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iobjectfa20 · 3 years

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Print: ‘Imposed migration’ by Pudlo Pudlat.

1986. Cape Dorset, Nunavut, Buffin Island, Canada.

British Museum

Explanation

This image appears in the current exhibit at the British Museum, “Arctic: Culture and Climate.” The exhibit was prompted by some recent archaeological discoveries in the Arctic, but contains a variety of artifacts and art pieces through a range of eras. Not all the objects in the exhibit are accessible online, but some interesting items I found were an intricately-beaded woman’s coat from 1898, an engraved walrus tusk from 1954, and a snowmobile from 1986. Interestingly, none of the objects from the exhibit featured on the website or in downloadable educational materials featured any of the ancient, recently-discovered artifacts; all appeared to be from the 19th century and later. In addition to the various artifacts displayed, the exhibit also features art from contemporary Native artists. These art pieces came from a partnership with the West Baffin Eskimo Cooperative, also called the Kinngait Cooperative.

The Kinngait Cooperative was founded in 1959 by a white Canadian settler who has been credited with “discovering” Inuit art and a local Inuit artist. There had been a longstanding culture of sculpting in the area, but as the cooperative developed, printmaking, drawing, and painting became more popular. Similarly, Pudlat had begun his artistic career as a sculptor but after suffering an injury that made continuing to sculpt difficult, he turned to printmaking, drawing, and painting as his primary forms of expression. He ultimately created over 4000 drawings and 200 prints. Pudlat’s work has been honored and recognized in a variety of ways. He has been featured on UNICEF greeting cards and on Canadian postage stamps, as well as in a variety exhibits. Two years before his death, the National Gallery of Canada opened a retrospective of 30 years of his drawings, the museum’s the first solo show of an Inuit artist.

I chose this exhibit and this particular piece for a variety of reasons. What initially interested me in the exhibit was the murky moral quandary surrounding the newly-discovered ancient artifacts. They had been trapped in ice in the Arctic circle, and if not for Global Warming, would not have become accessible to archaeologists. I find it interesting that none of these artifacts were pictured on the British Museum exhibit page. Furthermore, to include the work of contemporary Native artists in an exhibit centered on cultural artifacts does not do justice to the value of the artistry itself. Pudlat’s drawing powerfully captures the impact of industrialization and militarization on the environment, and through the environment, on Native communities. The other drawings and prints from Native artist in the accessible materials for the exhibit did not offer such a jarring statement; instead they highlighted the aspects of Native life that many often romanticize. I do not know who chose Pudlat’s drawing, but I think it was a brave choice. I hope that soon, more museums will lift up Native artistry and resistance, rather than exoticize it as an anthropological artifact.

Reimagining and Reframing

The image is a simple one. A military-style helicopter appears suspended against a blank background. From the helicopter hang three animals: a walrus on the left, a polar bear in the middle, and a musk ox on the right. The walrus is hung from its head, the polar bear from its neck, and the musk ox from its belly. I find the polar bear in the center to be the most disturbing. It is emaciated, echoing the photographs of polar bears we see increasingly frequently, who due to climate change lose their homes and sources of food. Its coat is yellowed, another sign of ill health. But most notable is that the rope attaching it to the helicopter looks exactly like a noose. The title of the piece is “Imposed migration,” and the image offers the illusion that perhaps the helicopter is simply relocating the animals. We know, however, that this is not really migration, but extermination. The animals will not survive human expansion and the climate change that accompanies our consumerism and greed. The title of the work also echoes the history of forced relocation of Native people – a governmental policy that did not only result in displacement, but also untold death.

This exhibit serves as an example of the British Museum benefiting from climate change. They can attract crowds (putting the pandemic aside for a moment) with the promise of newly-discovered archaeological findings, without grappling with the reality that those items only became recoverable because of a catastrophic loss of Arctic ice. Native populations are among those most effected by climate change; for example, many still rely on hunting and subsistence activities for their livelihoods, and animals are becoming increasingly sparse, and no longer migrate as far south because of rising temperatures. Exhibiting these new archaeological discoveries in a museum provides no benefit or relief to Native individuals suffering from climate-induced food or housing insecurity. In a telling move, the British Museum intentionally kept the BP logo away from promotional materials about this particular exhibit, although BP is a major funding source for the museum. That the museum simply removed the logo, but changed nothing about the policy of accepting BP’s sponsorship and promoting the company, highlighted that this exhibit was constructed to skirt its moral murkiness, not engage in what could be a groundbreaking discussion of ethics.

Referring to the opening up of the new archaeological site as both a tragedy and a treasure trove, a curator at the British Museum continued, “It’s like the library of Alexandria being on fire ... You’re plucking out these books which are coming out … it’s a remarkable window into life, all coming out of the ground in one go.” It’s not like the library of Alexandria being on fire, unless that fire were in fact an arson set by an invading army who then tries to paint themselves as the heroes in the narrative.

There have been some interesting cases and discussions in recent years of museums returning items obtained through various forms of theft, including colonial force, to the original countries or peoples. Last year, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City returned a coffin to Egypt that was determined to have been smuggled out of Egypt by a multinational art trafficking ring. Benin City in Nigeria hopes to open a museum in 2023 to display Benin Bronzes in their city of origin, but has experienced difficulty in getting other countries and museums, including the British Museum, to return them. The blockbuster movie Black Panther featured a scene at the fictional “Museum of Great Britain” in which the lead villain comments on how the items were looted from Africa before stealing them himself. The director wanted to shoot the scene at the British Museum itself, and use the real museum’s name, but the museum did not consent. That the British Museum comes up again and again in examples of pleas to repatriate stolen cultural artifacts speaks to how much of its collection was obtained illicitly. I believe that the objects obtained from these archaeological sites made accessible through climate change should be treated the same way as the Benin Bronzes and should be repatriated.

Reading this account by the curator alongside the belief of James Houston, one of the cofounders of the Kinngait Cooperative, that he had “discovered” Inuit art, reminded me of many of the points Gayatri Spivak made in her groundbreaking essay, “Can the Subaltern Speak?” Although she did not use this terminology, she issued a powerful indictment of the white savior complex, famously identifying a dynamic of “white men saving brown women from brown men.” Colonizers give themselves credit for saving Native peoples without taking accountability for or even recognizing the compounded oppression that they inflict on those they colonize. Houston, for example, felt proud of introducing the Native people he encountered in Kinngait to art forms that they could profit from, taking public credit without also publicly acknowledging the role that the Canadian government and the industrialization and capitalism it introduced played in destroying Native economies.

I read that archaeologists felt rushed to excavate the Arctic sites because looters were pillaging them as the melting ice made them accessible. How do we know that these “looters” were not simply Native people looking to hang on to remnants of their culture? I think of the disparity in newspaper captions after Hurricane Katrina, in which White survivors who took food from abandoned stores were termed “resourceful” and Black survivors doing the same thing were portrayed as looters and criminals. What separates the archaeologists themselves from the title of looters? My reimagined exhibit would address these questions head-on. Who can claim ownership to an ancient item? What constitutes theft? How should such an artifact be displayed? If that artifact or piece of art is obtained through some form of violence, how should that violence be acknowledged? What is a just reparation?

There is a long history of museums degrading Native art. The American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in New York City for example, which primarily features dinosaur bones, animal panoramas, and other exhibits on the natural (non-human) world, has a wing on Native American art and culture. The inclusion of Native Americans in the AMNH is, to say the least, dehumanizing. Native Americans are not Neanderthals. They are alive and could be thriving if not for European settler colonialism. The myth and romanticization of Native ways of living as an older and purer but unrealistic way of life does violence to all the Native people incorporating centuries of ritual into their 21st-century existence. For this reason, I believe that Native art should no longer be featured in exhibits that also contain archaeology; nobody would put an Andy Warhol painting in an exhibit with colonial-era embroidery. Native people deserve the same degree of attention and distinction.

—Mira R

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nofomoartworld · 7 years

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Hyperallergic: A Smorgasbord of Spiritualism Centered on Fantastical Coffins

Paa Joe, “Untitled” (2004–05), wood and enamel, 43 x 87 x 60 inches (all images courtesy of Jack Shainman Gallery)

In these uncertain times — pockmarked as they are by ongoing police crime, neo-Nazi terrorism, undeniable climate change, and the threat of nuclear war — it’s hard not to think about what lies beyond. I mean this in two senses. Firstly, that this particular moment in American history seems to be laying the groundwork for a very different type of political future than many of us might have imagined, prompting us to collectively think about the legacy we will leave for subsequent generations. And secondly, that each of us is reminded daily of our own physical mortality in the face of these violences, prompting us as individuals to ponder what might come after this earthly life.

The typical summer group show rarely offers much more than a snackable smattering of art showcasing the strengths of a particular gallery’s program, but Jack Shainman Gallery’s The Coffins of Paa Joe and the Pursuit of Happiness, spread across one of its Chelsea spaces and the School in Kinderhook, NY, offers a smorgasbord of spiritualism that effectively hits on both of the above points of existential reckoning.

The Coffins of Paa Joe and the Pursuit of Happiness, installation view at the School

Drawing from the Ghanaian tradition of abebuu adekai, or fantasy coffins, which celebrate the life of the deceased and usher them into the afterlife with pomp, Accra-based artist Paa Joe is well known for his extravagant funerary caskets, the designs of which range from Porsches to chili peppers. His Slave Castle series was commissioned by the late Jack Shainman gallery co-founder, Claude Simard, in 2004, and their presentation this summer marks their public debut. The works represent the European castles erected along the Gold Coast in the 15th century, which were sites of internment for slaves bound for the New World. These purgatories proved the last memory many Africans had of their homeland; for those who didn’t survive the journey, the castles marked their final moments on this earth.

Reproduced in miniature, these ghastly holding cells lose their edificial power. Painted in flat, rich colors, they are lined with bright, beautiful silks. At this scale and in these shades, they almost seem fun, like playhouses rather than penitentiaries — which is appropriate, as they are meant to celebrate, in the custom of abebuu adekai, the lives that were unsactimoniously lost due to the white, male, hegemonic Western “pursuit of happiness” — sins for which we are still struggling to atone today. The only travesty in their display is that more of them couldn’t be shown together due to their size: Of the 13 that were commissioned, the Chelsea location could only accommodate one, and the School showcased just three.

The Coffins of Paa Joe and the Pursuit of Happiness, installation view at Jack Shainman Gallery

The Coffins of Paa Joe and the Pursuit of Happiness, installation view at the School

Instead, these memorial slave castles are presented alongside works ranging from 16th-century European paintings of patrons and saints to Lynette Yiasom-Boakye’s moody fictional portraits. West African bateba shamanic shrine figurines sit kitty-corner to Beverly Fishman’s subtly neon-backlit geometric wall-mounted sculptures, which are meant to evoke the experience of a drug trip. Devotional Hindu serpent drawings are juxtaposed with Philip Kwame Apagya’s portrait photography shot against drawn backgrounds of contemporary technological apparatuses like office desks laden with phones and computers.

Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, “Wrist Action” (2010), oil on canvas, 100 x 80 3/8 x 2 1/8 inches

Beverly Fishman, “Untitled (ADHD / Opioid Cocktail)” (2016), urethane paint on wood, 71 3/4 x 48 x 2 inches

While the Kinderhook location especially could have done with fewer of these pairings (perhaps allowing a few more of Paa Joe’s exceptional coffins to be included), the mashup of works spanning mediums and centuries makes for a worthwhile thought experiment. In the face of systemic violence, lies, threats, and destruction, what and who should we memorialize, and how many have we memorialized who shouldn’t have been? How do we find a higher consciousness — through prayers or prescriptions? And in what should we place our faith as the world shifts around us — the sacred or the profane?

Ed Ruscha, “1984” (1967), lithograph with hand-coloring, 19 5/8 x 24 1/2 inches

Philip Kwame Apagya, “Booming Internet 2” (2000), chromogenic print, 28 3/4 x 20 3/4 x 1 1/4 inches

The Coffins of Paa Joe and the Pursuit of Happiness continues at Jack Shainman Gallery (524 W 24th Street, Chelsea, Manhattan) through August 25 and at the School (25 Broad Street, Kinderhook, NY) through January 6, 2018.

The post A Smorgasbord of Spiritualism Centered on Fantastical Coffins appeared first on Hyperallergic.

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nofomoartworld · 7 years

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Hyperallergic: A Curated Section Brings Body Politics to Volta NY

The entrance to Volta NY 2017 at Pier 90 (all photos by the author for Hyperallergic)

Volta bills itself as a “rigorously curated, boutique event — along the lines of a sequence of intense studio visits versus a traditional trade show environment.” An art fair can dream, but Volta is, for better or worse, like all the others of its ilk, just that: an art fair. Ninety-six solo booths (though some are actually duo) do not curation make.

Last year, though, Volta NY added a curated section — a special eight-artist display organized by fellow artist Derrick Adams — to up the critical caliber of the show. This year, it continues the tradition with another eight-artist section curated by writer Wendy Vogel. Curiously, both the 2016 and 2017 displays focus on the body. Adams sought to “explore the idea of the body as a site of reckoning, transformation and departure,” while Vogel has chosen artists “who foreground the precariousness of the body and identity in a time of political turmoil.” In retrospect, the progression seems almost natural, as much of the country, especially artists, has moved from a period of possibility mixed with anxiety to a time of terror. Political precariousness reminds just how vulnerable our non–white, straight, cis, male bodies are.

View of Wendy Vogel’s Your Body Is a Battleground at Volta NY 2017, with artwork by Carmen Winant on the front walls

I didn’t see last year’s curated section, but it should be noted that labeling the current one — which is titled Your Body Is a Battleground, after Barbara Kruger’s 1989 work — an “exhibition,” as the fair materials do, at times feels like a stretch. The display is comprised, essentially, of eight single-wall “booths” arranged in a rectangle, a formation that works well for the works shown inside the shape but awkwardly cuts off the ones on the outside. They feel mostly like independent solo presentations, though Vogel’s success is evident in the the meaningful connections that emerge between them.

Kent Monkman, “Baptism by Fire” (2017), installed with custom wallpaper at Peters Projects’ booth

The showstopper — of both the section and the entire fair — is Kent Monkman, presented here by Peters Projects. The queer artist of Cree and Irish descent continues to address the very serious subject of historical erasure and representation without barely a hint of self-seriousness. In Monkman’s hands, humor is a real weapon, a means of pointing out the absurdity of the white, colonial, European tradition, and by extension its dangerousness. When he paints an elaborate pastoral scene of homoerotic Native American men riding on horseback near white people who are pouring alcohol onto a flame atop a man’s head (“Baptism by Fire,” 2017), he puts you in a specific position — of having no idea what’s going on. It makes you wonder if everything you’ve ever seen in a history painting is just the invention of someone else’s imagination. A similar phenomenon is at work in his new series, Fate is a Cruel Mistress (2017), which casts Monkman’s alter-ego, Miss Chief Eagle Testickle, as the protagonist in a number of famous Biblical scenes involving women: Judith cutting off Holofernes’s head and others. Decked in headdresses and heels, Miss Chief Eagle Testickle reminds us that we only understand stories as extensions of who tells them.

Kent Monkman, “Salome” (2017), with Peters Projects

This is a major theme of a body of work made by Carmen Winant for the fair and presented by Fortnight Institute. In one of the new series of collages, all titled “Anita Told the Truth,” Winant gathers images of Anita Hill testifying before the Senate in 1991 about being sexually harassed by Clarence Thomas, who had formerly been her boss and went on to be confirmed as a Supreme Court Justice. The pieces feature images of Hill and other black women in grid formations alongside images of white men and bodies, all of them covered with severe applications of what looks like graphite or black paint. The coatings represent a kind of literalization of the way Hill was smeared, while the juxtaposition of black and white bodies — and in one piece, a border of raised, broken hands — prompts a questioning of which bodies and stories we instinctively trust.

Works by Camen Winant with Fortnight Institute

Installation view, Your Body Is a Battleground at Volta NY, with work by Nona Faustine on left, Deborah Roberts against back wall, and Sable Elyse Smith on right

Nona Faustine, here represented by Baxter Street at the Camera Club of New York — where she recently had a solo exhibition of much of the the same work that’s on view at Volta — uses her photographs to directly challenge such assumptions. In Faustine’s strongest work, she places her own black, female body, often fully or partially naked, at historical sites of US slavery. (Her pictures of national monuments with black bars across them are less compelling.) Sometimes she poses directly facing the camera, but even when not, the challenge she’s mounting is explicit: Reckon with your history, America, rather than attempting to bury it or wash it away. Recognize my body and the history it carries.

Works by Nona Faustine with Baxter Street at the Camera Club of New York

Whereas Faustine insists on inserting herself — and by extension, her people — into the national narrative, Sable Elyse Smith grapples in a more nuanced way with presence and absence. Smith’s presentation, brought by the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts (MoCADA), is the most coherent of the group, featuring a series of works centered on one topic: prison, and more specifically, her father’s imprisonment. Smith approaches the subject in different ways: aerial photos that evidence the scale of prison complexes, reproduced and deconstructed family photos taken inside prisons, a text piece and video about the anxiety-inducing experience of visiting prison. As a conceptual group, the works gracefully balance personal narrative with systemic reality. Smith uses her body as a kind of surrogate for her father’s; its presence points to the conspicuous absence of his, and of the over two million others hidden away behind bars in this country.

Works by Sable Elyse Smith with MoCADA

Zachary Fabri also works across media, and also uses his own body to explore and understand his place in the systems around him. Co-presented here by the Rockelmann & gallery and Aljira, a Center for Contemporary Art — where Fabri had a show earlier this year that included some of this work — his display feels the most like a fair booth, with a sampling of works that doesn’t quite come together. The two strongest pieces, however, drive home his abiding interest in the black male body: “Aureola (Black Presidents)” (2012), a grid of images of black men playing presidents in works of fiction, and “The Big Payback” (2009), an alternately funny and discomfiting video showing two black men dancing to James Brown on a Harlem street. These works, as well as others not at Volta, show how keenly attuned Fabri is to representations of black masculinity and the way they circumscribe him in society.

Works by Zachary Fabri with Rockelmann & and Aljira, a Center for Contemporary Art

Across the way, Joiri Minaya, presented by Casa Quien, does something similar with ideas of Dominican femininity. After conducting a Google Image search for “Dominican women,” Minaya printed out the results at life-size, but broke them into body parts — an arm and leg here, head of hair there, a stomach — which dangle from the ceiling like a pixellated puzzle. The backs of the pieces sport tropical-print fabrics, much like the ones in which Minaya has entirely cocooned herself for a nearby set of funny, faux-sexy beach and jungle photos. There’s indignation here, but also, as with Monkman’s work, a sense of playfulness. Minaya subverts stereotypes of sexiness by refusing to indulge our desire for the perfect body.

Detail of Joiri Minaya’s “#dominicanwomengooglesearch” (2016) at Casa Quien

Works by Joiri Minaya at Casa Quien

The last two artists in the show — Deborah Roberts, presented by Art Palace, and Melissa Vandenberg, brought by Maus Contemporary | beta pictoris gallery — are the weakest. They deal with related themes of womanhood, racism, and patriotism — Roberts in collages made from magazine pages, Vandenberg mostly in burn drawings — but in more simplistic ways than their peers. The show does a great job of taking a resolutely intersectional approach to a phrase that emerged from white feminism; in that vein, Vogel might instead have brought in another one or two LGBTQ artists, who, even before Trump instructed states not to comply with Title IX, were facing a vice president who has worked to oppose their rights. A nearby booth that’s part of the main fair speaks to this possibility: Samuel Freeman Gallery is showing a project by Danny Jauregui that elegantly traces the history of the coded gay address books that Bob Damron began compiling in the 1960s. Alluding to absent bodies through the use of human hair, it’s of a piece with Your Body Is a Battleground.

Still, Vogel has done an impressive job putting together a timely and thought-provoking show. It’s especially valuable for reminding us that the real world doesn’t magically disappear when we step inside the artificial environment of an art fair.

Works by Deborah Roberts with Art Palace

Works by Melissa Vandenberg with Maus Contemporary | beta pictoris gallery

Danny Jauregui in Samuel Freeman Gallery’s booth

Installation view, Your Body Is a Battleground at Volta NY

Volta NY 2017 continues at Pier 90 (W 50th Street at Twelfth Avenue, Manhattan) through March 5.

The post A Curated Section Brings Body Politics to Volta NY appeared first on Hyperallergic.

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