The Dominion - visual arts

The Edge

Moira Peters — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 05:37:53 +0000

An Artful Recovery

Moira Peters — Mon, 26 May 2008 17:54:22 +0000

Artists respond to post-Katrina New Orleans

On Friday, August 26, 2005, visual artist Elizabeth Underwood made the decision to evacuate New Orleans when she learned that Hurricane Katrina had strengthened to a Category 3 storm in the Gulf of Mexico. “We knew this was it; this was the big one, the storm we’d been talking about for years,” she says now.

At the time, Underwood was working for the photographer Herman Leonard, renowned for his images of New Orleans jazz culture. Suddenly she found herself on the brink of losing both her job and her home. “Saturday I went to pick up Herman’s negatives to put in the safe at the Ogden Museum. I had to judge what was important, how high the water was going to get, what needed to be taken care of first. After, with the little time I had left, I went home and had to judge what was important for me; first, what was living and then what was irreplaceable. I packed my hatchback with my fifteen-year-old cat and sixteen-year-old dog, leaving behind twenty years of hand-written journals.”

For several weeks, Underwood “bounced around from couch to car to hotel,” ending up alone in Austin, TX, for nearly a year. Then finally, in August 2006, she formulated an idea for a project that would bring her back to her beloved city. In September 2006, she moved into an unheated trailer in the Uptown district of New Orleans and began laying the groundwork for “Art in Action,” turning to her art to help rebuild not only her own life but also that of her city, and joining a growing community of artists committed to doing the same.

As the director of the “community-based, on-going, public art project,” Underwood orchestrates outdoor art installations in hurricane-devastated areas of New Orleans and uses the art to transcribe the experience of visiting those "tourist" areas as she guides visitors through some of the twenty-six sites created thus far.

Underwood found inspiration for Art in Action in the work of artist Tyree Guyton, a fellow native of Detroit. For his Heidelberg Project, he transformed the vacant lots of a decentralized and marginalized district in Detroit into one giant art installation. Today, “though the neighbourhood no longer exists, you can go to the street where the art is still standing,” she explains.

The heart of Underwood’s venture however originates in deep-seated New Orleans traditions. “This is a city that publicly ritualises life, death, and trauma through art, with examples in Mardi Gras and jazz funerals," she says. The jazz funeral stems from a centuries-old African ideology that has, in modern times, become a public, sacred experience unique to Louisiana, in which a jazz band plays slow, mournful dirges while the family of the deceased accompanies the body to the cemetery. After the burial, the band’s tempo accelerates, transforming the experience into a festive celebration that’s open to the public.

This community-based act of sharing in another’s trauma finds echoes in the mission of Art in Action, whereby artists reanimate flood-damaged areas of the city by using them as the backdrops for their public installations, always with the utmost respect and care for the residents. Indeed, the artists can only produce their works with the permission and participation of the landowners and neighbours. Once the installation is up, participants invite the local community to an "opening" party complete with live music and donations from Whole Foods and the local coffee house Fairgrinds.

In 2007, Underwood herself worked with fellow artist Naftali Rutter to create "Picture This" in the Lower 9th Ward. By hanging Polaroid images from the branches of a tree, the artists wanted to comment on how New Orleans has long been “visually fetishized” through photography. On the one hand, images recording the flood are powerful tools with which to communicate the need to rebuild the city and help its residents heal. On the other hand, “in a landscape that now symbolizes the horrific destructivness [sic] of marginialization/‘other-ing’,” it’s hard to find ways to “connect with the landscape/story via photography … with respect and dignity,” as they explain on the Art in Action blog. Picture This, however, also reflects how losing family photos became a shared experience for displaced residents after the storm: “A common refrain of survivors is how [that loss] is what hurts them to this day.” The site continues to evolve, since they invite anyone to add their own photos to the tree, as long as they’re "joyous, singing, and/or celebratory."

In addition to support from the Joan Mitchell Foundation, Art in Action, like other initiatives trying to rebuild and renew the flood-damaged city through art, receives funding from the non-profit Art Council of New Orleans, the official art agency of the city. Even with its office destroyed and under water, the council became indispensable to the city’s art community after the hurricane. Shirley Corey, the CEO at the time of the flood, moved its headquarters some 450 kilometres northwest of New Orleans to Shreveport, LA, in order to field the calls that were streaming in, both asking for and offering help.

One of the offers came from the French government and involved relocating artists to residencies in France. "Because of a long standing relationship with the French Consulate, the Art Council was prepared to work with them, and we were able to recommend a group of visual artists," says Mary Len Costa, Interim CEO of the council who worked with the consulate’s artistic attaché Debbie de la Houssaye to coordinate the residencies.

"New Orleans is a city built on its arts and culture. It’s attractive to artists, with its laissez-faire attitude,” says Gene Meneray, the director of the Arts Business Program at the council. “It’s important for us to help them because a community looks to its artists to tell the stories and capture the thoughts and emotions after a tragedy to make sense of what’s happened." By funding "Social Dress New Orleans" (2007) by Takashi Horisaki, for example, the council has helped bring the story of the Katrina disaster to the Socrates Sculpture Park in Long Island City, NY, where the artist created a sculptural installation made of latex, cheesecloth, steel, and the remnants of a house that once stood at 1941 Caffin Avenue in the Lower 9th Ward.

New Orleans has long identified itself in its artistic community, one with long-standing traditions of celebrating life and mourning death in very public, communal ways. While the population is still not back to its pre-Katrina numbers and many neighbourhoods remain in grave states of decay, the artists of New Orleans are returning to these traditions in order to tell the stories of the flood and ensure the city is reborn more vibrant than ever.

Art in Action
Art Council of New Orleans
The Heidelberg Project
Takachi Horisaki, Social Dress New Orleans

Picture This

Advertising. Free to decide.

dru — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 20:13:04 +0000

ForeignOffice.com has a montage of the advertising and news clips that were part of the background and scenery in the film Children of Men.

(via Greg.org)

Portraits of Strength

Thu, 04 May 2006 21:29:21 +0000

The women of Panzós

Women are leading the demand for justice in Panzós. photo of Marlon Garcia Arriaga's painting: Pedro Sousa

Panzós, Guatemala – May 29, 1978. Early morning. Eight hundred people gather in the town square. Their land, homes and crops have been expropriated by the Guatemalan government and given to the International Nickel Company (INCO) in mining concessions.
9 a.m. The mayor of Panzós arrives to address the crowd. He makes a sign and the military, which has the square surrounded, opens fire. 35 people are executed and 40 are injured. Those trying to escape in boats drown in the Polochic River. In total, 53 die.

May 31, 1978.
Headline in leading Guatemalan newspaper: "Mob of two thousand farmers attack military detachment at Panzós."

Montreal – May 18, 2005.
I am sitting in a small, bright room on the fourth floor of edifice Le Belgo. The floor-to-ceiling windows are open and I can hear the traffic on Ste-Catherine Street. The walls bristle with huge portraits, columns of photographs, and typed banners that document a Canadian mining company's implication in the massacre in Panzós, Guatemala in 1978.

Marlon Garcia Arriaga is a short, impeccably dressed young man. His exhibit is titled "Panzós, 25 ans plus tard..." The Guatemalan painter and forensic photographer explains why he has brought his artwork to Montreal.

"When the massacre happened, I was ten years old. At that time, state violence was intimidating, but this was the first time the army was unselective in its slaughter. Men, women and children were shot, clubbed and stabbed without reason. It was all over the papers for weeks. The teachers at my school were very left-wing; they pasted up news articles every day, all over the walls of our hallways.

"When I visited Panzós years later it was to photograph the exhumation of the victims of the 1978 massacre. I visited the town many times, and it occurred to me that I was amassing lots of information, and that I could possibly do something useful with it."

The massacre at Panzós may have been the paradigmatic act of violence in Guatemala's 36-year internal armed conflict, which officially ended in 1996 with the ratification of the Peace Accords. During the war, 200,000 people were killed or disappeared and 1.5 million displaced during a series of military dictatorships. The vast majority of the victims were indigenous subsistence farmers. Central to this time of violence was the control of land, coveted by foreign corporations for resources like bananas, sugar, nickel, and gold.

INCO, a Canadian Corporation that was recently given a failing grade by Report on Business magazine for corporate social responsibility, was the interest being defended when the population of Panzós was mown down by its own soldiers. This message comes through loud and clear in "Panzós, 25 ans plus tard..." and, seeing and reading the evidence in a cheery Montreal gallery, I feel the appropriate shame and outrage at what my people did to Marlon's people. Marlon focusses his lens on a different injustice, however; a more local bifurcation in the story he is compelled to articulate: the exclusion of women from documented history.

Dominating the exposition, 8x8 foot portraits, mostly of young women, glow in mellow orange and pink.

"My education was centred on the European painters of the 17th century. I studied the enormous paintings of Napoleon, for example. This was a way to pay homage to a great man - to do a big painting of him. Of course, I am Guatemalan, and so I prefer yellow and orange and blue to the greys and browns those European painters used." Marlon and I think this is funny.

"Do you know that when authorities or journalists wanted to quote witnesses to what happened in Panzós, they only ever asked men?

"Do you know that when I visited Panzós, I would take rolls and rolls of film? Hundreds of rolls of pictures I took at Panzós. And when they'd be developed, and I'd have the negatives laid out, all I saw were photos of women. Women, women, women, women, women!

"Women have the traditional right to ask compensation for the deaths of their husbands and sons and brothers. It is women who lead the demand for exhumations, reconciliation, and justice."

I turn my attention to the woman standing in the corner of room 312 with her chin in her hand. Her brown skin glows against the yellow tank-top tucked tight at her waist into her long heavy skirt. She stares at a tree's reflection in a lake that ripples where seeds fall into the water. Three crocodiles slide around each other at the edge of the lakeshore, and three hummingbirds break up the green-and-blue painting with their red wings outstretched. Among the crocodiles float tiny reflections: four military helicopters, their red lights flashing. The woman carries an empty bucket.

"A woman named Mama Maquin led the march in Panzós the day of the massacre. She was there with her daughter and grandson and granddaughter. Only the granddaughter survived. This is her..." Marlon points to the painting of a woman with high cheekbones, her black hair piled against the sky. "She is a leader in her community now."

By bringing us closer to the protagonists of his story, Marlon entices Canadians to appreciate and respect the people whose world we share. "Together, our histories make one history, but with two distinct faces. We are two peoples implicated in one genocide, with two distinct images of the opportunity to be human. Making who you are and who we are more visible will continue to be an essential theme of my art."

"Panzós, 25 Years Later...," Marlon's exhibition in English, was displayed at the Sky Dragon Community Development Co-operative in Hamilton, Ontario, April 12-23, 2006. A committee of the Maritimes-Guatemala Breaking the Silence Network hopes to bring "Panzós, 25 Years Later...," and the artist, to the Maritimes later this year.

Moira Peters talks to artist Marlon Garcia Arriaga about his paintings and the women of Panzós, Guatemala that inspire them.

Card Carriers

Wed, 16 Nov 2005 22:20:53 +0000

Artist's Trading Cards (ATCs) are art for everyone

The only rules for ATCs are that they measure the standard card size and that they be exchanged for other cards.

There is a new currency on the market that measures 2 1/2 x 3 1/2" and can be made of anything from ticket stubs to porcelain. This creative currency's value is measured in communication, accessibility, and exchange, and is known as the Artist's Trading Card.

The only rules for ATCs are that they measure the standard card size and that they be exchanged for other cards. There is not money involved, no media restrictions, and sometimes, no Artists. The point of an ATC is that it can be made by anyone and that the exchange of them brings people together; cards are traded by mail, on the internet, or in face-to-face trading sessions organized throughout the world. In fact, if there is an elitism to be found in the practice, it is that some traders consider face-to-face trading to be the "only true" form of ATCs.

Issues of art versus craft, or of artist versus non-artist, or of commercial viability are mixed and defied in trading sessions. If done through the mail, a participant accepts the condition that anyone can make a card anyhow. And when it comes to trading, a similar attitude is adopted. Don Mabie, who is associated with trading sessions at The New Gallery in Calgary, says, "I have never refused to trade with anyone, and, in principle, I would not refuse to trade with anyone. We do get a number of non-artists that regularly attend and make most interesting cards."

The point of an ATC is that it can be made by anyone and that the exchange of them brings people together.

Mabie has collected some 8,000 cards, and keeps them all in binders in plastic sheets to facilitate trading. He stresses the importance of the social exchange of the trade above the material trade. "Traders look forward to attending the sessions to see each other and see what the new cards look like this month, to see what new approaches regarding ATCs have evolved during the past month. I have been trading for some eight years and it never ceases to amaze me regarding the endless creativity."

The movement has similarities to scrap booking, where collage, personal taste, and found materials combine to allow anyone a creative outlet. And like scrap booking, the commercial market has taken notice and slick anthologies and "how to" books as well as commercial starter kits have become available. While these aids do not jeopardize the exchange or loose rules that are the focus of ATC, they do tend to be formulaic in their recommendations for design, and romanticize the cards and the aesthetic.

The "real charm" of ATC is the diversity and freshness that comes from people creating miniature art without commercial or elitist constraints. There are not too many venues where Leonardo could be trading work with an eight year old while discussing the pros and cons of using duct tape versus glue guns in collage. The fun and social emphasis of the cards can make ATC a grassroots public art without the stratifications, elitism, and inaccessibility that more institutionalized forms of art can carry.

For more information or to find a group to trade with check out
Artist's Trading Cards, Artist's Trading Cards Meetup, Canadian Content, and The New Gallery

Max Liboiron looks at the issues raised by creative currency of Artist's Trading Cards.

A Serious Lack

Mon, 10 Nov 2003 21:38:06 +0000

American Visual Artists and Imperialism

None of the "Justice Project" finalists dealt with Bush's conception of justice.

I have to admit that the abundance of American flags bothered me when I first came to New York a few months ago. And the bumpers stickers saying 'God Bless Our Soldiers' didn't ease my mind much, either. But I breathed a sigh of relief whilst walking past the offices of the faculty of my fine arts program; on almost every door was an anti-war poster from the internet. Relieved, I set out to find what the American professional visual arts community was saying about the war. Things went downhill from there.

My search began in the hundred or so galleries in New York City's Chelsea district. No mention of the war anywhere. So I emailed four of the city's galleries known for more 'alternative' shows. No luck there. Was I frustrated? Not yet; almost all of the artists and art educators that I had come into contact with since moving to New York are very critical of Bush's foreign policy. I was sure that some Americans were making art about what was so passionately on their minds. Isn't that what art is?

I came across an outdated call for submissions from The Justice Project, "a nonpartisan organization dedicated to fighting injustice and to creating a more humane and just world".

The website's gallery features the young winners in video, animation, and graphic design medias. Featured are a pro-life animation clip, a lot of anti-gun and anti-nuclear graphics, clips that request the abolishment of the death penalty next to clips demanding that murderers are not let out of jail... And a graphic lamenting the lost American soldiers in the two recent (and continuing) wars. Whether or not there were entries that were critical of Bush's idea of 'justice' is impossible to know; if there were, they were not chosen as finalists by the Justice Project's jury.

My last hope resided in the recent Whitney Museum of American Art's show "The American Effect." The catalogue's forward by Maxwell Anderson was promising: "How those who question our policies and values perceive us is the most urgent question we face in a nation in search for security, and in this exhibition we look at artists to teach us something about ourselves that we cannot learn from isolated introspection." If the New York professional art world was silent on the war issue, at least one can depend on the international artistic community to speak out! Out of forty-seven artists from thirty countries, not one had a direct reference to the war in Afghanistan or Iraq. The gallery tour guide defended this lack by saying that the pieces were chosen before the war on Iraq started. But the situation remains ludicrous: a 'contemporary' exhibit claiming to represent the world's view of America fails utterly to represent the world's most current view of America.

I left feeling enraged at the apparent lack of concern, awareness, and critical thought on the war by American visual artists. When blatant opportunities arouse for commentary, the main issue was left out entirely. I ran to my studio to do something about that.

To be fair, not all American visual artists are skirting the issue; Susan Sontag spoke out against the war in Afghanistan the minute Bush proposed it. She was nearly stripped of her citizenship. There are surely artists in their backroom studios all around the world making art about the wars; the work just isn't easily accessible. And one can never forget the anti-war spoof posters on every faculty member's door; the internet is ultra-public and accessible. As far as the New York professional art world goes, I'll be the first to admit that it is more a business than a Art World, and the fear of losing one's job seems to be a greater issue than real justice projects or looking 'to artists to teach us something about ourselves.'

***

Two websites for anti-war posters: 1, 2

American Visual Artists and Bush's War
I have to admit that the abundance of American flags bothered me when I first came to New York a few months ago. And the bumpers stickers saying 'God Bless Our Soldiers' didn't ease my mind much, either. But I breathed a sigh of relief whilst walking past the offices of the faculty of my fine arts program; on almost every door was an anti-war poster from the internet.