Artist Talk: Turmoil and Transformation @ Hera Gallery

My migrant blanket piece “bodies, borders, cages” was recently included in the juried exhibition Turmoil and Transformation at Hera Gallery in Wakefield, RI. Hera Gallery was founded in 1974 as one of the earliest women’s cooperative galleries in the US. I spoke about the process and inspiration behind my piece at the artist talk, which you can view here (minutes 11:43 - 15:27):

This piece is called “bodies, borders, cages.” I made this piece because I was furious about the human rights violations perpetrated against migrants by the US government. To make it, I collected photos of the children detained in McAllen, TX that US Customs and Border Protection provided to the press in 2018 and I burned the photos onto a silkscreen using a photo-emulsion process that resulted in these abstracted shapes, which I then printed onto a thermal blanket like the ones used in these camps. 

I was really influenced by Andy Warhol’s Death and Disaster series which similarly uses photo-silkscreen and repetition in a way that reflects the saturation of these images in the news-media and our resulting desensitization to seeing that cruelty. I was really thinking about Thomas Crowe’s essay about Warhol’s paintings of death and violence, where he says “We cannot penetrate beneath the image to touch true pain and grief, but the reality of suffering is sufficiently indicated in the photographs to draw attention to one’s own limited ability to find an appropriate response.”

As I was making this piece I was thinking about how the only images we have of the inside of these facilities are the ones that that CBP provide – so essentially, how the institution that’s committing this violence is also in control of how we see it - and how most of the photos released showed boys, boys of color, who according to the American Psychological Association are more likely to be perceived as guilty and face police violence when accused of a crime.

I wanted to use those images but strip them of attributes like skin color or gender, so you need to really look closely to recognize a human figure in the piece, but when you do you see them and recognize their surroundings – the chain link cages, but you also see your image reflected in the thermal blanket, placing you in that situation, asking you to consider what that experience is like. And in that empathetic practice to then question What kind of protection do we owe each other as human beings? And to imagine alternatives to detention that honor human dignity.

The process of making this was a way of channeling my grief and my feelings of powerlessness to change a situation that is perpetrated by my government in my name. Art can’t change the world, but I truly believe that collectively, people can. So I want to highlight the work of organizations like RAICES Texas and Project Amplify, who advocate for migrants at the border, and close to home there’s Never Again Action RI and the FANG Collective who are doing great work to cancel ICE contracts with the state and shut down the Wyatt Detention Center in Central Falls. So if you are moved by this piece please check them out and support their work.  

 

Multiple Occupancy: Eleanor Antin’s Selves @ ICA

There was so much to this exhibition that I have to go back to really take it all in. One piece really struck me during this visit.

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This piece was painful for me to sit through. I couldn’t make it through the whole thing, I came into the room around the end and stayed for the beginning, so I think I missed a good chunk of the middle. Antin sits almost facing the camera, seemingly peering into a mirror in the distance. From what you can tell, she is wearing only a see-through bra, and seems to be going through her nighttime beauty regime before bed – she washes her face, applies a face cream, musses with her hair, poses, talks to herself, and takes drags from a cigarette in between prepping her skin for sleep.

The piece is in stark black-and-white, and completely silent. The only sound I could hear was the sound of the Nathalie Djurberg exhibition softly in the distance. The effect is eerie, as if you are the mirror image Antin is staring into. When she speaks to herself, your brain fills in the blanks. I heard my own insecurities while watching her eyes pensively scan the mirror/camera and her mouth mumble something inaudible.

I also found myself thinking how gorgeous she looked like this, taking off all of her make-up and looking so vulnerable. I noticed how she looked like so many women I recognized from family pictures taken during the 70s. At one point, she stands, removes her bra and waits a moment, just inspecting her image, before putting on a blouse and trying on different poses, as if she were in a department store changing room. I really identified with this one, but it made me wonder how a man might have responded to the same video.

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Rashaun Mitchell, Stephin Merritt + Ali Naschke-Messing: PERFORMANCE @ ICA

Rashaun Mitchell, Stephin Merritt + Ali Naschke-Messing: PERFORMANCE @ ICA

January 25, 2014 

Begun during a two-week residency at the ICA in the summer of 2013, PERFORMANCE is inspired by a quote from Richard Avedon: “We all perform. It’s what we do for each other all the time, deliberately or unintentionally. It’s a way of telling about ourselves in the hope of being recognized as what we’d like to be.”

In a sneak preview in July (under the working title Romance Study #1) Mitchell’s virtuosic choreography, live music from singer-songwriter Merritt of the Magnetic Fields, and Naschke-Messing’s richly glowing installation combined to celebrate the mystery of performance, individualism, wit, musicality, fancy, and the absurd. — http://www.icaboston.org/performance/co-lab/PERFORMANCE/

Watching this performance brought me back to my very first “welcome to art school moment,” when I found myself in a five-hour, improv performance art class. I say “found myself” like I had nothing to do with the arrangement, but really I chose this situation because I felt like being adventurous. I loved performing in plays in high school, but this was some next level shit. I loathed every self-conscious second of being a tree, of mirroring strangers, of wiggling around like birdshit falling from the sky.

Amazingly though, despite how horrified I was to put my body through that experience, I’ve recently realized what an appreciation it gave me for dance and dancers, and the incredibly beautiful gestures they can create with their bodies.

For me, the most beautiful part of the performance was the end, when Stephin Merritt appeared outside of the huge auditorium window leading a procession of dancers, who were blowing bubbles in a trail behind him.  The bubbles froze and burst in the air, and the frozen shards dropped like lead balloons. Merritt singing “I Die” and plucking on his ukelele was barely audible from outside, while inside was perfectly still and quiet. Merritt and the dancers were lit by moonlight outside, and the lights were off in the auditorium. As the small parade shuffled off out of eyesight to the left, a brightly-lit cruise ship in the waterfront floated out of sight to the right at almost the exact same moment, leaving everything dark inside and outside. The timing was so perfect it seemed like it had to have been planned that way, but it couldn’t have been. I thought it was interesting that the last time they had performed this, it was during the summer residency, so the bubbles freezing like that was something brand new in this performance.

After the performance, there was a Q&A with the collaborators and the dancers, all of whom gave profound insight into the process of collaboration, but the take-away was how dry and hilarious Stephin Merritt is. His answers were all extremely terse compared to the abstract artspeak of his collaborators.

I did not attempt to shake his hand or say hello because I’m afraid of meeting my idols, but my friend Meg was brave and asked a question: “Did you enjoy the summer residency?” He responded with a perfectly brief “some parts better than others.”

PIECE WORK @ Portland Museum of Art, ME

I had the pleasure of checking out the Portland Museum of Art’s biennial during my trip to Maine last week. The overall theme connecting all of the work was the process behind each piece. From the exhibition catalogue:

“The subtitle Piece Work is derived from the exhibition’s thematic approach. It is meant to evoke the traditional labor-based notion of artisans and factory workers who are paid “by the piece,” but also to conjure the image in visitors’ minds of “one thing after another,” a seemingly endless repetition of making, passing, and making again… While the artwork featured in Piece Work spans a broad range of media, the thread that connects the artists is their use of repetition, handcraft, and translation.”

       Michael Zachary, Dave at the Cabin (CMYK)

I have a habit of getting as close up to work as I possibly can without setting off an alarm. I am really interested in an artist’s process and mark-making, and I like to see if I can determine how a piece was made, or what line was put down first. So initially I didn’t really know what to make of this series, because I observed them from only inches away. I saw hundreds of rigid, methodical lines in primary colors, clearly done with a hand and a ruler.  It wasn’t until I moved on to the Lauren Fensterstock piece installed several feet away that I was at enough of a distance to recognize what all that process was building up to.

The relationship between Michael Zachary’s drawings and the sculpture installed next to them is really exciting, because they both reveal themselves slowly. At first glance of Lauren Fenterstock’s “Ha-ha,” you see blades upon blades of grass at eye-level.

Lauren Fensterstock, “Ha-ha”

Lauren Fensterstock, “Ha-ha”

As you step back from Michael Zachary’s pieces so that your eyes can register the images, you inevitably notice the hidden interior space in Fenterstock’s sculpture, filled with thousands of hand-cut paper flowers.

JT Bullit, “I will not stop until I fall asleep”

JT Bullit, “I will not stop until I fall asleep”

I spent a lot of time taking in JT Bullit’s drawing work, including this piece from his passenger series. Bullit is deeply invested in mark-making and creating symbols; from his artist statement:

Every action we perform leaves its mark in the world. Putting pen to paper is thus an ideal metaphor for living. In doing so, over time, points become lines, lines become forms, and forms become symbols imbued with meaning. This hierarchical accumulation of small gestures adds up to a densely concentrated language of action and choice that can be rich with significance and emotional truth.

But my favorite piece of his was “Every Time I Did Not Think of You,” which I wish I could find an image of. If it were a sound piece, it would be a Magnetic Fields song. It’s a drawing made up of tiny checks drawn intermittently throughout an invisible grid. There are maybe a dozen or so checks softly marring the otherwise blank paper at sporadic intervals. Sometimes the marks are close together, as if the You of the title didn’t leave the artist’s mind for days, sometimes spread far apart. Pretty heartbreaking.

I moved from that sentimental piece to another one, just as clever.

Crystal Cawley, “Love Letter Sweater”

Crystal Cawley, “Love Letter Sweater”

This was another piece that made me go “aww,” at first. The sweater is cozily constructed, the colors are pastel and soothing, and it looks like the type of comforting old thing you’d thrown on after work. When you are up close, you can see that it is made of shredded strips of love letters (presumably sent to the artist?) that are still quite legible. I almost didn’t want to read them because it felt so personal, like eavesdropping. The intimate nature of the letters definitely adds to the overall feeling of comfort and security, but it took on a sort of sinister feeling for me when I thought about the process involved. The artist had to shred and destroy all these mementos of past (or maybe present) loves in order to construct the sweater. That conflict between the comforting appearance and the destructive process is what made me this piece stick with me longer than others.

WITNESS, LaToya Ruby Frazier @ICA Boston

This was a powerful show. I’m really inspired by LaToya Ruby Frazier after seeing this, knowing that she started much of this work as a teenager and is such a powerhouse at only 30. Basically, she makes me want to step up my game.

Frazier’s upbringing in Braddock, Pennsylvania, was imprinted by the drastic downsizing of the Pittsburgh-area town’s Edgar Thomson Steel Works in the early 80s that prompted many residents to flee. Homes and businesses were abandoned, infrastructure and amenities crumbled, the national crack epidemic took hold, and urban families found themselves subject to widespread vilification. … Like many, Frazier believes industrial pollution has sickened a disproportional number of Braddock residents. She suffers from lupus, her mother has cancer and a neurological disorder, and Grandma Ruby died of complications related to pancreatic cancer.

— http://www.icaboston.org/exhibitions/exhibit/LaToya_Ruby_Frazier/

LaToya Ruby Frazier, “Grandma Ruby Smoking Pall Malls”, 2011

Her work is intensely personal and specifically deals with the issues her hometown faces, but it speaks to issues of working class poverty and lack of healthcare that are widespread across the country. I found it easy to see my family in her family.

LaToya Ruby Frazier, Self-Portrait (United States Steel), Digital Video Transfer to DVD
Color, Sound, 3:28 Minutes[source]

liked this video piece, a self-portrait where Frazier presents herself breathing in and out deeply as footage of the Steel Mill shows gaseous emissions pouring into the air of Braddock. Compositionally, the steel mill dominates the image; it’s influence on Frazier, her home, her family, and her health is huge. I liked the relationship between this piece and the photograph of Frazier’s grandmother smoking in her living room, which were installed on opposite sides of a wall within the gallery. Both images concentrate on respiration, and breathing in these toxic chemicals. I connected with the theme of respiration and sickness in these pieces, thinking about my father’s cancer.

DETOX (Braddock U.P.M.C.), 2011, Digital Video Transfer to DVD, Color, Sound, 22:23 minutes[source]

In DETOX (U.P.M.C.), Frazier documents herself and her mother undergoing an ionic detox footbath. In such a detox, “toxins from the body are released through the pores of the feet… The water is said to change different colors as the initiated electric charge applied pulls all of the toxins from the organs.” (– http://kiffecoco.com/blog/ffecoco.com/2011/02/beauty-in-imperfection-latoya-ruby.html) I feel like it’s worth noting that in Googling that term, all of the highest results contained either the word “sham” or hoax.” The detox session is cut with footage of Frazier’s mother sitting on her bed as Frazier asks her to speak about her illness and her unsparing opinions of what is going on in Braddock. At one point, Frazier situates the camera between her legs, zooming in on the footbath, which at this point is a frothy, orange and green colored slop. From this vantage point, I felt like I was sitting in her chair. I am really interested in the way that Frazier uses personal documentary to bring attention to the corruption in Braddock and the country at large.

THE PUNK SINGER

When my older brother played Rebel Girl for me as a girl just barely entering my tweenage years and told me “maybe you should wait to listen to the rest of this album until you’re a little older,” he pretty much sealed the deal that I would become obsessed with Bikini Kill overnight.

Kathleen Hanna, lead singer of the punk band Bikini Kill and dance-punk trio Le Tigre, rose to national attention as the reluctant but never shy voice of the riot grrrl movement. She became one of the most famously outspoken feminist icons, a cultural lightning rod.

Naturally, I was ready to eat this movie up. I was surprised by what a revealing portrait it ended up being and by how little I really knew about the woman whose music and activism shaped my teen years. The home movie footage of Kathleen and Adam Horowitz was especially revealing, showing what a tender, supportive relationship they have. I might be a little in love with Adrock after this.

I knew that they were married, but I had no idea that their relationship went so far back and that they were involved when Kathleen was still in Bikini Kill. It was so entertaining and charming to see their goofy home movies from that period, especially considering how mismatched their public personas seemed to so many people. It’s also jarring to see Kathleen Hanna in such a vulnerable light, especially when the film delves into her illness, given how all of the press she’s received throughout her career has created an image of her as this vicious, unstoppable force of nature.

I have a really vivid memory of being at a sleepover with some girl friends in middle school, flipping channels and landing on MTV just long enough to see Diana Ross jiggle Lil Kim’s mermaid boob, because that makes an indelible mark on your memory. We must have changed the channel as soon as they announced the who won, though, because the rest of that clip was completely new to me. Seeing that footage in the film was a really strange connection for me, since looking back now I realize I had no idea who Kathleen Hanna was in 1999, but the next year I would adopt her as a personal savior. The fact that she was present in this absurd pop cultural moment and I never realized it until now was a little surreal.

What I found most interesting about the film was the way it presented Kathleen as a musician who thinks deeply about her craft, and not just as the mouthpiece of a movement. Bikini Kill was definitely more about the political message of a group of young women barging into a hostile scene than it was about whether or not those women were trained to play their instruments, but since then Kathleen Hanna has grown tremendously as a musician. Bikini Kill’s message was so impactful that it shot Kathleen to feminist icon status, but it’s rare to read or see something that discusses her as an artist and not purely as an activist. Seeing Kathleen talk about herself as a singer and describe the way she visualizes her voice as a bullet was almost more of an intimate portrait than the home movies of her and Adam. I thought it was a smart choice to take the title of the film from a Julie Ruin song, since that was the album that Kathleen asserted herself as an artist foremost and came into her own as a musician.

“Other people can think whatever they want, but… they should have to stay out of my way.”

– Kathleen Hanna

JOHN SINGER SARGEANT Watercolors @ MFA

“Sargent’s approach to watercolor was unconventional. Disregarding contemporary aesthetic standards that called for carefully delineated and composed landscapes filled with transparent washes, his confidently bold, dense strokes, loosely defined forms, and unexpected vantage points startled critics and fellow practitioners alike.”

— http://www.mfa.org/exhibitions/john-singer-sargent-watercolors

John Singer Sargent, Bedouins, 1905–1906

Seeing this exhibition was inspiring for me. I love working with watercolor and I usually work loosely with a wet-on-wet approach, but I struggle with the level of detail to include and when I’m “done”. But the loose definition of forms in these paintings is so gorgeous and evocative. I spent the most time with the series of watercolors he made throughout his travels in the Middle East, mainly because of those blues. The walls of the small section these paintings were installed in were painted the same deep blue color, setting this series apart from the rest of the exhibition. It brought out the shadows and made the pieces feel even more luminous. Loved it.

John Singer Sargent, Bedouin Camp, 1905-1906.