Month: April 2015

Posted on April 1, 2015

Ebony G. Patterson, Invisible Presence: Bling Memories (2014), installation view from EN MAS’, Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans, 2015. Photo: Sarrah Danziger.

Joshua Jelly-Schapiro of Artforum recently reviewed the premier exhibition of EN MAS’: Carnival and Performance Art of the Caribbean at the CAC New Orleans. Jelly-Schapiro efficiently summarizes the impetus behind the project as a whole and emphasizes the questions posed by the exhibition, stating:

“How might carnival’s attendant forms of aesthetic practice and ritual modes of masquerade—the performative arts that Trinidadians call mas’—be synthesized with the larger contemporary discourse of performance art, with its genealogy presumed to originate in the bodily economies not of chattel slavery but of Europe’s avant-gardes?”

The article goes on to discuss the importance of these questions to our current understanding of contemporary performance, and the CAC as an ideal locus for the presentation and further discussion of these ideas.

To read the full article, visit Artforum’s website, here.

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Posted on April 2, 2015

Marlon Griffith, POSITIONS + POWER, 2014, Port of Spain, Trinidad. © Arnaldo James, 2014. The New Orleans Advocate recently featured a review of EN MAS’: Carnival and Performance Art of the Caribbean at the CAC New Orleans. To read the article, visit the New Orleans Advocate website, here.

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Posted on April 10, 2015

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Curator's Perspective: Inti Guerrero

Posted on April 14, 2015

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Felipe Mujica: Jugador como pelota, pelota como cancha

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In the Canyon, Revise the Canon

Posted on April 15, 2015

do it instruction by Thomas Schütte, The Episcopal Academy, 2015.

The Episcopal Academy recently posted an article summarizing the experience of do it EA and the project’s positive influence on the entire school community. About the presentation of do it at the Episcopal Academy, Crawford Campus Center Gallery Director Susan Coote says:

 

“It was a true community effort, and through it we strengthened our bonds between units, classes, special interests, and talents. We made drawings, photos, sculptures, videos, and performance pieces. We enjoyed live music and recorded sound pieces.”

 

To read the full article, visit the Episcopal Academy website, here.

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Nicolás Dumit Estévez, C Room, EN MAS’ installation view, CAC New Orleans, 2015. Photo: Sarrah Danziger. Art Papers recently featured an interview of EN MAS’ curator Claire Tancons by D. Eric Bookhardt. To read the article, visit the Art Papers website, here.

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Martha Wilson at the exhibition Martha Wilson: Downtown, NYU Fales Library and Special Collections, 2015.

A recent Hyperallergic article discusses artist Martha Wilson’s particular modes of archiving her performance pieces in relation to the IC exhibition Martha Wilson: Downtown at the NYU Fales Library. It notes that ‘the practices of using first-person accounts or oral histories, ephemera and grassroots archives, as well as alternative publishers, have long been core strategies for feminists seeking to document and preserve histories that have been ignored or mischaracterized by institutions.’

The piece explores the ways in which Wilson utilizes archiving as a survival strategy in both the personal and public domain: as a fervent diarist; as a collector of over 13,000 artists’ books and periodicals (eventually acquired by MoMA); as the founder of Franklin Furnace; and more recently, by building a digital archive of events and performances for the organization.

Regarding the artist’s use of archiving as a survival mechanism, writer Alexis Clements states:

 

Perhaps that’s the key to this strategy and what makes it so fascinating: Wilson, like Schneeman, is demonstrating and embodying methodologies for grappling with what others find too messy and confusing to confront through the act of narrating her own archive. Some will dismiss these narrations as too personal or too close to the subject, but we know by now that objectivity is, at best, an illusion. The fact that so many people who have done so much for the arts are forced into the position of writing their own histories remains galling and problematic. But as an act of resistance and a strategy for demanding attention by the sheer weight of their accomplishments, it’s clear that the archive remains a powerful tool.

 

To read the full article, please visit the Hyperallergic website, here.

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Posted on April 17, 2015

Christophe Chassol, BIG SUN, (2014), installation view, CAC New Orleans. Photo: Sarrah Danziger The Oxford American recently featured an in-depth review of EN MAS’ at the CAC New Orleans. To read the article, visit the Oxford American website, here.

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Posted on April 21, 2015

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Domestic Revolution

Posted on April 24, 2015

Martha Wilson: Exhibition Windows at NYU

Martha Wilson: Exhibition at Pratt

Robert Longo

Performing, Re-enacting, Reacting at Pratt

Alaina Claire Feldman, Martha Wilson, Nicolas Dumit Estevez

Alaina Claire Feldman, Martha Wilson, Nicolas Dumit Estevez, Robert Longo, Tavia Nyong’o

 

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Performing, Re-enacting and Reacting