contemp.art.

[yumisakugawa]

"Claudia Kishi, My Asian-American Female Role Model of the 90’s" 

Published in Sadie Magazine

2012

[contemp-art-blog]

I recently came across this comic artist, Yumi Sakugawa and she recently came out with a volume of her works from her tumblr. A great number of her works deal with her life growing up and dealing with friendships, art and identity as a Japanese-American. These internet comics are extremely interesting and I personally identify with the artists as a young girl growing up in the 90’s.

The specific comic that I’ve chosen is called “Claudia Kishi: My Asian-American Female Role Model.” This comic is centered on hybridity, identity, and creating a role model for herself in a culture that wasn’t representational of Japanese-American females. Yumi Sakugawa found a role-model in the popular Babysitter’s Club book series and this comic depicts how and why it happened.

Personally, I may have done something similar growing up and created in my a female, Mexican-American role model that I could identify with as a young girl. It’s important for creating one’s own individuality to be able to identify with someone, even if they are a fictitious character.

Did you ever feel like it was hard to find a role model growing up that you identified with due to the lack of representation in the media or pop culture?

[artnet]

"The Chinese art world does not exist. It is impossible for a totalitarian society to create anything with passion and imagination."

This statement was one written by Ai WeiWei in a 2012 article he wrote for The Guardian. This article was in critique of a show that opened in London that same year titled : Art of Change: New Directions from China. He also stated that “Chinese art has never had any clear orientation.” What can be made of such claims? They come from one of China’s most well-known artists, who has had many negative interactions and run-ins with his own government. This article spurred me to look into Ai’s personal history, which is one of seemingly constant hopping back and forth between China and the west. He claims in this article that a show that does not deal with real issues confronting contemporary China cannot itself be called contemporary. As an activist/artist, Ai Weiwei continuously seeks to challenge the existing regime in China, and thus has a proverbial leg to stand on when making such claims. Can all contemporary Chinese art be judged based on its ability to speak about or be critical of contemporary Chinese issues? It seems a bit confining to imagine every artist being limited to ‘representing the nation’ either critically or non-critically. When I say non-critically I mean ‘simply filling a slot in an exhibit of Chinese artists’, which is what Ai Weiwei seems to be accusing the artists of Art of Change to be doing. It seems that either way, these artists individual issues and voices would be lost under the overwhelming burden either a) representing China purely by being Chinese, or b) not representing China properly. Must all artists in an all-Chinese show make art about being Chinese? Let me know what you think, and if you haven’t already, I’d highly recommend looking into Ai Weiwei’s life history: it is positively fascinating.  (via contempquand)

I completely agree with the analysis of this quote; however, I do not think that all Chinese artists have to represent China. It is their heritage and their background whether the artist wants to represent it or not but I feel like it should be a choice for a person to identify however they want to be identified. There are other factors involved that do not make answering this question as easy as one may originally think because a Chinese artist will be labeled and others will identify the artist as such. This causes the audience, critics, etc. to categorize that particular artist by a particular label and will use the artist as someone representing for that particular community. In some ways, representing a community isn’t a choice an artist can, or will consciously make.    

What really boggles my mind is this generalized statement from Ai Weiwei. He is inarguably the most famous contemporary Chinese artist today and has pigeonholed an entire population of artists with this blanket statement.  An artist doesn’t have to create a political statement or even have a piece that is centered on their ethnicity. A work can be representative of an event, emotion, way of life, etc. and those can have passion behind it. Even a totalitarian government uses art as a tool of propaganda around something like farming and they’re can be passion behind it, but I’m sure it is strategically planned. I may be playing devil’s advocate here, but this quote really elicits emotions from me.

[contemp-art-blog]

For an exhibition called "LA Heat," the Chinese American Museum in Los Angeles asked 30 artists to come up with new works inspired by two homegrown hot sauce heroes: Sriracha and Tapatio.

Sriracha and Tapatio are two common condiments that I see in restaurants and markets everyday. I use them quite often, but put very little thought into their origins.  I know I like them both on different items. I like Sriracha on rice, pizza and sandwiches while I like Tapatio on popcorn, pizza and beans.

Sriracha was created by David Tran, a Vietnamese refugee in the United States while Tapatio was created by Jose-Luis Saavedr, a Guadalajaran immigrant.

These two sauces are now being incorporated into different flavors of Lay’s potato chips and various items due to their overwhelming popularity. As silly as this may seem, these hot sauces are perfect examples of hybridity and reterritotialization taking place on a national scale and perhaps global.  David Tran and Jose-Luis Saavedr customized flavors inspired, or from, their respective cultures and created something for a new demographic – Californians.

Looking further into the origins of these condiments actually shows an ever growing shift in our popular culture and the desire for a different heat in our food.

  The Chinese American Museum in Los Angeles has an upcoming exhibition called “LA Heat: Taste Changing Condiments” featuring artwork that celebrates these notions surround the popular condiments and questions them accordingly. These works are an examination of the current culture surrounding these hot sauces. Please take a look at their different works on the NPR webpage or go to the Chinese American Museum website. What do you think of these works or even the availability of these sauces in your area?

[contemp-art-blog]

[caption id=attachment_3525 align=alignnone width=570] Sweet Hashtag Gift Tags by GoHeyJudy on Etsy[/caption] The first time I ever saw a hashtag, many

Have you ever used a hashtag?

  Did you know that the pound symbol (‘#’) is actually called a “hash key” for everywhere outside of North America? One of the main reasons why it isn’t called a pound sign is due to the British pound currency symbol. I find this to be an interesting tidbit of globalization leaking into our everyday life without people in really noticing it. That’s why we don’t call it “poundtag.”

  The popularity and use of  hashtags has become integral for the art world online especially for D.I.Y. blogs and websites such as Etsy.

  Here is an article from a website called, Work Your Art. This is an online resource designed for artists, crafters, etc. who want to own their own business and get their work seen. This article highlights to importance of using a hashtag as an opportunity to get more recognition for their work and make it easily accessible to thousands of people through the internet.

  It goes through all the different social media websites (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.) and how to effectively use them with the space.

  It is so interesting that throughout all the mediascapes and technoscapes there is an easier way to collect and search this information on the internet. Plus, this is an affective tool for an young artist to use in order to get recognition and visibility for their work throughout the world and not just at a local level. Although this also may make it harder on a new artist since they now have to compete on social media websites on a global scale.

[contemp-art-blog]

Have you seen this new YouTube series called “Art VS Reality”?

This YouTube channel started recently in March and will continue to create this series for the next couple of months. This first episode is “Art Galleries VS Reality” and the second episode covers “Conceptualism VS Reality.” The episode I would like to point out and discuss is the third in this series titled, “Street Art VS The Art Market.”

I understand I've been posting quite a bit about the global contemporary art market and the reason why is that it just intrigues me and astounds me at the same time. It

Anyway, the video discusses the brief history and evolution in how art was accessed by the public. It also states that art fairs, like Art Basel--which is an excellent example which this video references through a great deal of references and visuals-- are actually a step back from the D.I.Y. aspects of the Impressionists when it came to exhibiting their own art to the general public. The fake art critic in the video questions and theorizes that art fairs are actually an old hat and are just another version of the art salons meant for the wealthy, but under a different name and a different guise.

Do you think art fairs are just another form of the art salon from the days past or do you think this video is just unreasonably cynical in it’s view of the current art market?

[contemp-art-blog]

Artists Still Not Getting Paid (But at Least We're Starting to Talk About It)

A campaign in the United Kingdom called Paying Artists released a report with a series of recommendations for getting artists paid, an urgency they claim based on their finding that "71% of artists...

Have you ever seen the stereotypical representation of the “starving” artist? The one more concerned with the development of their work instead of being able to fund  their lifestyle?

Well, Hyperallergic recently posted an article presenting data from research for artists getting paid. I find the results exceedingly interesting due to the fact that the price for art has is now the highest it has ever been and the article states that many artists still do not get paid, or get equally compensated for their work. This data analysis and report was created in the United Kingdom showing a disparity in the price of an artist’s work versus the cost of the work.

This article primarily focuses on the fact that  “71% of artists exhibiting in publicly-funded galleries received no fee for their work” and I believe this relates more towards the United Kingdom instead of what occurs in the United States, however, it paints an overview of the current economic atmosphere for a contemporary artist. I mean, the number one reason why an artist cannot display their artwork in an exhibition is that it costs for too much to do so and the main concern for an artist is to get their work exhibited.

This creates a different image than the 60 Minutes report we say in class last week. Most artists are obviously not receiving large sums from the one percent of one percenters since most artist aren’t generating enough income from their art to live off of.

[contemp-art-blog]

Psychedelic Symbols of State Power in Nicaragua

After Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega lost his re-election bid in 1990, the eccentric poet and first lady Rosario Murillo told a reporter she was happier with her common-law husband out of power...

I came across an interesting artist and she happens to be the former First Lady of Nicaragua.

First Lady Rosario Murillo is the wife of former President Daniel Ortega. She was originally a poet before becoming First Lady when President Ortega was elected in 1984 until 1990. In 1988 until 1990, Murillo “acted as the nation’s art czar, directing the Institute of Culture” and she continues to remain a huge influence today. President Ortega fought as a guerrilla for the Sandista National Liberation Front (FSLN) while Murillo worked for the Marxist movement. Now Rosario Murillo is the Sandinista spokesperson and is making a movement to create more public monuments. There are changes happening all over the city containing bright colors such as fuchsia, yellow and other bright colors dubbing it the “Pink Revolution.” This revolution is stark contrast to the typical black, white and red machismo art that the Sandista’s used to utilize. This “Pink Revolution” is extremely interesting since their official theme is "Socialism, Solidarity, Christianity" yet the money that is funding the country comes from the extremely capitalist ties to oil companies. I like how there are depictions of “revolutionaries” like Hugo Chavez and her husband (President Ortega) funded themselves and their country with oil revenues. It is a fairly interesting dynamic and history that seems to be forgot and romanticized. There is a great amount of interesting back story going on here and I highly recommend everyone to find out more since I can only write so much about it.

[contemp-art-blog]

PARIS — As the world map that leads the new tattooing exhibition at the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris plots out, the art of skin alteration has roots in every continent, from the Iroquois in North ...

Tattoos are a very interesting thing considering its roots stem from many cultures all over the world and were done for ceremonious, deviant or beatification reasons. The Musée du Quai Branly in Paris is doing a tattoo exhibition by taking a look at different cultures from all over the world to depict different styles, themes, and present a multitude of contexts for why people tattoo themselves. This exhibition is quite interesting considering it spans a collection of over 300 pictures and items that depict different type of tattooing done for various causes. It also provides a narrative for the history of tattoos and how they have been appropriated to a contemporary youth culture. For the longest time tattoos were for a specific subculture of deviants and, as of 2010, 23% of people in the United States have a tattoo.  It is now common to see a 24 year old with body alterations such as tattoos or gauges in their earlobes when tattoos were used to mark a criminal or a prostitute in feudal Japan. These types of exhibitions are necessary to provide the audience with a certain historical knowledge of a topic one may not think to deeply about. I don’t know if this exhibition is necessarily elevating tattoo art as a medium, but it is providing a very important historical and cultural context through a very common art institution narrative. I believe this gives a nice voice to various cultures and their ceremonies throughout history.

[contemp-art-blog]

Here is an interesting TED talk video on identity presented by artist Hetain Patel and  performer Yuyu Rau. The video starts out with Hetain Patel speaking Mandarin Chinese while Yuyu Rau is interpreting for him to the audience. We then are informed that Mr. Patel memorized this paragraph in Mandarin so people would not decipher his Northern accent since he has grown up in England and is of South Asian heritage; however, this talk is about identity and the role of appearances versus one’s own actual identity.  

It contains a nice little interplay of information and humor with the artist, performer and the audience.

What I like about this TED talk is that it’s not just stating an opinion, it is guiding the audience into the experience and explaining why Mr. Patel feels that way. It creates an interesting experiential presentation without actually living his life. They discussed Mr. Patel’s experience while reading comic-books like Spider-man and he recites an speech from one of Bruce Lee’s movie, using the action star as a tool for imitation of someone else to help create one’s own identity.

Identity is extremely important in expressing oneself! Even if you are influence by someone else since it reveals an aspect of yourself to someone else. It provides an outlet for oneself in another way that you may not realize.How have you expressed your own identity? How do you identify yourself and how does that affect how you interact with other people?

[contemp-art-blog]

The Victoria and Albert Museum in London has been called out many times as to being very stuck in the old world and not embracing the contemporary art world. In this article about the new initiative for this museum is the “Rapid Response Collecting.” Rapid response collecting has been defined by the New York Times as the accumulation “the kind of items that can mostly be bought without having an acquisitions committee meeting.” This collection currently has items that have been purchased from everyday shops. Some of the items they carry are connected with pop culture, history, social events, and advances in technology. One of the items that they are currently being praised for in acquireing is one of the first 3D printed guns while some are questioning the purchase of Katy Perry’s line of fake eyelashes. They currently showcase a pair of jeans that they acquired from the Rana Plaza factory emergency from Bangladesh last year. I feel like most of these items are relevant to the modernity of social cultures, technology, fashion and cultural events.

The  aggregation of this collection seems to be under scrutiny, as it seems to be more like an advertisement for what may become popular in the future while this historical art institution has been known for keeping items and exhibiting more historically “acceptable” art piece instead of venturing out to the contemporary art scene. Do you feel like this change is an attempt to get a younger crowd and, perhaps, some funding from these companies that they are collecting from? What are your thoughts on the matter?

[contemp-art-blog]

frieze magazine was set up in 1991 and is the leading magazine of contemporary art and culture. frieze is published eight times a year and includes essays, reviews and columns by today’s most forward-thinking writers, artists and curators.

Here is a great resource for more information and article regarding contemporary art. Frieze is a publication for contemporary art that was founded was 1991 and it contains essays, articles, reviews on pretty much anything you may need.

I found this research just by searching around the internet and looking for something interesting to write about. Frieze is primary a blog or an online magazine, which can cost quite a bit for each edition, however, it has an excellent archive of articles and reviews that can be more than helpful in your efforts in finding more information about globalization in contemporary art. There are bulletins and videos of shows or exhibitions that someone may not be able to experience otherwise and it really incorporate the use of digital media and social networks. Also freize has expanded and now contains a new magazine called frieze d/e, which is a German and English magazine independent from frieze while based in Berlin.  

The owners of frieze are also involved in creating the Frieze art fairs that primarily occur in New York and London. The art fairs showcase a plethora of art from ancient art to modern or contemporary depending on the fair. I highly recommend just taking a look around to view different galleries or programs for exhibitions since there is so much information to be absorbed.

I should note that the main sponsor for the art fairs is Deutsche Bank, which is incredibly interesting and I would like to get more information if there seems to be any influence regarding the creation of frieze d/e and their sponsorship. Quite intriguing.

[contemp-art-blog]

Have you ever seen an emoji? Do you use emojis?

Perhaps you have a friend who texts you an emoji from their iPhone on an hourly basis or you’re second written language is emoji. I know I use them fairly often to express myself to close friends.

An emoji is a hybrid of two Japanese words for “picture” e- and “character”  -moji . This term is used for those little emoticons on your 21st-century smartphone primarilly used for people who have an iPhone, which according to ibtimes.com is 34% of all smartphone users.  Other smartphones are capable of reading these little symbols or images, but iPhone are the one who helped to make these characters popular.

Emojis are an excellent case of globalization and the use of hybridity in our daily lives.

I am positive that not everyone knows emojis stemmed from Japanese electronic messages, but did you know that a non-profit organization in Silicon Valley called Unicode Consortium developed and maintains a list of basic emojis used on different devices and mobile companies?Did you also know there are only two male characters on this basic emoji list that represent people other than Caucasian?

Recently, there have been some cries about the lack of racial diversity in the images used for emojis and the lack of diversity representation is extremely appalling considering Han Chinese is the largest ethnic group in the world.

Do you feel the need for more cultures to be represented in these graphic symbols that are used as a form of communication by the masses?

Below are a couple of articles on the matter:

http://hyperallergic.com/116925/emojis-may-be-going-multiculti-but-what-about-art/

http://hyperallergic.com/58847/theres-an-emoji-for-that/

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-26749867

[contemp-art-blog]

We discussed in class on Wednesday that China is currently dominating the market share of fine art auctions by 46.1% compared to the United States who is only at 24.5% in 2011.The actual volume of sales of the fine art market in 2011 was 51.3% by Chinese buyers.

An excellent example of this fairly recent phenomena is in this recent article of an Andy Warhol print being bought by a Chinese businesswomen (Chinese restaurateur Zhang Lan). The print was Warhol’s Little Electric Chair from 1965 and it was purchased for $10.5 million when the estimated price was worth somewhere near $7.5  million to $9.5 million.  Lan also purchased a Martin Kippenburger for $18.6 million when the price was originally estimated to be near $9 million to $12 million.  

The fact that both of these pieces were purchased at exorbitant prices also underlines the fact that the value of art work has gone up and it looks like the demand is high. Are these purchases another example of an art market getting so inflated that it’s creating it’s own economic bubble that’ll be ready to burst soon or is it truly another investment that keeps advancing in price?

Well, the past 25 years has told us that this is the way the art market is, but do you think this is just an over commodification  of the art world?

[contemp-art-blog]

I found this web site called the Foundland Collective and this group was found by Lauren Alexander and Ghalia Elsrakbi. They are a design research collective primarily dealing with graphic design, visual arts and written text. These two artist are primarily based in the Netherlands, but also work in Cairo and conceived this group in 2009. Their work is rooted in politics and they create visual and written manifestos. They are primarily commissioned to create works for festivals or art institutions which can vary from project to project. These ladies use social media-like Facebook- as a platform for social protests by collecting images and sharing them to circles within a certain framework that they create for their projects. these artists also do a great deal of historical research within their topic.

A perfect example of this is their new subject about the history of “Little Syria”--the Manhattan area-- for their new residency in the United States. This project is being funded by the non-profit Edge of Arabia program to delve into a narrative for immigrants from the Middle-East to the United States. For this work, they are teaming up with Palestinian artist, Taysir Batniji, and the residency is supposed to end by the end of the year to the beginning of next year with the project being researched and prepared until then.

These artists have very intriguing work that utilizes mediascapes and technoscapes. Please visit their website and take a look around at their various projects.

[contemp-art-blog]

A project I came across was European Attraction Limited. This is going to occur on May 15, 014 and it's a re-creation of the Human Zoo that was exhibited in the 1914 Oslo world fair where the audience could watch an exhibit of 80 people from Senegal live in a place called “The Congo Village” that was built for specifically to present this group of people living in that area for five months. This “zoo” was created to celebrate the 100 year mark for the Norwegian constitution and was viewed by over 1.5 million in its 5 month span. The original zoo is definitely an excellent example of Primitivism and reinforced the idea of the “other” by exhibiting a group of people.

Two Norwegian artists (Fadlabi and Lars Cuzner) decided to reenact The Congo Village for the 200 year anniversary of the Norwegian constitution. The artists want to challenge and contradict the idea the contemporary inclusive, anti-racial Norwegian and the unrealistic image of Norway that only presents the positive aspects of the country. This Human Zoo is meant to remind Norwegians of its forgotten history and help remind the nation the work that was involved in building the country of today.

The artists of this project have an open call on their website where you have to fill out a form in order to register and warn the reader that volunteers of the project may have to defend the reason why they participated. Also, they encourage people to write about their experience so they can publish a book in 2015.

Here's an article if you would like to read more about it: http://hyperallergic.com/126424/two-artists-are-building-a-human-zoo-in-norway/

[contemp-art-blog]

A biennial I found to be extremely interesting is the Biennial of Contemporary Art, D-0 ARK Underground. This biennial was founded in 2011 and ever since its conception it has been held in a enormous bunker in Knjic, Bosnia. This bunker was created by the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and is one of the largest underground structures in the work and is over 12 blocks long and 280 meters deep. This bunker was created for President Josip Broz Tito, his family and a number of other people to aid him in a crisis. There are many rooms such as sleeping quarters, planning rooms and offices. This highly unconventional space is still owned by the Ministry of Defense of Bosnia and Hersegovina and one must get approval from them in order to gain access via private transport to the facility.

The biennial wants to attract younger audiences with the contemporary art that is shown and wants to create curiosity amongst people who want to visit this military Atomic shelter that was kept hidden from the general public until the 1990s. The intention of having the biennial in this structure is to create a space of culture, promote creativity and connect with the somewhat fractured community with UNESCO support.

In the 2013, biennial the partner countries were the Republic of Turkey and Republic of Croatia

[arth343]

Spencertunick.com

Spencer Tunick is an American photographer who shoots large scale photos of nudes. He started his work in 1992 in New York. His philosophy is, “individuals en masse, without their clothing, grouped together, metamorphose into a new shape. The bodies extend into and upon...

[contemp-art-blog]

I feel that when looking at examples of Spencer Tunick’s photography, I feel like this is an extraordinary example of liminal art. A great deal of Spencer Tunicky’s large-scale nude shoots are so vast in scale and has a large number of people in them, the viewer cannot really differentiate the nationalities and origins of singular people without really going out of your way to scrutinize the singular form’s physical features which is completely contradictory to what the photographs are about. Mr. Tunick’s on Artnet.com in 2011 is stated as saying, “individuals en masse, without their clothing, grouped together, metamorphose into a new shape. The bodies extend into and upon the landscape like a substance. These grouped masses which do not underscore sexuality become abstractions that challenge or reconfigure one's views of nudity and privacy.” This statement really incorporates the ideas of contemporary art being liminal that Homi Bhaba discusses in his writing, “Locations of Culture.” Having a large group of people to create a new shape really makes the art less about the individual and more about the form or appearance.