Hair & Nails, Talk & Touch: 4 Encounters with Women Artists in Mumbai
Over the past few weeks, Jennifer Doyle has been reporting from her travels in India. Following is her final dispatch. — Ed.
Masooma Syed makes small things, sometimes from materials gathered off the bodies of her friends, her family — a crown from her mother’s hair, tiny chandeliers from her friends’ fingernail clippings. An astonishing amount of care, attention, and labor is implicit in each of these works. The delicate materials are carefully washed and cleaned; the structures made from fingernail clippings sometimes require that tiny holes be drilled into them (without destroying them); each strand of hair is stiffened, shaped, and placed.
Masooma Syed, "Crown," human hair twined, twisted, and knotted, 9"x8"x variable, 2005
The works require an unusual degree of care and attention from the viewer, who is asked to pay attention to that which we hardly notice. Salima Hashmi places these works within the practice of “contemporary miniature” (Contrary Signs: A New Generation of Artists from Pakistan, Flash Art 265 March-April 09). Partly because I’d been looking at his work recently, as I am talking with Syed about her work, I think of William Pope.L — his work with hair and nails is deliberately dirty, trashy (while also visually engaging, even sort of floral). Tim Hawkinson made a two-inch bird skeleton and spiderweb from fingernails and hair. But that work is made from stuff from his own body (as is the also case with William Pope.L). There’s a narcissism in play in their works: William Pope.L’s is abject; Hawkinson’s is boyish. I would not say this is the case for Syed, quite the opposite. These works are made from the traces of other bodies, as sentimental and spooky keepsakes.
Masooma Syed, "No Man's Land," human fingernails glued together, 2002.
The smallness of Syed’s work seems appropriate to an artist who moves between Lahore and New Delhi. As she does so, she crosses one of the world’s most vexed borders. These works materially respond to structurally unstable situations, in which the storage and transport of works can be an artist’s most pressing material problems. Work made from the bodies of those around you makes sense, as both a sustainable and loving practice.
Weekly Roundup
Art21 artist Barry McGee stands in front of one of his geometric creations. Courtesy Wallpaper.com.
From the west to the east coast and over to Taiwan, Art21 artists are involved in a number of new and large-scale exhibitions:
- Works by Barry McGee (Season 1) and Philip Frost are the focus of mindthegap, the inaugural exhibition of Prism, a three story gallery located on the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles. Curated by P.M. Tenore, founder of RVCA clothing company and the associated publication ANP Quarterly, the display includes embellished baseball bat and surf board sculptures, paintings, film and interactive installations. Flip through images of the show at Wallpaper.com.
- Undercover: Performing and Transforming Black Female Identities is currently on view at the Spelman College Museum of Fine Art in Atlanta. The all-star artist roster includes Ellen Gallagher (Season 3), Cindy Sherman (Season 5), Renée Cox, Lyle Ashton Harris, Lauren Kelley, Mequitta Ahuja, Kalup Linzy, Wangechi Mutu, Lorraine O’Grady, Gordon Parks, Lorna Simpson, Renée Stout, and Mickalene Thomas. Undercover runs through December 5; a closing reception will take place December 10. Read Rebecca Cochran’s review of the exhibition for Artforum.com.
- Days and Giorni, two sound installations by Season 1 artist Bruce Nauman, are on view at The Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA) through April 4, 2010. These works made their international debut in Bruce Nauman: Topological Gardens, the exhibition organized by PMA in conjunction with the Universitá Iuav di Venezia and the Universitá Ca’ Foscari di Venezia, to represent the United States in the 53rd Venice Biennale. Days and Giorni at PMA marks the first time in seven years that Nauman is showing new major installations in the United States. Film and video works made by the artist in the late 1960s — Dance or Exercise on the Perimeter of a Square (Square Dance); Slow Angle Walk (Beckett Walk); and Wall-Floor Positions — are also on view.
- In more Philly news, the PMA and the Fabric Workshop and Museum (FWM) will present Fallen Blossoms, a multi-site exhibition of works by Cai Guo-Qiang (Season 3). A series of four gunpowder drawings and a sculptural installation will be on view inside the PMA in a presentation titled Light Passage. Two newly commissioned works, Time Flies Like a Weaving Shuttle and Time Scroll, will be on display at FWM. One of Cai’s signature “explosion events” has been commissioned for the exhibition and will take place at both sites on opening day, December 11.
- Hanging Out in the Museum is Cai’s second collaboration with the Taipei Fine Arts Museum in Taiwan. The retrospective exhibition features new gunpowder drawings, and the site specific installation Cultural Melting Bath (1997), which invites audiences to join a medicinal bath located in the museum’s outdoor courtyard. Hanging Out in the Museum remains on view through February 1, 2010.
- Cleveland Cavaliers center Shaquille O’Neal has added curatorial work to his resume. His forthcoming exhibition Size DOES Matter will explore the idea of scale in contemporary art through works by Tim Hawkinson, Paul Pfeiffer (both Season 2), Fred Wilson (Season 3), Jeff Koons, and Yinka Shonibare MBE (both Season 5), among others. Hosted by the Flag Art Foundation in New York, the exhibition is scheduled to open February 19, 2010. In Lindsay Pollock’s report for Bloomberg News, O’Neal says, “As a curator, I have a responsibility to the artists, who are my ‘teammates.’ We all have to make each other look good — no different than what I do on the court.’’
- The new home of the Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA) — designed by Season 2 artist Maya Lin — opened to the public in September. The 14,000 square-foot space incorporates environmentally sustainable design solutions, and features a sky-lit courtyard that “harkens back to the memory of a traditional Chinese courtyard house.” Lin says, “MOCA’s new space focuses attention on individuals and families of Chinese heritage who have made their homes throughout the country, and who are very much a part of the fabric of this nation. The space was designed to show the dynamic presentation of the Chinese American story, as an integral part of the greater, and continually evolving, American story.” Read more about MOCA’s new building here.
- Season 1 artist Richard Serra is included in the group exhibition 1969 at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center in Long Island City, New York. Serra’s work was highlighted (along with Nauman’s) in Peter Schjeldahl’s review for The New Yorker. Schjeldahl states, “The year’s most original artists were the post-minimalists Bruce Nauman and Richard Serra…Nauman and Serra addressed a culture in which “artist” was becoming a job description, at once secure and drained of meaning. Having nothing to do, but having to do something, they made the situation clear and just a little bit dramatic.” Read the entire review here.
Looking at Los Angeles: Westward Expansion
Florian Maier-Aichen, "Untitled (Dewatered)," 2009. C-print, 71 3/4 x 94 inches (182 x 239 cm framed). Courtesy the Artist and Blum & Poe, Los Angeles, 303 Gallery, New York and Gagosian Gallery, London
In the previous Looking at Los Angeles post, Catherine Wagley explored the still-healing schism of East and West Germany through an Angelino lens. Meanwhile, the premiere last night of Season 5’s Fantasy episode offered us a glimpse of Los Angeles through the eyes of German-born artist Florian Maier-Aichen. Maier-Aichen explains that for him, the landscape of Los Angeles “has a great meaning [because] it’s the end of American pioneerism, it’s the end of the American West.”
Indeed, one could argue that Los Angeles has been an epicenter of creativity, fantasy, and innovation partly because it feels like a perpetual final frontier of the Wild West—the apex of lawless expansion, openness, and freedom. We may be short on some resources, but we’ve got space and we’re not afraid to use it. For a prime example, look to the gallery that discovered Maier-Aichen while he was still an MFA student at UCLA: Blum & Poe.
While galleries around the globe are shuttering or shrinking, native Angelinos Tim Blum and Jeff Poe just moved into a new 21,000-square foot venue–four times the size of their previous space. While they could have opted to open an outpost in another art world hotspot, the gallery decided to focus on expanding within their hometown. In fact, they ended up staying in their home neighborhood and found an ideal property directly across the street from their previous space in Culver City. Blum & Poe is known for being one of the first galleries to set up shop in the since-revitalized Culver City Arts District, which the New York Times backhandedly praised as a “nascent Chelsea” in 2005. When I asked Tim Blum what he liked about Culver City, he highlighted the same feeling of openness and expansiveness that Maier-Aichen alluded to in last night’s Art21 segment, referring to the area as appealingly “airy, flat, and fluid – just the opposite of congested.”
Weekly Roundup
Jessica Stockholder, "Flooded Chambers Maid", 2009. Courtesy of the Madison Square Park Conservancy. Photo: Jeffrey Sandgrund and Sam Rauch.
- Jessica Stockholder (Season 3) has completed her first outdoor installation in the United States. Flooded Chambers Maid is a site-specific multimedia installation on and around the Oval Lawn at Madison Square Park in New York City. The piece will remain in the park through August 15.
- Stockholder’s second solo exhibition with Mitchell-Innes & Nash is on view at the gallery’s Chelsea location through June 13.
- Kara Walker (Season 2) will be at the University of Chicago on May 13 as part of the university’s ArtSpeak series. The artist will reflect on her work in a presentation and dialogue with Professor Amy Dru Stanley, who focuses on capitalism, slavery and emancipation, and the historical experience of moral problems.
- Nine new works by Tim Hawkinson (Season 2) are on view at PaceWildenstein through July 25. Included in the exhibition is Sherpa (2008), a life-sized single cylinder two-stroke engine motorcycle constructed out of eight varieties of feathers.
- Artists Alfredo Jarr (Season 4), Yto Barrada, Cláudia Cristóvão, Georgia Papageorge, and Berni Searle are included in the exhibition Continental Rifts: Contemporary Time-Based Works from Africa at UCLA’s Fowler Museum. Read the Los Angeles Times Culture Monster review.
- New York Times art critic Holland Cotter reviews the environmental sculpture Storm King Wavehill by Maya Lin (Season 2). For this project, Lin transformed an 11-acre gravel pit at Storm King Art Center into a grassy vista of ocean-like waves. This is the largest site-specific earthwork she has created to date.
- The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art has just opened their new Rooftop Sculpture Garden, with works by Kiki Smith, Louise Bourgeois (both Season 2), and other renowned artists.
Authoritarian?
Matthew Ritchie, "The Dead: Belphegor," 2004
As I mentioned last week, the Teaching with Contemporary Art column over the next few weeks will focus on questions generated at the recent NAEA conference in Minneapolis. This week’s question comes from Clyde Gaw from Indianapolis, who wrote, “Much of the teaching that takes place in art rooms today is authoritarian and actually restricts personal expression. Is this beneficial in any way?”
First of all, I do not agree that much of the teaching that takes place in art education classrooms is authoritarian. Mimicry can be a problem, but I can’t say that I’ve encountered many instances where the teaching could literally be called authoritarian. What I do find, as Olivia Gude pointed out in our Art Practice, Teaching Practice panel at the conference, is that many art educators are desperately clinging to old models of teaching from their childhood and/or teacher training. Using the elements and principles of design to drive a curriculum, for example, is simply not enough, and in some cases it’s misguided altogether.
Bringing contemporary art and artists into the classroom through the incorporation of Art21 education materials or sites like artbabble.org allows teachers to make important connections between the strengths in an existing curriculum and the gaps that curriculum faces. For example, taking ever-present artists like Andy Warhol or Alexander Calder and juxtaposing them with Margaret Kilgallen or Tim Hawkinson can teach more about all of the artists and ideas involved. What are the similarities between Warhol and Kilgallen? What do Calder and Hawkinson have in common and how is their work very different? What do Warhol and Kilgallen teach about working with popular culture? How do Calder and Hawkinson each attempt to redefine sculpture?
If, as Clyde points out, art education in your school or district leans towards an authoritarian model, then my suggestion might be to share (and model!) how contemporary art promotes choice, play, uncertainty, chance, undiscovered relationships, and new perspectives. Good teaching, much like contemporary art, has a lot to do with taking risks. Perhaps the first risk may be to push an existing curriculum into new territory.
Sugimoto + U2
Word on the street is that one of Hiroshi Sugimoto’s images will be used as the cover for U2’s upcoming album No Line on the Horizon, scheduled for release March 3rd. The Season 3 photographer follows in the footsteps of other Art:21 artists who have also crossed over and “exhibited” their work as album art. Notable favorites include Raymond Pettibon for Sonic Youth (Goo, 1990), Tim Hawkinson for Beck (Mutations, 1998), and Matthew Barney for Arto Lindsay (The Prize, 1999).
In other news, I dare say that I may be the first and only Art21 blogger to have a weird utensil named after him.
Barbara Kruger’s “Another” at UCSD
Barbara Kruger (Season 1) has created a wall and floor mural for the 4-story atrium of the Price Center East at the University of California San Diego, where the artist taught from 2002 to 2006. Another is the 17th piece in the 25-year old Stuart Collection of public/site-specific art on the campus, which also includes prominent works by Alexis Smith (Snake Path) and Season 2 artist Tim Hawkinson (Bear).
Another is more understated than Kruger’s usual fare, blending into its surroundings and incorporating a giant photomural of two clocks punctuated by text blocks reading “Another Day, Another Time, Another Loss, Another Dollar, Another Place, Another Time, Another Smile, Another Song, and Another Sweater.” The work is a commentary on the relentless nature of time, the “everydayness,” as the artist puts it. Live Reuter news and headlines are also integrated via two LED displays. In lieu of her usual solid red background, Kruger has substituted a more architectural terrazzo-style block in reds, greens and blues to counterpart the real terrazzo rectangles scattered across the floor, which itself is interspersed with quotations from various writers and social critics, such as “Those who make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities” (Voltaire).
Sounds like the perfect thing to digest in the center, a dining hall where students also eat and congregate.
Tim Hawkinson on NewArtTV
A video featuring Art21 artist Tim Hawkinson was recently released on NewArtTV.com. In this interview, Hawkinson discusses many of the objects in How Man is Knit, the artist’s first solo exhibition at Pace Wildenstein Gallery in May 2007.
Tim Hawkinson Down Under
Scout, an exhibition of work by Art21 Season 2 artist Tim Hawkinson, is on view at the Gow Langsford Gallery in Auckland, New Zealand until May 16th.
Hawkinson’s full range of mad scientist quirkiness is on exhibit, ranging from drawings and paintings to multi-media constructions. The wide array of works are meticulously designed and constructed, integrating scavenged and ephemeral materials with a healthy dose of absurdist humor.
“Through his work, Hawkinson draws the viewer into a Carrollean world of inverse proportions, surreal adventures, and fantastical, sometimes sinister characters. His über-imagination produces a cast of hybrid animals, queasily enlarged body parts and grotesque collages that occupy a space situated somewhere on the other side of the looking glass” (from the press release).
Shahzia Sikander and Tim Hawkinson at MCA Sydney; Art21 videos on view
On view at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) in Sydney, Australia are two major exhibitions by Art21-featured artists: Shahzia Sikander and Tim Hawkinson. In conjunction with both of these shows, Art21 video profiles on each of these artists are running on a loop in the museum’s Resource Room.
Shahzia Sikander opened last month at the MCA and includes a major site-specific work which the artist created directly on the gallery wall.
Sikander’s work is characterised by its precision of line and delicacy of touch: from tightly structured miniature paintings to larger, more loosely formed watercolours in which pigments stain and bleed into one another. Historical tradition meets contemporary interpretation, incorporating both figurative and abstract elements. Since 2001, Sikander has also worked with digital animation, setting her miniatures into physical motion. Images break apart and reform in new hybrid permutations, while sound adds a further dimension.
Sikander was recently granted the prestigious MacArthur Award last year. She was recognised by the MacArthur Foundation for “merging the traditional South Asian art of miniature painting with contemporary forms and styles to create visually compelling, resonant works on multiple scales and in a dazzling array of media.”
Shahzia Sikander is on view at the MCA until February 17, 2008.
Yesterday, Art21 featured artist Tim Hawkinson (Season 2) opened his first Australian exhibition, Mapping The Marvelous, at the MCA.
Hawkinson has received widespread recognition for his ingenious constructions of everyday objects, often large-scale kinetic and sound-producing works, whose intricate and playful constructions engage with the human body and portraiture, incorporating mechanical components and materials such as latex, plastic, cardboard and string.
Showcased works are sculptures, photo collages and drawings from the mid 1990s to the present, all of which refer to the obsessive human need for order and containment, using maps and charts, volumes and measurements to document the world in all its excess.
The exhibition introduces Hawkinson’s extraordinary new creations—among them a bat created from shredded black plastic bags and twistie ties—as well as inflatable self-portraits, monstrous beings and fantastical structures that chatter, whistle, rotate and spin.
Mapping the Marvelous is on view through March 5, 2008.
