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In May of 1982, Budapest-born artist Agnes Denes congregated with a small group of volunteers at Lower Manhattan’s Battery Park Landfill. They planted wheat berries onto the plot of land, which, once grown, created a lush field of wispy stalks juxtaposed against the city’s skyline. Visually striking, the ecological artwork was in part a protest against exploitation, greed, and the destruction of people and the environment. The paltry $158 spent on seeds stood in stark contrast to the $4.5 billion evaluation of the land itself.
Denes’ “Wheatfield—a Confrontation” is one of ten case studies presented in Lauren O’Neill-Butler’s timely new book. Released on the heels of this weekend’s mass mobilization against the Trump administration, The War of Art: A History of Artists’ Protest in America comes at a moment when many of us are considering what tools we have to create the world we want to live in. Artists have long grappled with this question, O’Neill Butler reminds us, as many have even fused their aesthetic inclinations with their desires for justice.
The War of Art is in the lineage of books like Nicolas Lampert’s A People’s Art History of the United States, which chronicles grassroots approaches to art and social change across 250 years. For her text, O’Neill-Butler shortens the timeline and begins with the 1960s. Early projects include Benny Andrews’ co-founding of the Black Emergency Cultural Coalition, or BECC, and the creation of a prison arts program at the Manhattan House of Detention following the Attica riot.
O’Neill-Butler is wary of dictating exactly what activist art is, instead leaving the genre open-ended. The defining characteristics she does offer are that these types of projects are “always a means to an end” and tend to collapse the already frail boundary between politics and art. Many of her case studies utilize art to gain attention from the media and, therefore, the public, a combination that often proves more efficacious than either protest or artistic presentation alone.
For example, David Wojnarowicz’s work to end the AIDS pandemic with ACT UP and Nan Goldin’s Prescription Addiction Intervention Now (P.A.I.N.) were both movements that utilized spectacular tactics like the “die-in,” a public performance that originated during the Vietnam War. These actions involve protestors lying on the ground or floor, and in the case of Goldin’s work, took place in institutions like the Metropolitan Museum of Art in objection to the Sackler family’s wing.
Wojnarowicz is also famous for his now-iconic jean jacket saying, “If I die of AIDS—forget burial—just drop my body on the steps of the F.D.A.,” an image of which has widely circulated and come to symbolize the movement. These projects aren’t simply art created with activist concerns but rather inextricable from the positions they argue for.
Of course, it’s important to acknowledge that the problems these artists rail against—a lack of affordable housing, public health crises, discrimination in the art world, to name a few—are ongoing, and like most socially engaged projects, the examples the book includes are not without criticism.
In 1993, seven African-American artists established Project Row Houses in Houston’s historic Third Ward by renovating a block of derelict shotgun houses and creating a welcoming gathering space in an underinvested neighborhood. Although Project Row Houses did revitalize the area through various artist-driven efforts like the Drive-By exhibition shown below, today, gentrification and the effects of the climate crisis continue to displace the residents whom organizers sought to serve.
O’Neill-Butler doesn’t suggest that artists should be tasked with identifying and implementing solutions to the world’s ills and notes that Houston’s Third Ward would likely have gentrified even without artist intervention and subsequent attention. She does, however, offer a nuanced consideration of each project’s successes and struggles and acknowledges the limits of endeavors like those she outlines. Art provides what the book refers to as “a crack in the wall,” a rupture in the flimsy veneer of power and oppression that, once exposed, threatens their foundational structures.
The War of Art is out today from Verso. Find your copy in the Colossal Shop.
Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article ‘The War of Art’ Charts the Catalyzing History of Artists’ Protests in the U.S. appeared first on Colossal.
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In Specimen Garden, Pamela Poh Sin Tan translates the ambiguous ecologies of her large-scale public works into freestanding sculptures. Tan, who works under Poh Sin Studio, frequently fuses principles of art and design, and for this series of coral-inspired forms, she embellishes sand-coated laser-cut steel with small chalcedony stone beads.
“Inspired by the ethereal elegance of natural systems—coral, roots, jellyfish, diatoms—these works reflect my fascination with the subtle, intelligent structures of the natural world,” she says.
Drawing on the ornamentation traditions of her Chinese-Malaysian heritage, the artist fuses contemporary techniques with timeless themes of fragility, strength, and beauty. “Each piece feels like a living fragment of a surreal coral garden—plant-like in posture, reef-like in texture, and jewel-like in detail,” she says. “Together, they form a quiet ecosystem of imagined species suspended between nature and artifice.”
Keep up with Poh Sin Studio on its website and Instagram.
Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article Candy-Colored Sculptures by Poh Sin Studio Ornament Aquatic Life appeared first on Colossal.
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In our ever more globalized society, we have technology to thank for the unprecedented connectivity we enjoy, both in our ability to fly or sail practically anywhere and have face-to-face video chats from halfway around the globe. It’s easy to forget that the turn-by-turn directions we use on our phones or locations we tag on social media are all built upon time-honored analog maps that have been used for centuries. And forget virtual credit cards—remember good old fashioned cash?
For South African artist Faith XLVII (previously), cartography, money, and national symbols provide the foundations for ongoing series like The Deconstruction of Value and Chaos Theory. She cuts apart old maps, discontinued currency, and flags, sewing them back together into patterned tapestries. More than a dozen of these pieces will also be on view later this month at Heron Arts.
Faith XLVII’s solo exhibition, Venarum Mundi—which means “veins of the world” in Latin—examines “the economic and geopolitical systems that structure our world,” the gallery says. Through colorful, quilt-like pieces, the artist is interested in what shifts and shapes our global reality, challenging notions of value, borders, and history.
Venarum Mundi opens on June 28 and continues through August 2 in San Francisco. Find more on Faith XLVII’s website and Instagram.
Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article Faith XLVII Sews Textiles Made from World Maps and Currency to Explore the ‘Veins of the World’ appeared first on Colossal.
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“The model railroader is the truest creator: engineer, architect, and master of his own timetable,” reads a statement about Josh Dihle’s feverish exhibition, Basement Arrangement.
Armed with hundreds of minuscule objects from coral to LEGO, Dihle concocts dreamlike worlds in which figures become topographies and every cavity houses a surprising detail. Peek inside the cheek of “Moreau/Detrick Reliquary,” and find a wooly mammoth with lustrous stones embedded in its wooden tusks. “Confluence” is similar as carved fish jut out of the foam-and-plaster ground alongside trees and palms with widespread fingers.
Evoking model railroads and dollhouses, Dihle’s sculptural paintings incorporate recognizable objects but with an uncanny, if not skewed, perspective. Stretching nearly five feet tall, the large-scale works hang on the wall and draw a contrast between the overall composition, viewed straight on, and the miniature vignettes best taken in at a 90-degree angle. Step back and see an aerial landscape with hills shaped like lips or a sunken nose, while close-up inspection becomes a dizzying hunt for unlikely items tucked into every crevice.
The exhibition title originates with hermit hobbyists, who seem to come alive when cloistered in worlds of their own making. What appears to outsiders as an escape from reality is, for them, an attempt to organize the chaos and take control, even if in the form of toys and make-believe.
If you’re in Chicago, see Basement Arrangement at Andrew Rafacz through July 18. Find more from Dihle on his website.
Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article Josh Dihle Toys with Reality in His Topographic Paintings Akin to Fever Dreams appeared first on Colossal.
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Taking diagrams to a new level, U.K.-based studio collective Dorothy creates prints that celebrate information—charts, maps, alphabets, color wheels, and blueprints. The team has also plunged into the world of cutaway drawings, which are popular for visualizing otherwise opaque, multilayered objects in the manufacturing world.
Cutaway diagrams have actually been around for centuries, with the form originating in the 15th-century notebooks of Italian Renaissance engineer Mariano “Taccola” de Jacopo. Dorothy’s twist on the 3D graphic form, a series titled Inside Information, is a celebration of pop culture and modern technology, from Apple computers and sneakers to boomboxes and theremins.
Each object teems with figures and motifs that have been instrumental in the item’s history and culture, like trailblazing rappers and hip-hop artists who wander stereo box innards in “Inside Information: Boombox” as if it’s a building. The same goes for the Moog, which highlights flashpoints in its development and musical icons like David Byrne and Led Zeppelin who have contributed to its popularity—along with its namesake, of course, Robert Moog.
Prints are available for purchase on Dorothy’s website, and you can follow updates and releases on Instagram.
Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article ‘Inside Information’ Cutaway Diagrams by Dorothy Dig Into the Makings of Pop Culture Icons appeared first on Colossal.
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