Meet the Season 5 Artist: Doris Salcedo
The above video is excerpted from the Season 5 episode Compassion, premiering on Wednesday, October 7, 2009 at 10pm (ET) on PBS (check local listings). Compassion features three artists — William Kentridge, Doris Salcedo, and Carrie Mae Weems — whose works explore conscience and the possibility of understanding and reconciling past and present, while exposing injustice and expressing tolerance for others.
Who is Doris Salcedo and what does she have to say about compassion?
Doris Salcedo was born in 1958 in Bogotá, Colombia, where she lives and works. Salcedo’s understated sculptures and installations embody the silenced lives of the marginalized, from individual victims of violence to the disempowered of the Third World. Although elegiac in tone, her works are not memorials: Salcedo concretizes absence, oppression, and the gap between the disempowered and powerful. While abstract in form and open to interpretation, her works are essential testimonies on behalf of both victims and perpetrators. Even when monumental in scale, her installations achieve a degree of imperceptibility—receding into a wall, burrowed into the ground, or lasting for only a short time. Salcedo’s work reflects a collective effort and close collaboration with a team of architects, engineers, and assistants and—as Salcedo says—with the victims of the senseless and brutal acts to which her work refers.
On the subject of compassion in art, Salcedo says about her 1997-98 work Unland (in the forthcoming Season 5 book):
[In this work] what I tried to do was to transform materials to the point where they are no longer metaphors but metamorphose into something else quite human and quite delicate—to talk of the fragility of human life and also the brutality of power. In order to do that I wanted to make a surface that was incredibly delicate and fragile, that can literally be destroyed if you just pull a little bit of the fabric that covers it. It’s unbelievably fragile. And I think that would generate the idea of fear and compassion as the human response to a tragic event.
The poet Paul Celan, quoting Georg Büchner, uses a very beautiful image: he says that he wishes he could be a Medusa’s head to turn certain things into stone and gather people around that stone as though it were a great masterpiece. In a way that’s what we do. Celan also says that the artist steps outside the human into a different terrain, the terrain of the inhuman, but looking always towards the human. I think that defines what I do and how I try to connect what I research with my work.
Poetry is something that you cannot use in everyday life, but—like the only aspect of our world that is not practical, that we cannot use, that is outside capitalism and consumer society—it is there in its extraordinary uselessness, which is exactly why it is poetic. Without it we would no longer be human. We would just be producing.
What happens in Salcedo’s segment in Compassion this October?
“I am a Third World artist,” says Doris Salcedo, “from that perspective—from the perspective of the victim, from the perspective of the defeated people—it’s where I’m looking at the world.” Filmed in her Bogotá, Colombia studio while preparing a series of abstract Untitled (2008) sculptures based on antique household furniture, the artist devotes careful attention to the tormented wooden finishes and smooth concrete surfaces of her objects. “I don’t work based on imagination, on fiction,” she explains, characterizing her role as a “secondary witness” to the victims of violence whose testimonies she collects as research for her pieces, such as Atrabiliarios (1992-93) at SFMoMA.
“My work is based not on my experience but on somebody else’s experience,” she says, prompting her long-time assistants to narrate the development of major works such as her Unland (1997-98) series of tables, held together with strands of human hair sewn through millions of tiny holes; the ephemeral installation Noviembre 6 y 7 (2000) that spanned 53 hours to commemorate a bloody siege on Bogotá’s Palace of Justice; and the computer modeling and engineering behind Shibboleth (2007), a 160 meter crack in the foundation of Tate Modern in London, for which the artist enlists a Bible story as a parable for the plight of immigrants in Western societies. Reflecting on her position as an artist in a world beset with so much horror and grief, Salcedo surmises that “the word that defines my work is ‘impotence’…but then, as a person who lacks power, I face the ones who have power and who manipulate life.”

Doris Salcedo. Left: "Untitled," 1998. Wood, concrete and metal, 74 x 44 x 21 1/2 inches. Collection of Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo. Photo: David Heald. Right: "Shibboleth," detail, 2007. Installation at Turbine Hall; Tate Modern, London Concrete and metal, 548 feet long. Photo: Tate Photography, London. Courtesy of the Artist and Alexander & Bonin, New York.
What else has Doris Salcedo done?
Salcedo earned a BFA at Universidad de Bogotá Jorge Tadeo Lozano (1980) and an MA from New York University (1984). Her awards include a commission from Tate Modern, London (2007); the Ordway Prize, from the Penny McCall Foundation (2005, 1993); and a Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation Grant (1995). Her work has appeared in major exhibitions at Tate Modern, London (2007); Castello de Rivoli, Turin (2005); and Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam (2002), among others. She has participated in the T1 Triennial of Contemporary Art, Turin (2005); Documenta (2002); and the Liverpool Biennial of Contemporary Art (1999). Her work is included in many museum collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Art Institute of Chicago; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Where can I see more of her work between now and the Art21 premiere this October?
Doris Salcedo is represented by Alexander & Bonin Gallery, New York.
What’s your take on Doris Salcedo’s inclusion in Season 5?
Tell us what you think by leaving a comment below!
Interview: Dan Cameron on Prospect.2 New Orleans
Before I say that Prospect.1 New Orleans was the most exciting art event to take place in the U.S. in the last decade, I should probably provide the disclaimer that I was responsible for its docent training (on a volunteer basis) as well for its archival photography (on a not-so-volunteer basis). But you don’t have to take my word for it: my Art21 blogging colleague Hrag Vartanian did a great job of chronicling the biennial on these very pages. It was truly a landmark event, and it’s a safe bet to say that there are still a lot of us here in New Orleans who are still catching our breath from the whole magnificently chaotic experience.
Prospect New Orleans curator Dan Cameron, however, doesn’t have the luxury of catching his breath like the rest of us. It’s the nature of biennials that plans for the next one begin the moment the previous one is finished, and Cameron is already immersed in preparations for the opening of Prospect.2 in the fall of 2010. I sat down with him this week at his home in the Tremé neighborhood of New Orleans to find out what’s in store.

John d’Addario: Let’s start by talking about some the lessons you learned from Prospect.1 that will change the way you’ll be doing things for Prospect.2.
Dan Cameron: Well, it’s not so much a case of what lessons were learned as it will be tweaking the model a little bit and improving on things that did work.
One of the top things I want to see happen is having the biennial more neighborhood-identified within the greater context of New Orleans. Over the course of Prospect.1, I noticed that some people found the whole thing very daunting given the scale of what we were doing, especially people from out of town who maybe were just encountering New Orleans for the first time, or who didn’t know that there’s a lot more to the city than the French Quarter. And a lot of those people might not have been familiar with what the different neighborhoods in New Orleans were all about.
This city is made up of incredibly diverse, vibrant neighborhoods and I want Prospect.2 to become more closely associated with places like Mid-City, Tremé, the Warehouse District … the list goes on. So we’re hoping that by branding the different neighborhoods as exhibition venues, it will make the whole experience more manageable for the people who come to see it.
Another thing is that Prospect.2 is going to be more focused on music than Prospect.1 was. On one level, the Prospect biennial is an art festival, and I always wanted to differentiate it from other festival-type events like Jazz Fest. But instead of using the festival concept as a restraining idiom, I want to focus on the concept of an art festival as grab bag: the biennial as centerpiece of a wider festival of the arts, which will include music as well.
So we’re planning to have some kind of music event somewhere in the city every night of the exhibition—we’ve already been discussing programming in terms of “65 Nights,” which is how long the biennial will run. It will be similar to the type of programming that goes on during an event like a World’s Fair, or a Documenta, except that our focus would be mostly on music. We’re thinking about a possible collaboration with the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra, and about inaugurating a visual and performing arts community space in the Lower Ninth Ward.
Of course we had a strong performing arts presence in Prospect.1 too … there was Kalup Linzy’s “Members Only” cabaret at Sweet Lorraine’s, and Navin Rawanchaikul and Tyler Russell’s jazz funeral for Narvin Kimball. But there are so many amazing performance spaces here in New Orleans that I’d like to utilize over the course of the exhibition, like the mortuary on North Rampart Street that the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Foundation has taken over and Le Chat Noir, a cabaret on St. Charles Avenue. So there won’t be a problem finding enough material to have every night covered. It’s hard to predict how it’s exactly going to pan out at this point, but that’s what I want to see happen.
Jd’A: So what other changes can we expect to see in Prospect.2?
DC: There’s a somewhat higher number of New Orleans and Louisiana-based artists proportionately, though there’s also fewer artists overall: about 60 this time around, compared to over 80 last time.
We’re also going to charge this time, which hopefully won’t surprise too many people. Right now we’re discussing how best to do that, though it will probably involve a tiered system of day passes, weekend passes, and exhibition-long season passes. We’re fortunate that pretty much every institution that was involved in Prospect.1 wants to be on board for Prospect.2 as well, so that will give us the opportunity to do more clustering of venues throughout the city as we add new locations to make it easier for visitors to see everything.
A big challenge is how to expand the biennial’s presence in the French Quarter, which is of course the part of town that most visitors are familiar with – although we want to convey the idea that it’s a genuine neighborhood, not just a strip of bars on Bourbon Street. A lot of people told me how much they liked the “treasure hunt” aspect of Prospect.1, going all over the city to seek out some of the more out-of-the-way venues. That would work really well in a neighborhood like the French Quarter, and would give us the opportunity to draw attention to some great cultural landmarks a lot of people don’t get to see.
Seeing people in the New Orleans art community take advantage of the occasion to mount related exhibitions was one of the most exciting things about Prospect.1, and I want to see those satellite programs become even larger than the biennial itself. I want everyone – visitors and residents alike – to be able to see art all over the place, all the time.
I also expect to see at least twice as many visitors as we did for Prospect.1. We had 89,000 visitors last time, so I don’t think it’s unreasonable to see that figure double next year.

Oliver Herring - TASK at the Former Federal Security Bank, 2003
Starting today, Art21 is pleased to welcome K-12 teachers from across the country to participate in our first summer institute, Art21 Educators. Jessica Hamlin, Marc Mayer, Joy Lai (our amazing education intern), and myself will be joined by Art21 colleagues, fellow educators, and artists for one week to share approaches for incorporating contemporary art in and out of the classroom—revising and re-energizing curricula with teachers who applied to participate in this annual program. The teachers are:
- Casey Carlock, Mary Lyon Elementary, Chicago, IL
- Jenny Davidson, Sammamish High School, Seattle, WA
- Jennie M. Duke, Beacon High School, Beacon, NY
- June Edmonds, Lawndale School District, Lawndale, CA
- Kristine Hatanaka, Culver City High School, Culver City, CA
- Lluvia Higuera, freelance educator, Los Angeles, CA
- Troy Kroft, Glen Rock High School, Glen Rock, NJ
- Tanya Manabat, Roosevelt Elementary, Lawndale, CA
- Benjamin Morales, Lawndale School District, Lawndale, CA
- Pam Posey, Crossroads School, Santa Monica, CA
- Joyce Riley, High School For Leadership and Public Service, New York, NY
- Joanne Ross, Glen Rock High School, Glen Rock, NJ
- Keeley Marie Stitt, Chicago International Charter School, Chicago IL
- Lucia Vinograd, Besant Hill School of Happy Valley, Ojai, CA
- Stacey J. Ward Kelly, Sargent Elementary School, Beacon, NY
This summer institute begins a year-long relationship and we are excited to work with these teachers here in New York City and in their classrooms over the next 12 months. Art21 Educators is the result of the creation and presentation of Art21 professional development workshops for teachers over the last six years. Recognizing the potential of teachers to support and inspire each other through long-term networks that encourage them to share personal anecdotes and experiences, the initiative will cultivate a collection of case studies, video documentation, and curricular models representing specific ways that teachers are merging contemporary curricular resources and content with innovative teaching strategies.
More to come!
The Studio at Colton: A Look Back and Ahead

If you had to point to one institution that best illustrated the progress of the arts community in post-Katrina New Orleans—not to mention the progress of the city in general—you wouldn’t have to look any further than the Colton Middle School on St. Claude Avenue.
Named for an evidently well-regarded member of the New Orleans Board of Education in the early years of the 20th century, the Charles J. Colton School opened in 1929 and operated for more than seventy-five years as a middle school serving a community which included the Bywater, Faubourg Marigny, Tremé, and Lower Ninth Ward neighborhoods. Although the school was one of a handful to reopen shortly after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, a dispersed population and resulting drop in attendance led to its closing after the 2007-08 school year.
Shortly after its closing as a middle school, the city’s Recovery School District leased the building to the Creative Alliance of New Orleans (CANO), a non-profit arts-focused economic development organization spearheaded by “cultural entrepreneurs” Jeanne Nathan and Robert Tannen. The couple organized the Studio at Colton partly as a response to concerns voiced by artist Paul Chan, who noted while visiting New Orleans for his landmark production of Waiting for Godot during Fall 2007 that there was not enough affordable studio space in the city.

In short order, and with a shoestring budget supplemented by donated janitorial services and volunteer work, CANO transformed the vacant 100,000 square foot building into exhibition, rehearsal, and studio space for more than 100 artists and arts organizations including painters, photographers, theater and dance companies, costume designers, sculptors, landscape architects and video production outfits. In return for use of the facilities, many resident artists and groups at Colton conducted free or low-cost classes and workshops for New Orleans student groups and adults. (More than 60 such classes and workshops were offered during the spring of this year.)

Rechristened the Studio at Colton, the building received a high profile boost when it was selected as one of the venues in last year’s Prospect.1 biennial exhibition. Art:21 Season 3 artist Cai Guo-Qiang’s Black Fireworks piece (above) was installed to magnificent effect in the Colton’s main auditorium, and Prospect.1 artists José Damasceno (below, left) and Tatsuo Miyajima (below, right) created room-scale installations in former classrooms elsewhere in the building.


Flash Points: Art+Economics, Looking Back & Moving Forward

Srdjan Loncar, "Value" (2008), as exhibited at the Old U.S. Mint during Prospect.1 New Orleans
Money is on everyone’s mind but particularly for those in the art world, which faces one of the most difficult economic climates in ages. The last few months on this blog we’ve posted about art and economics, looking at them from various angles and reflecting on a topic to which there is never a conclusion. Here are some highlights from this newly concluded Flash Points topic, “What is the Value of Art?”
Beth Allen kicked off the discussion:
Buried within questions about the economics of art are assumptions, and often judgments, about its value that beg to be examined: How is the value of an artist’s intellectual versus physical labor calculated? Are collectible works valued differently than ephemeral projects?
Ben Street highlighted parallels between the world of money and art:
[they]…may not be equivalent, but they are remarkably alike. As Swiss artist Daniel Spoerri put it, “in exchanging art for money, we exchange one abstraction for another.”
Thomas Micchelli offered his own insights:
Money may be a shared commodity but it fractures perception; not only is it the most unreliable historical indicator of aesthetic value, but when art is rendered into a trophy and displayed as such, its role as a piece of communal experience, owned by all, is diminished.
Lila Kanner pointed out that the artist’s role is crucial in our understanding of art economics and that “currency in art has a beautiful double meaning – it’s about cultural relevance as well as economics.”

Jackson Pollock's "No.5, 1948" (1948) is, according to Wikipedia, the
most expensive painting in history.
Then there were the tales of financial woe, from the impact that the economic downturn has had on museums (more) to artists looking to be fairly compensated for their work in museums.
Some bloggers looked at artists who thrive in the capitalist system, others sought out alternative economies, including one Chicago-based research institute (InCUBATE) that critically examines models for arts funding, and the Exhibition & Free Store in New York, which sought to “demonstrate the value of free art, free imagination, free form, and free rewards.”
The role of the arts administrator was raised by Tracy Candido, who reminded us, “I am an arts administrator, which is arguably the second invisible position in line behind the artist” and Richard McCoy wrote about the question of value from an art conservator’s point of view.
Julia Steinmetz took a different approach to the question of art’s value and cast her net into the body of Adrian Piper’s work to suggest that “art’s value is its capacity to direct our attention to a particular object, image, sound, environment, or situation.”
Among the key posts of the last few months, there were numerous interviews that focused on economics in different ways, including:
- a video chat with Jackie Battenfield, whose first book The Artist’s Guide: How to Make a Living Doing What You Love is a practical reference book that she wished she had when she began her own art career;
- a Q&A with David A. Ross, former director of the Whitney and SFMOMA, who offers his opinion on art’s economic future;
- Arnold Lehman, director of the Brooklyn Museum, spoke about the financial strain on major institutions;
- Dublin-based artist Seoidín O’Sullivan, explained her interest in helping communities feel empowered and take “ownership and responsibility in and for their localities”;
- Bjøernstjerne Christiansen of SUPERFLEX, who addressed the Danish trio’s critique of (doomed) economic systems; and
- and New York $treet Artist$ Enjoy Banking, who plastered the city with fanciful economic messages like “Enjoy Stimulus Package.”
Finally, we looked at the state of federal arts funding by the numbers and then spoke to the House Arts Caucus co-chairs about the state of federal funds for the arts.
For future reading and some hot topics in the news related to Art+Economics, try these:
- LA Times art critic Christopher Knight explores the merry-go-round of museums that deaccession art to buy more art and then change their minds about what they should be buying;
- Felix Salmon, writing for The Atlantic, thinks that if the federal government is serious about stimulating the economy, it should give out some money to its poorest citizens, artists, since “Arts spending is fantastic at creating employment: for every $30,000 or so spent on the arts, one more person gets a job, compared with about $1 million if you’re building a road or hospital”;
- the US House increased arts and humanities funding, including an additional 9.7% or $15 million increase from this year’s budget for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA);
- New York gallerist and blogger Ed Winkleman has written a brand new book How to Start and Run a Commercial Art Gallery–it goes on sale tomorrow (Tues., July 14)–which promises to be a comprehensive guide for those eager to start their own gallery; and
- a Boston-based artist Geoff Hargadon has created, CASH FOR YOUR WARHOL website, for those who want to dispose of their Warhols quickly. He explained to Artinfo that he has received mixed reactions: “I have received a lot of calls, most of them hang-ups (curiosity?), but a few have probably been real. I haven’t returned the calls yet cause I don’t know what to say to them quite yet. Would I buy a Warhol from them? Sure, but I haven’t figured out the pricing thing.”
Banksy New Orleans: Then and Now

It’s been nearly a year since the U.K.-based street artist and provocateur known as Banksy completed over a dozen public art pieces in various locations around New Orleans, including the Faubourg Marigny, Mid-City, Tremé, and the Lower 9th Ward.

The appearance of the pieces coincided with the third anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, and many of the images commented directly or obliquely on issues like government (non-)reponse to the crisis, racial and class divisions in the city of New Orleans, and the persistent efforts of local anti-graffiti vigilante Fred Radtke, aka the “Grey Ghost.”

While the approach of Hurricane Gustav over Labor Day weekend and subsequent evacuation of the city prolonged the lifespan of several of these works for a few extra days, by the middle of September 2008, most of them had been painted over by parties not sympathetic to Banksy’s singular worldview. In one case, a Banksy image was physically sawed off the front of the shotgun house upon which it was painted. (Banksy’s pieces sometimes fetch considerable sums on the secondary market, although the artist has stated that any piece thus removed from its original context and sold without his consent is no longer “an original Banksy.”)
Letter from London: Dearth in Venice

Charles Ray, "Boy with Frog" (2009). Photo: Ben Street
There’s a school of thought that claims that any large-scale survey of art conducted in any year in history will have its share of peaks and troughs, but holding the world’s largest contemporary art survey in Venice gives the lie to that idea, somewhat. Slipping into a church like San Zaccaria, which I did after the onslaught of the national pavilions and the Arsenale, provided a corrective to that idea in the form of Giovanni Bellini’s altarpiece, made about 500 years ago. No, it wouldn’t have been the same.
Herein lies the danger of showing contemporary art in Venice. The magisterial presence of literally hundreds of architectural and artistic masterpieces has a breathing-down-the-neck quality that sends otherwise sensible artists a bit loopy. The vast medieval hall of the Arsenale, which is longer than 5000 tennis courts laid end-to-end, either swamps smaller works or forces artists’ hands in creating huger artistic gambits than they’d do otherwise. Hence the almost total absence of painting in the Arsenale (curated by Daniel Birnbaum) and the preponderance of big film projections, sprawling messy installations, and theatrical light effects. As though second-guessing the inevitable fatigue of the visitor, the show peters out towards the end, sinking in the metaphorical mud in a series of plops and bubbles appropriate for the city sinking into the lagoon (too easy?).
Invariably and problematically (to use a favored Biennale word), the overabundance of stuff means that memorability becomes the litmus test. If it’s not still in your mind by the time you’re being doused in Perrier by a squadron of nude dwarves, or whatever it is they do at the openings (I think my invite got lost in the post, probably), then it hasn’t worked. This is unavoidable in a image-mad culture such as ours which privileges quantity over depth; it means that the Arsenale becomes an impatient channel surf through the last ten years of artmaking, rarely settling on one thing for long. That’s great for the opening, when a hasty whip-through is all the heat or paucity of cocktails will allow, but it makes for a thin viewing experience thereafter.
Having said that, there are a number of stand-out works, especially Paul Chan’s terrifying and hilarious Sade for Sade’s Sake, a projection of silhouetted figures conducting Sadean activities unmentionable on an educational website such as this one, which sees Chan step away from the wistful whimsy of Seven Lights and back to the jerky misanthropy that made his early work so compelling. Jorge Otero-Pailos hangs a huge latex imprint of a wall of the Ducal Palace, which has collected dust and pollution for years, creating both a palimpsest of time and motion and a frozen moment in a city in a state of perpetual entropy, like a skin sample preserved for future cloning. And venerable arte povera maestro Michelangelo Pistoletto has hung big gilt-framed mirrors around three walls of the second room and smashed them; some have big gaping fissures in them, others just a couple of spidery holes. While this is almost one of those you-had-to-be-there performance residuals beloved of art insiders, it makes sense as an after-the-fact installation, a memory of violent action relevant to the city itself (particularly in the Arsenale, its defunct naval factories) and a kind of furious self-portrait—Pistoletto taking a wrecking ball to the elegant mirrored surfaces of the works which made him. As Roger Moore would say, it’s simply smashing.
Weekly Roundup

William Kentridge, Drawing for "II Sole 24 Ore (World Walking)", 2007; Collection of Doris and Donald Fisher; � 2008 ; photo: courtesy Marian Goodman Gallery, New York.
- Maybe reviving the art market can take a page from Herb and Dorothy Vogel. Herb & Dorothy is a documentary playing now, that recounts the inspiring tale of how a postal clerk and librarian, with their modest salaries, amassed one of the most important Minimalist and contemporary art collections in the world. The Vogels have been going strong since the 1960s, and director Megumi Sasaki tells their story largely through the artists they collected, including wonderful anecdotes from Chuck Close, Linda Benglis, Robert and Sylvia Mangold, and Richard Tuttle (Season 3).
- William Kentridge: Five Themes opened over the weekend at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. The exhibit features a comprehensive survey of the Season 5 artist’s films, drawings, books, prints, sculptures, and stage designs. The show runs through September 7.
- In tandem with the artist’s mid-career retrospective at the Brooklyn Museum, Yinka Shonibare MBE (Season 5) has created Party Time: Re-imagine America in honor of the Newark Museum‘s centennial. In the opulent, mahogany-paneled dining room of the Ballantine House, the Season 5 artist stages an imagined scene of a late nineteenth century dinner party, comprising eight headless figures dressed in period costume who have cast away their Victorian etiquette in favor of indulgence and debauchery. Through January 3.
- The Serpentine Gallery is currently exhibiting Jeff Koons‘ (Season 5 Fantasy Episode) Popeye Series, featuring a number of inflatable toy sculptures and paintings that draw on images from American childhood and consumer culture. The works incorporate some of Koons� signature ideas and motifs, including flippy combinations of everyday objects, cartoons, art-historical references and children�s playthings. The show runs through September 13.
- Jessica Stockholder speaks tonight at Skidmore College, where the Season 3 artist is a visiting professor in the Summer Studio Art Program. It’s at 6pm and free. For more information, go here.
New guest blogger: John d’Addario

Thanks to Sharon Butler of Two Coats of Paint for three weeks of fabulous posts. Be sure to follow her daily musings back on her blog here.
Up next is John d’Addario, a writer, photographer, independent curator, and arts educator. A native New Yorker, he currently lives in New Orleans where he teaches at the University of New Orleans.
Ida Applebroog | Inspiration
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EXCLUSIVE: Ida Applebroog discusses her life as an “image scavenger” in her New York studio, while working on her “Photogenetics” series—a blend of photography, sculpture, painting and digital media.
Ida Applebroog propels her paintings and drawings into the realm of installation by arranging and stacking canvases in space, exploding the frame-by-frame logic of comic-book and film narrative into three-dimensional environments. Strong themes in her work include gender and sexual identity, power struggles, and the pernicious role of mass media in desensitizing the public to violence.
Ida Applebroog is featured in the Season 3 (2005) episode Power of the Art:21—Art in the Twenty-First Century television series on PBS.
VIDEO | Producer: Wesley Miller & Nick Ravich. Interview: Susan Sollins. Camera & Sound: Mead Hunt and Merce Williams. Editor: Mary Ann Toman . Artwork Courtesy: Ida Applebroog.




