Ai Weiwei and the Refugee Crisis The Chinese Art Ai Weiwei has become known for using his art as a form of activism, and his most recent focus has been on the refugee crisis. After having established a studio on the island of Lesbos in Greece and undertaken research on the migrant crisis in Europe, Weiwei withdrew an installation from a … Continue reading "Ai Weiwei and the Refugee Crisis"
A History of the Rainbow Flag In thinking about the imagery and icons of protest, I began to research the history of the rainbow flag in association with the gay pride movement. The flag is believed to have originated in Northern California where it was flown during the Gay Freedom Day Parade on June 25, 1978. It was designed by the … Continue reading "Ai Weiwei and the Refugee Crisis"
Activism through Pain & Mourning: Genocide Victim Name Readings Module six discussed many forms of activism, including creating a consciousness or awareness surrounding pain and mourning that results from a particular experience. This brought to mind spoken works as a form of mourning I have seen. One form of awareness raising activism is the name readings that are undertaken to remember the victims of genocide. Raphael Lemkin’s … Continue reading "Ai Weiwei and the Refugee Crisis"
Defining Street Art As a part of a larger project to define a glossary of terms relating to social practice art forms and movements, the following entry attempts to define street art. “Street Art refers to a set of artistic practices produced in public, often urban, settings that are intended to be seen by the general population … Continue reading "Ai Weiwei and the Refugee Crisis"
Moral Museums As a part of a Museums special, the New York Times published an article titled Making Museums Moral Again. The article calls attention to the funding and ethics that lie beneath the institutions, usually unbeknowst to their visitiors. “But the reality that museums are, or can be, ethically and politically compromised had been exposed.” … Continue reading "Ai Weiwei and the Refugee Crisis"
Embodied Knowledges in Mexican Muralism Embodied Knowledges combined a number of pairings: information vs matter, reason vs affect, mind vs body, worker vs labor, and individual vs collective. I found myself thinking about questions that involved these terms reading more about the Mexican Muralist movement, particularly as I learned about some of the motivations behind the commissioning of the murals. … Continue reading "Ai Weiwei and the Refugee Crisis"
Environmental Harmony I was particularly interested in Chemi Rosado-Seijo’s El Cerro project because it reminded me not only of several other favela painting projects I have seen, such as Haas & Hahn’s more colorful work in Rio de Janeiro, but also of efforts to create harmony between the environment and infrastructure in many parts of New Zealand. … Continue reading "Ai Weiwei and the Refugee Crisis"
Inside Out: The People’s Art Project Embodied Knowledges deals with ideas of how we show our presence in a place. For Marina Abramović and Fred Wilson, their presence was marked simply by being in the room with their audience rather than by any particular action. Inside Out is a project by French artist JR, who takes portraits of people from around … Continue reading "Ai Weiwei and the Refugee Crisis"
Art + Practice, Los Angeles Art + Practice is a new project that combines art, social practice and pedagogy to serve foster youth and the larger community of Leimert Park in Los Angeles. The foundation was formed by social activist Allan DiCastro, artist Mark Bradford and collector Eileen Harris and opened at the start of 2015. While it is … Continue reading "Ai Weiwei and the Refugee Crisis"
The Thing Quarterly The Thing Quarterly is a project that takes the idea of a regular magazine publication and replaces the magazine with an artist object in order to create different “issues” that are each designed by a different artist or contributor. The purpose of the concept is “to create issues and projects that ask us to rethink our … Continue reading "Ai Weiwei and the Refugee Crisis"
Art Basel Miami: Art Fair vs. Biennial The discussion of art biennial vs. art fair in the MOOC defined an art fair as a marketplace for selling art and the biennial as more focused around the practices of the artist, suggesting that social practice art fits much more comfortably within biennials rather than art fairs, just as it is more often found … Continue reading "Ai Weiwei and the Refugee Crisis"
Decolonial Theory in the work of Kara Walker and Jenette Ehlers The video work Black Magic at the White House by Jennette Ehlers that was featured in the 4th MOOC immediately made me think of the work of Kara Walker. In addition to the similarity in the forms of the figures in Ehlers’ video and the silhouettes of Walker, both share the decolonial theory – bringing … Continue reading "Ai Weiwei and the Refugee Crisis"
Collective Art Spaces I was particularly interested in the Ruangrupa collective in Indonesia, which has recently celebrated 15 years in existence. One of the projects that the collective encompasses is RURU Gallery, described as ” a contemporary art gallery opened by ruangrupa since 2008 to make room for the work of visual artists, writers, and young curators through six … Continue reading "Ai Weiwei and the Refugee Crisis"
The Blending of Art and Corporations: ArtLifting One of the questions posed in Module 3 is on the relationship between art and corporations – can corporations be art projects? A recent NY Times article profiled the work of ArtLifting, a for-profit company that partners with homeless and disabled artists to exhibit and sell their work. The start up was begun by brother … Continue reading "Ai Weiwei and the Refugee Crisis"
Information Circulation and the News Museum References to alternate or mainstream forms of communication led me to research the News Museum, recently mentioned by a friend. The museum was opened in 2008 in Washington DC, and states that it is dedicated “to free expression and the five freedoms of the First Amendment: religion, speech, press, assembly and petition.” Highlights of the … Continue reading "Ai Weiwei and the Refugee Crisis"
Felipe Ehrenberg and Mail Art The Mail Art movement is one example of the successful inversion of an existing system – using the mail to assemble often forbidden artworks in a new artwork. One artist that immediately came to mind was Felipe Ehrenberg, and his work Ariiba Y Adelante. This black and white illustration shows a sexualized image of a … Continue reading "Ai Weiwei and the Refugee Crisis"
Vacant Lot of Cabbages In 1978, New Zealand artist Barry Thomas occupied a vacant lot in the city of Wellington, and through an act of ‘guerilla gardening’ transformed it into a cabbage patch. After owners had abandoned the lot, locals grew angry at the eyesore that the lot presented. Thomas and a group of his friends decided to plant … Continue reading "Ai Weiwei and the Refugee Crisis"
Dismaland Along with fifty-eight other artists, Banksy led the construction of Dismaland, a rather dystopian riff on Disneyland that is marketed as “the latest addition to our chronic leisure surplus.” (Interestingly enough, legal representative from the Walt Disney Corporation are banned from the park.) Works include Banksy’s Cinderella recreates Princess Diana’s death, Maskull Lasserre’s Skeletal Merry-go-Round, … Continue reading "Ai Weiwei and the Refugee Crisis"
Accessibility to Art Another class that I am taking this semester includes an arts based service learning project that is great evidence of a local organization who facilitates social engagement in art. Arts Access is a non profit based in Raleigh that works to make art in the Triangle Area more accessible to children and adults with disabilities. … Continue reading "Ai Weiwei and the Refugee Crisis"
Muralism and Street Art as Therapy During our first visit to Lilly Library where we briefly conducted research using the books on reserve, I came across a segment of one book that focused on city transformation through large-scale mural and painting works. When Edi Rama became the newly appointed mayor of Tirana, Albania, one of his first decisions was to purchase … Continue reading "Ai Weiwei and the Refugee Crisis"
Van Gogh’s Bedroom in Chicago In relation to the Feminist Art Program’s Womanhouse project, I came across another interesting installation project launched this week by the Art Institute of Chicago as a part of their exhibition Van Gogh’s Bedrooms, which will show all three versions of Van Gogh’s portrait of his bedroom in Arles together for the first time in … Continue reading "Ai Weiwei and the Refugee Crisis"
Womanhouse Womanhouse was a socially engaged collaborative art project run by Judy Chicago and Miriam Shapiro at the California Institute of the Arts that began in 1971. The idea was conceived of by Paula Harper, who joined the faculty of the Feminist Art Program at CalArts, and grew to become an all encompassing project that relied … Continue reading "Ai Weiwei and the Refugee Crisis"
Silent Sam Class discussion surrounding the spatial politics of monuments referenced a statue on UNC-Chapel Hill’s campus, which immediately made me think of the recent protests surrounding Silent Sam. Silent Sam is a bronze statue of a confederate soldier on the upper quad of UNC’s campus that was dedicated in 1913 by Robert Carr, during a ceremony … Continue reading "Ai Weiwei and the Refugee Crisis"
The Great Wall of Los Angeles Considering the concept of monumentality in public art, I was led back to murals and their impact on spatial politics. The Great Wall in Los Angeles is a mural project begun by Judy Baca in 1974 that stretches over half a mile through the Tujunga Flood Control Channel. Over the course of four summers, the project employed … Continue reading "Ai Weiwei and the Refugee Crisis"
