of the King’s transformations ( this is the son of Pacal, Chan Bahlum II). Please forgive me this cliche touristic indulgence (we were there). But we had such a great time climbing up and down these three temples, I couldn’t resist.
The next installment if I don’t get distracted with other work will be on Yaxchilan, Bonampak, and Merida. We also went to an eco hotel in a biosphere. Too much to write.

Overshadowing our trip were the horrors of Israel’s slaughter in Gaza, which I followed with so much sadness and horror. US tactics, US weapons, obviously taking advantage of the transition in this country. All I could think of was, how we look down on the Maya as primitive for practicing human sacrifice, but we slaughter our own race with no control. The newspapers and tv in Mexico covered the Palestinian side thoroughly showing interviews with Palestinians, the protests of the orthodox Jews in Israel against their government, and page after page of the invasion and destruction. This is a poster asked us to write our opinion about whether the bombardment of Palestinians by Israel was serving Yankee interests.

Christmas and Politics

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/390300_ornament03.html
Deborah Lawrence my good friend and politically engaged artist has pulled off a big media coup. She was invited to make an ornament for the White House Christmas tree: her ornament honored the radical history of Washington State including Jim McDermott’s support for impeachment, WTO, and the Seattle General Strike of 1919, in tiny writing that weaves through a stripy design. Deborah has been using flag related colors and stripes for awhile, so it was the perfect moment to make a statement.
She was censured from the White House Christmas Tree.
And the media storm has played nationwide. There seem to be multiple issues coming to the fore: bad manners, out of the Christmas “spirit”, “evil, maniacal artist” . So three in one, what is courteous about Christmas trees in the white house, it is just a PR gesture to cover up Bush’s wars against people and the planet. Even as I write he is reversing every environmental regulation he can think of. What is Christmas as wars and killings go on and on in Iraq, Afghanistan,Palestine and elsewhere, directly or indirectly the result of the policies of this particular white house. Why do people find artists “evil” when they speak truth to power, the real point of being an artist.

Lawrence was the only artist among the over 300 who participated to use the opportunity to make a statement. And she has eloquently and calmly stood up for what she believes in on right wing talk shows and other media.

The arguments against her action by conservatives were that she was being “rude” because she had an invitation into “someone’s home” and was exploiting it selfishly to her own ends. That Chistmas is not the time to be political. What about that. Why not? Christmas is already political. All right so when we are actually eating dinner on Christmas, or opening presents, we might have to be a little careful with our immediate families, but why should we suddenly stop paying attention to what is going on; people are still dying, people are still wounded. That is exactly what Bush wants us to do, forget all about it. And Deborah refused to let him off the hook. Unlike the Congress and so many members of the American public who want to simply move on. She is speaking ( quite subtly actually) to the horrendous crimes that Bush has committed.

They said she was too obvious, why couldn’t she be more subliminal ( that was one of the more supportive comments)
She lacked “class” – an odd statement I couldn’t quite fathom that was repeated many times. What did they mean by class, what is more classy than a subtle subversion of ornament into art.

Her response is that she was honoring the state and Jim McDermott for this signing on to the impeachment of President Bush. She was making a statement, but she always makes statements. Here is the artist in her own words.
Anybody that knew Deborah, knew she was going to do this. Like my son in law said, it is the story of the frog and the scorpion, she is a scorpion. He also compared it to Diego Rivera’s mural at Rockefeller Center, which was destroyed because it lowered the real estate values by honoring the worker and communism too prominently.

I am thrilled that Deborah has not only stood up to the media, but done so calmly and articulately. Laura Bush gave far more prominence to the ornament than if she had hung it, and by extension it is bringing up the continual need to impeach Bush and to prosecute him for war crimes after he leaves office.

It tells you that she is trully political, in her fiber. She knows how to handle real world politics, as well as subverting the decoration on the white house Christmas tree which is itself decorating the committing of war crimes and the horror of the last eight years. The Washington Post comment line had this great comment:

Posted by: jaylin4dc | December 2, 2008 5:04 PM

A Brief Hallelujah and the problems continue

Of course I begin with Hallelujah for the election of Barack Obama. No matter what, it has to be better than the last eight years. We are all relieved and proud.

We all know that Obama cannot solve all the big problems overnight, but we hope, hope, hope, that he takes dramatic actions to change the course of several severe, forever problems, particularly Israel and Palestine. Please Obama take advantage of your mandate to really take action on a new way to think about that painful situation. Gaza is a nightmare as severe as Guantanamo right now. The West Bank is fragmented by Israeli settlements funded by our money. The State of Israel relies on millions of dollars in our aid. And in fact, there are many Israelis that completely oppose their government policies. The Palestinians deserve respect, apologies, and the possibility for the basic necessities of life, water, food, shelter, as well as freedom to lead a normal life. The Israelis are following a policy of systematically destroying those basic given necessities, destroying Olive Trees, orange trees, dividing land. As I sat and ate a quince grown on our tree in our garden, I thought of the destroyed orange groves in Palestine, bulldozed ruthlessly, for no “security” reason. As I eat olives, I think of the thousand year old olive trees being destroyed. The farmland divided by walls.

Barack, don’t let the pressures on you obscure the facts.
The facts are that Gaza has an electric fence around it, Apache helicopters flying overhead all the time, gunboats patrol the shore, missiles fired at suspicious activity. This description comes from Hollow Land by Eyal Weizner, one of three books that have come to my attention courtesy of Adbusters 78
The Lords of the Land, The War for Israeli’s Settlements in the Occupied Territories 1967 – 2007, by Idith Zertal and Akiva Bdar, Hollow Land: Israel’s Architecture of the Occupation by Eyal Weizner, and Hold Everything Dear, Dispatches on Survival and Resistance by John Berger. Be sure to look at the slide show on their website. Obviously, the wall is another famous example of the architecture of occupation.

At the same time I am increasingly aware of the boldness of Palestinian artists in the Occupied territories and around the world in making Palestine visible, in resisting obliteration, in revisualizing the past, in creating history, in perpetuating Palestine. Cultural workers are playing a crucial role in the Palestinian resistance. I have just become aware of Project 6 plus and its collaborative exhibition with Palestinian artists called Secrets, and that is just one example.

And of course the awards going to Emily Jacir are cause for celebration. I hope she uses her exhibition at the Guggenheim as a pedestal for the Palestinian cause. Not to mention the money itself to support the cultural institutions in like Khalil Sakakini in Ramallah. That would be terrific. But Emily is simply the most prominent. There are many writers, poets, visual artists, dramatists, actors, dancers, singers, calligraphers, filmmakers, video artists, photographers, who are active in the cause. Of course the great poet Mahmoud Darwish was the best known, and his recent death is a great loss. But his words live on.