The Original Birds

Forgotten Songs by Michael Thomas Hills.  Originally commissioned by the City of Sydney in 2009 as a temporary installation,
this beloved work was reinstalled as a permanent work of public art in 2012.

Not too long ago, the sprawling city of Sydney, Australia was a lush forest, home to abundant wildlife.  While we enjoy the urban pleasures of this splendid and powerful city, we typically forget to ask: what happened to the birds and animals that once lived here, right here, where now there is a cafe, bookstore, international bank, government office, or Prada store?  Where are they now?

Forgotten Songs hovers over a cafe in
Angel Alley, in the heart of downtown Sydney.

Michael Thomas Hills' marvelous artwork, Forgotten Songs, reminds us to wonder -- literally, because this work summons a sense of wonder.  One of my favorite works commissioned by the City of Sydney's vigorous public art program, Hills' multimedia installation takes full advantage of its site:  one of the tight little lanes that crisscross Sydney's downtown. These vital small spaces are hidden behind grand 19th century buildings with ornate facades of granite and sandstone, and their intimate scale makes it possible for artists to work magical acts of transformation.  Rounding a corner, we look up at a swarm of old fashioned birdcages; where once there were perches on mighty tree branches, now there are hundreds of empty cages miraculously suspended in empty space.

Forgotten Songs spans the width of its narrow site.  A shaft of sun reaches into this shadowed canyon at certain times of day, bringing the play of light across the birdcages that hang in a ghostly cloud.  At first, Forgotten Songs is simply delightful.  But we realize that we have been transported into an avian ghost town, a post-apocalyptic world. All the birds are gone, they've flown the coop.  Perhaps they held on as long as they could as wild birds, and then were preserved briefly as pets or specimens, but now they have vanished entirely.  Thanks to an audio component, if we listen carefully we can detect an echo of their presence woven through the hubub of city noise.  Hidden speakers play the sounds of 50 species that once called, romanced, alarmed, and scolded in this space.

Each suspended cage is unique and suggestive of individual character -- in the same way a carved tombstone is, somewhere between mass produced and hand-crafted.  Having worked for 10 years in a Victorian cemetery, I recognize a kinship, even though Forgotten Songs is as light as air.  Both feature a massing of delicate, but enduring, objects, scaled to fit the body and designed to comfort through domestic analogy; individuals come together to form a grand memorial landscape bigger than any single life story.  As memorials, both preserve memory, evoke the past, and spur thoughts of the inevitability of change and ephemerality of life.  

"Habitat loss is credited as the biggest threat to bird survival. At present there are 129 species of birds native to New South Wales formally listed as extinct or threatened with extinction."
                                      – from Forgotten Songs, City of Sydney website 

Forgotten Songs commemorates more than the mortality shared by all living creatures.  It reminds us of our culpability.  We humans displaced almost all Sydney's birds to create our own habitat, a new world which leaves no spaces for wild creatures.  These creatures once brought vitality -- color, movement and song -- to our lives.  The grim truth is that we are eliminating birds and other animals all over the world, at an incredible, seemingly unstoppable pace.  Forgotten Songs creates a space to contemplate this tragedy and, hopefully, gain resolve to fight it.

To create the audio component,  Hills collaborated with a scientist, Dr. Richard Major.  The research that went into selecting which diurnal and nocturnal birds to include (based on local ecology and historic museum collections) is a story in itself, and can be found along with a list of all the birds and a link to some field recordings of their songs on the City of Sydney's website for this artwork.

More Information

Artist's Statement 

"An interplay of past and present, large and small, predator and prey, Forgotten Songs engages audiences with the beauty, unexpectedness and unfamiliarity of these displaced birdsongs. The installation explores how Sydney’s fauna has evolved and adapted to co-exist with increased urbanisation – inviting contemplation of the city’s past, its underlying landscape, and the sustainability issues associated with increased urban development."

– Michael Thomas Hill, 2009

City of Sydney Guide to Public Art -- Entry for Forgotten Songs

Always was, always will be

Public art and street art in Sydney is often hidden down a small street, tucked away around a corner, nestled into a laneway -- as the narrow alleys that offer shortcuts through the city’s long blocks are called.  You have to hunt for it.  But not always….

Seen from afar, this magnificent work by Reko Rennie jitters and glows like a radioactive site.  It crooks a finger and beckons…come nearer, see more… Then, viewed up close, it smacks you in the head!  But in a good way.

Always Was, Always Will Be by Reko Rennie, 2012-2014.  Commissioned by the City of Sydney's Streetware Program.

Coming from Boston, I had an immediate association with Sol LeWitt’s marvelous wall paintings at Mass MOCA – but run wildly amok.  I immediately fell in love with this work just for the way its dazzling use of color and pattern transform a stolid masonry structure into a sizzling work of sculpture.

Standing closer, I read the script wrapping around the façade, and began to recognize that this work is trying to tell us something about history, about determination, about endurance.  A simple declaration with the weight of ages:  “Always was, always will be.”  This, it turns out, is the title and core message of the work.

As a citizen of the United States traveling in Australia, I have been impressed by how the wrongs that were done to the Aboriginal people during “settlement” of the continent are an acknowledged part of the national story and identity.  Genocide, a generation of children abducted, continuing prejudice and impoverishment – this shameful history (and challenging present) is given space in civic discourse and family conversation.  In 2008, the Labour Party's Prime Minster Kevin Rudd issued an official – and heartfelt -- apology: "We apologise for the laws and policies of successive Parliaments and governments that have inflicted profound grief, suffering and loss on these our fellow Australians....and for the indignity and degradation thus inflicted on a proud people and a proud culture...We the Parliament of Australia respectfully request that this apology be received in the spirit in which it is offered as part of the healing of the nation."  Rudd called for "A future where all Australians, whatever their origins, are truly equal partners, with equal opportunities and with an equal stake in shaping the next chapter in the history of this great country, Australia."  While this utopia has not been achieved, during our travels, we noticed that many public events -- small and large -- begin with a dedication to the first peoples, and Aboriginal art is proudly exhibited in contemporary art museums as well as in historic collections.   

Of course, apologies and dedications are not reparations, and poverty, discrimination, and cultural dislocation are acknowledged problems.  And things have changed in Australia since the days of PM Rudd, with Aboriginal land rights jeopardized by powerful development interests backed by the government.  It's not a simple situation. 

So, I’m wondering if this is what this piece is about. Has the artist created a vibrant space to think about the displaced people of earlier times? And a vivid assertion of their right to be here, right here, in the middle of Sydney?  A summoning of resilient spirit, a mash-up of traditional culture and global, street-wise, hip hop energy that offers a glimpse of a new way forward?  A little research confirms this guess.

Always Was, Always Will Be was commissioned by the City of Sydney’s Streetware Program in 2012.  The program gave a street artist whose clandestine work would typically be confined to part of a wall or the sides of a train the opportunity to take over an entire building.  Streetware enabled Reko Rennie to make a bold move, to create something spectacularly assertive that is both a part of the urban fabric and profoundly, stubbornly "other."

On his website, the artist Reko Rennie explains:

In this work, I used the geometric diamonds, referencing my associations to northwestern New South Wales and the traditional markings of the Kamilaroi people….Across the front of the building façade, neon text (‘Always was, always will be’) is incorporated across the geometric diamonds.  As a temporary work in this urban context the meaning is clear – this always was Gadigal country and always will be Gadigal.

So the simple diamond pattern is an ancestral motif from Rennie's own Kamilaroi heritage, and the transformed building becomes a heraldic crest for the Gadigal (the Gadigal clan lived in what is now called Sydney and are acknowledged by the city government as the "traditional custodians" of the land there).  

Now, how to explain the colors?  Rennie says he uses a “fluro pigmented paint” to achieve this intensity of clashing color, quite different from the subtle ochres, grays, and browns made from natural materials used in traditional aboriginal paintings. These strident colors are drawn from the palette of spray paint and markers used by graffitti artists everywhere to tag and transform urban walls all over the world; they are the international colors of now. 

A thoughtful essay by Vincent Alessi explores Rennie’s use of – and departure from – traditional forms and color.  Alessi believes that Rennie’s experiences growing up in the suburbs of Melbourne, the influence of other artists, and his own politically-oriented graffiti/street-art practice enabled him:

to create contemporary Indigenous art that was not restrained by the stereotypes that have come to dominate its representation.  Rennie was not interested in making work that simply utilised [sic] traditional mark-making such as dots and lines within the narrow ochre palette.  This was not because he did not associate with or want to be part of this tradition; rather the traditional symbol that he references – the diamond shape – formed only part of his identity.  His urban upbringing, which had shaped him as an adult and, ultimately, as an artist, was just as significant.  For Rennie, art was a means to explore identity, memory and Indigenous politics.  It was a way for him to challenge the stereotypes that had characterized Indigenous art.  And it was a way for him to explore what it means to be an urban Indigenous man in contemporary Australia.

Renie has developed a set of motifs, a vocabulary that appears in both art commissioned for public places and work created for a gallery setting.  In addition to the diamond pattern, he uses a crown (marking a kinship with Jean-Michel Basquiat) and an aboriginal flag; both symbolize the original sovereignty of the indigenous people.   Regarding the diamond motif Alessi offers this insight:

Described as a type of coat of arms by Rennie, it represents his Indigenous heritage.  The hypercolour rendering articulates his urban upbringing and declares proudly that he is part of a living, continually developing culture, not one that is static and defined by the ‘noble savage’ narrative.  The contemporary treatment of this sacred design reveals the level of self-investigation in Rennie’s work and his search to find a place for himself in an urban environment as an Aboriginal man.

With this fuller understanding of the artist’s intent, it is clear that Always Was, Always Will Be functions on two levels.  It is a monument to a past that is still with us, and a pointer towards the future.  It celebrates the survival against odds of Indigenous people while it offers a triumphant new accomplishment, a vibrant and vital expression that both preserves and transmutes earlier traditions in a contemporary voice.  

Around the same time as he created Always Was, Always Will Be, Rennie was invited to create a work in Washington DC in 2012.  Entitled "Remember Me," this work also uses the diamond pattern overlaid with script.  The script is rendered in neon, giving the work a literal glow at night.  Rennie brought the Australian awareness of indigenous peoples to our nation's capitol city, creating a work that is part admonition, part inspiration.  It literally lights the way to a new relationship to history.  Rennie explained:

This is, of course, not about remembering me, but remembering the past and remembering the original inhabitants of the land, at home and abroad.  

Remember Me, 2012, by Reko Rennie.  Commissioned by the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities. Curator: Justine Topfer.

Remember Me, 2012, by Reko Rennie.  Commissioned by the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities. Curator: Justine Topfer. 

Rennie became a full-time artist in 2009, when he realized how much he could accomplish as an artist.  In an interview with his former employer, The Age, he said: "'I realised that in art I had more power than I ever did as a journalist...After working as a journalist for a number of years I realised that some of the ideas I had about being able to portray Aboriginal affairs were a bit naive."  And indeed, he has achieved great success, with an impressive list of awards, commissions and exhibitions at home and abroad that get his messages out to wide and diverse audiences.  He has also worked collaboratively with young people and local artists, helping them to develop  empowered voices that will ripple out further.

It is not in the scope of this blog post to describe the ways that Australia's current conservative government is failing to keep the promises made by Prime Minister Rudd. In a recent interview Rennie was asked "What can you say about the timeliness of your work for Personal Structures [at the Venice Biennale], given the recent debates and protests surrounding Aboriginal sovereignty in Australia?"  His response was: "Unfortunately today, it’s easier to dispossess people and force the closure of remote or regional Aboriginal communities based on economic rationalisation, the economic rationalisation relating to natural resources. So it's a timely reminder." ("The Personal Structures of Reko Rennie," Australia Council for the Arts, 2015)

I will leave you with one last quote from Alessi’s essay:

Rennie has declared that he doesn’t have an issue with his identity, even though others do: ‘I’m comfortable with who I am, where I’m from, and hopefully my work shows that.’  Throughout his career he has maintained such a position, one that he poignantly and authoritatively declared in a  2013 neon work that simply read, in all its  glorious glowing red and yellow, I wear my own crown.

I'd like to thank my host in Australia, Kerrie Faulkner, for exploring Sydney with me and sharing her knowledge of her country's history and politics as well as her home!

For more information:

Reko Rennie, Artist's Website

Apology to Australia's Indigenous peoples

"Wearing his own crown; the work of Reko Rennie" by Vincent Alessi, Art and Australia, No 52, 2014. 

"Reko Rennie:  Aboriginal artist spreads his wings" by Dewi Cook, The Age, 2013.

"Rekospective" by Jirra Lulla Harvey, Artlink, 2013. 

MONA -- A Museum of Old and New Art at the end of the world

Designed like a Borgesian labyrinth, lit like a nightclub, arranged like a grand cabinet of wonders, MONA, since it opened [in 2011] on a remote island with a population of 500,000, has attracted more than 700,000 people [1.5 million as of June, 2015].  Visitors came first from Tasmania, then the rest of Australia, and now increasingly the world – a growing caravan of stars and celebrities, art lovers, aficionados, camp followers and the curious. In two years, MONA has become Tasmania’s foremost tourist attraction and a significant driver of its languishing economy. Lonely Planet recently listed Hobart as one of the world’s top ten cities to visit in 2013, largely because of MONA.

-- Richard Flanagan, “At home with David Walsh, the gambler,” The Monthly, February 2013

David Walsh, the visionary creator of MONA, claims to believe that life is shaped by “the coin toss” of arbitrary chance.  Heads, you end up working as a tax agent (as he did for less than a year as a lad); tails, you create a $180 million museum at the end of the world.  Walsh is, of course, speaking as a professional gambler, or rather a man who is rumored to make $8 million a year through his gambling activities.  In turn, this money finances the estimated $8 million a year operating loss required to keep The Museum of Old and New Art going; MONA then contributes an estimated $100 million to the local economy, which is huge in one of Australia's poorest states.  Walsh was raised close to where he located his museum, in a low-income neighborhood of Hobart, and he has made admission free for all Tasmanian residents.  

Walsh’s success as a gambler is not the result of luck, however.  It was hard earned through extensive research, investment in large betting pools, and complex computing programs that reduce risk.  The success of MONA, which is often portrayed as Walsh's ultimate and most wild gamble, was won by attention to every detail of the unusual architecture, sumptuous exhibition design, curatorial daring, and an innovative and highly crafted visitor experience. 

MONA combines cutting edge technology with ancient paradigms to reinvent aspects of the museum experience.  Three levels of windowless exhibition spaces are carved into the living rock of a sandstone bluff.  Think burial in a royal Egyptian tomb, a mad scientist's lair, art seen by torchlight in the caves of Lascaux, and Georges Bataille’s dark fantasies.  In this lush, dimly lit setting, the dominant themes for the permanent collection are sex and death; in fact, for $75k you can have your cremated remains stashed at MONA.  You descend to the galleries riding in a transparent elevator set into a luminous glass shaft – a tube-shaped pipeline through the heart of the museum.   Like a space-age Dante, you leave daylight behind and navigate the underworld of the galleries using The O -- one of the most elegant iPod guides I’ve ever experienced.  This gently glowing companion replaces label text, eliminates the need for conventional lighting, and satisfies your curiosity.  You can read curatorial text (push the “Art Wank” button) and listen to audio clips with curators, artists, and Walsh himself.  The layout of the museum is deliberately mysterious and disorienting.  But the iPod hanging around your neck and breathing into your ear has a GPS system so accurate that at the touch of a button it jumps to the object in front of you, and lists the things nearby.  Using the O gives you the sensation of being inside a virtual space and navigating by hyperlink.  The result is an experience that mixes the sensations of exploration, risk, and safety.

Walsh’s first try at building a museum featured his collection of ancient and tribal art, and MONA – the Museum of Old And New Art -- mixes these with contemporary work.  There are Sumerian tablets and Egyptian sarcophagi, including one surrounded by Stygian pools of water that harks back to the entertaining Victorian dinner party practice of unwrapping a mummy by using a scanning technology to reveal the corpse down to its skeleton.   

Esto es peor (This is worse) from The Disasters of War, Francisco Goya, 1812-1815

On the Road to Heaven the Highway to Hell, Stephen Shabrook, 2008

Violence enters some of the works.  A terrifying print by Goya (from the Disasters of War, 1812-1815) is hung next to On the Road to Heaven the Highway to Hell -- a chilling life-size sculpture of a young suicide bomber by Stephen Shanabrook.  The latter was inspired by a photograph of the freakish aftermath of the detonation, which left the boy’s face and torso intact.  The image haunted the artist’s imagination until he created an uncanny life-size sculpture, a kind of death mask, made even more appalling by being fashioned in cast chocolate.  The connection between these two unflinching artists -- separated by 200 years -- is clear.   

I hesitated to include photos of these "portraits" by Greg Taylor.  Are they exploitative or liberating? Pornographic or feminist?  Ultimately, I decided to include them to share the experience of seeing one of MONA's most written-about works, and let readers decide.  The women involved were willing to let this private part of themselves be seen, albeit anonymously, and it doesn't seem morally right to censor this work. Two from a series of  150 porcelain sculptures entitled Cunts and Other Conversations, by Greg Taylor and friends, 2008-2009.

Around the corner, 140 small sculptures -- porcelain vulvas -- hang in a long row that makes its way along darkened corridors.  Disembodied “portraits,” each unique work is framed in a spot light.  It's hard to know what to think; is it offensive that this series takes sexist objectification of women to an absurd place? Or is it liberating that this always hidden part of a woman's body is made public, without any shame?  On "O" the artist explains that "it's about the whole issue of women's body issues...the place of women...for thousands of years being told that they're stupid, they're ugly, and they stink."  Replicas -- ironically made of soap -- are offered for sale in the gift shop and are a popular item.  This work is mentioned in nearly every article I have read about MONA, along with Wim Delvoye's infamous Cloaca, a giant room-sized machine which simulates the human digestive process, culminating every few hours in mechanical, but very smelly, elimination of excrement.  

Zizi, the Affectionate Couch, Twenty121

But the MONA collection is not summed up by these two works, despite their pervasive appearance in media reports.  There are hundreds of diverse works on display, including many that are funny, beautiful, playful, sinister, graceful, or strange.  Two that I particularly enjoyed were Zizi the Affectionate Couch created by the artists collective Twenty121 and Artifact, a large sculpture by Gregory Barsamian.  Zizi squawks, squeals, shudders and squirms in response to your movements on her cushy faux-fur seat.  The artists describe this friendly bench as "a mixture of shaved poodle, a fluffy cat and an exotic sea slug.  Zizi growls when sat upon, purrs when touched and groans with delight when you stroke her fur.  If left alone, she mews for attention."  Artifact appears as the discarded head of a gigantic automaton; a series of small windows give you a glimpse of the thoughts, dreams or memories still swirling within.  The scenes are created by an old-fashioned method of animation using rotating sculptural elements and a strobe light to generate the illusion of movement.

MONA’s above ground spaces complement its subterranean chambers.  A white pavilion perches on the hilltop, designed by James Turrell to frame a rectangle of sky and the surrounding vistas – expansive views of the Derwent River that flows down to Hobart’s harbor.  At sunrise and sunset, a suite of changing colored light washes across the ceiling, manipulating our perceptions of color and depth.  No surprise to discover that one of Walsh’s childhood interests was astronomy; he commissioned Turrell to add a celestial temple to his modern necropolis, one that invites us to contemplate the subtle transitions of dusk and dawn, the movement from day to night, and night to day.  (And, by the way, the work is entitled Amarna – after the city built by the “heretical” Egyptian pharaoh Akhenaten and dedicated to monotheistic worship of the sun god.)

Amarna, James Turrell, 2015

During our visit, we met David Walsh briefly; we later learned he has an apartment in the museum.  We guessed it was him, getting into a Tesla parked in a space marked “RESERVED – GOD”.  Asked if he was, indeed, God, he replied modestly “Well, no, but I’m acquainted with him.”  However, at MONA, I am convinced that Walsh does an excellent job fulfilling the jobs of both Zeus and Hades, ruling equally over the realms of light --  rational intellect -- and dark -- subterranean myth.

For more information:

Richard Flanagan, "At home with David Walsh, the Gambler," The Monthly (originally published in shorter form in The New Yorker)

Vicky Frost, "Mona's David Walsh: 'Now I'm the Arbiter of Good Taste, the thing I abhor,'" The Guardian
Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore, Australia's Temple of the Weird," Slate

The Key in the Hand – Chiharu Shiota in the Japan Pavilion, Venice Biennale 2015

For the Japan Pavilion, Chiharu Shiota has created a magical grotto from every day materials: red string and old keys.  As in earlier installations, the artist transforms the rational geometric spaces of the gallery by stretching thousands of different lengths of string from the ceiling to points on the walls, floor and objects.  This repetitive weaving process builds up complex and overlapping layers, forming intimate, immersive, and cave-like spaces that invite exploration and provoke feelings of wonder and delight.  The webs of red string filter and reflect the light; making the space glow with a gentle pink like a strange underwater world. Where the layers of string are densest, the color coalesces into the strong bright red of blood emerging from a fresh cut. 

Two humble wooden boats float in the center of the room and the layers of string and suspended keys form a vortex of energy around each one.  Keys dangle everywhere and spill onto the floor – 180,000 were collected in donation boxes placed in museums in Germany (the artist lives in Berlin) as well as the United States and Japan.  Sometimes a lone key hangs from a single strand, sometimes a group of keys is clustered together. The keys are mostly antique in style and bear a dark patina of age.

This beautiful installation was one of my favorites.  Before reading the artist’s statement, my associations are from the world of fairy tales: the heavy bunch of keys that Blue Beard gives to his wives, allowing them to open the doors to every room in his fortress but one mysterious forbidden one.  Little Red Riding Hood setting off for her journey through the forest labyrinth, where layers of trees hide many secrets.  The drop of blood in the snow that prompts Snow White’s mother to wish for a daughter with lips as red as blood and skin as white as snow.  The twisting brambles that bury the castle of an enchanted princess in a dense web of vines and thorns.

Of course, the installation also evokes dark stories from history. Could these be the keys to doors in the ghost towns of Fukushima, where radioactivity caused by storm damage to a nuclear power plant has forced more than 50,000 citizens to abandon their homes?  Or the keys that belonged to any of the millions of exiles and refugees dislocated by violence, economic devastation, or environmental disaster around the globe and throughout time.  These could be the keys that belong to the victims of the Holocaust who once carried the travel-worn suitcases and trunks stacked up to form Fabio Mauri's Wailing Wall, which I wrote about in an earlier post.

In actuality, Shiota has said that she wanted to get away from these sad associations, which weigh people down, and create a piece that looks to the future and has a sense of hope.  Of course, Shiota says, the work is also about memory.  It would be close to impossible to look at keys of this sort – which have so much character – and not wonder about their absent owners.  The work’s title, “The key in the hand” recalls this intimate connection between owner and object, renewed every time the hand clasps the key to turn it in a lock.  

Shiota explained that while she was building the piece, she imagined the stories attached to each individual key, the stories of the people who once used them. And she expects that visitors will have this experience as well: “The keys are carrying a lot of messages from their owners.  When people are walking here, it is like walking around human memory, human life.”

I know it is sentimental, but I feel that “The Key in the Hand” is also about love.   Each key could be an emblem of the one who could find a way into another’s heart.  Especially these keys, enmeshed in the red color of the boudoir satin and chiffon, and hanging from strings that run like bloodlines, connecting individuals and families.

The title – “The Key in the Hand” – has another meaning for Shiota.  In a video interview on the Biennale site, Shiota explains:  “if you have a key in your hand, you have a chance.  The future is in your hands.  If you lose a key, this means you lost some way of your life.”  

Perhaps this is why Shiota created an introduction or prologue viewed on the garden terrace area that visitors go through on the way to the second floor, where the installation is sited.  In this cheerful garden area, visitors are greeted by a 4-channel video – very charming and funny -- of quite young children being interviewed about their memories of being in their mother’s womb and being born.  Their recollections are full of love and imagination, promise and spunk.  Nearby, a large photograph is displayed, of a child’s small hands holding a key.  Perhaps Shiota is suggesting that we are all born with the key we need to unlock our own future.  And if we have misplaced it, well, we can certainly find another one in her installation upstairs.

More information:
The artist's website: Chiharu Shiota
Biennale Website
Interview with Shiota on the Biennale YouTube channel 
A short review with great pictures in Design Boom

The Weeping Wall

Il Muro Occidentale o del Pianto (The Western Wall or the Wailing Wall) by Fabio Mauri

Although the title of the 2015 Venice Biennale is "All the World's Futures," most of the artwork concerns the past.  One of the first works a visitor sees in the Central Pavilion is this monumental sculpture constructed from old-fashioned suitcases, trunks, and traveling bags. Ironically positioned to welcome visitors, it speaks of departure, dislocation, abandonment and extinction.  Each scuffed and worn bag conveys a sense of individual history, of personality and character. Together they tell the story of a group -- a neighborhood, an ethnic enclave, an extended family -- huddled together, forced to move, carrying whatever they could manage, leaving much behind.

Fabio Mauri (1926-2009) created this work in 1993 as a memorial to the victims of the Nazi holocaust and to all people forced to embark on "journeys without return," as the exhibition catalog puts it.  Mauri's father was in the newspaper business; as a teenager, at the end of the war, he was exposed to reports in many different papers documenting the concentration camps, including photographs of the victims.  The event and images horrified him so much that he suffered a nervous breakdown.  By the early 1950s he had recovered and became an artist, taking the holocaust as a central theme:

"In a career that lasted half a century, Mr. Mauri, who died in 2009, produced work after work that probed the problem that had unhinged him as a boy: How could such atrocities happen under everyone’s eyes in Europe? In drawings, sculptures, performances and installations, he explored the ways in which mass media and public spectacle can mask and warp the world." Arthur Lubow, The New York Times

In the right hand corner of the sculpture there is an open trunk with a poster pinned up inside -- forming a window onto Mauri's own career.  This is a poster des "Ebrea" ("Jewess"), a film that Mauri made in 1971. The film shows a naked woman standing in front of a mirror, cutting off clumps of her hair and pasting it onto the surface of the glass to form a Jewish star obscuring her reflection. This mysterious imagery becomes painful when we think of the piles of human hair found in the camps, shaved off on the way to the gas chamber.

The exhibition curator Okwul Enwezor says about his exhibition:

"At the core of the project is the notion of the exhibition as a stage, where historical and counterhistorical projects will be explored.  These projects, works and voices, like an orchestra, will occupy the spaces of the Biennale and pre-occupy the time and thinking of the public." Okwul Enwezor, Exhibition Catalogue

It is unfortunate that it has become a cliche to say those that do not understand history are doomed to repeat it, because it is urgently true.  This exhibition seeks to help us understand history, so that we may make different choices.  

More:
Fabio Mauri Works, Fueled by Trauma, Head to the Venice Biennale, Arthur Lubow, The New York Times

2015 Venezia Arte Biennale: when beauty isn't enough

Entrance to the Arsenale

The curator of All the World's Futures, the central exhibition of the 2015 Venice Biennale, is Okwui Enwezor, a citizen of the world who has lived in Africa, the United States and Europe.  Born in Nigeria in 1963, he moved to New York in 1982 and entered New Jersey City State College in 1983 to study political science.  At the same time, Enwezor plunged into New York's art scene, which he described as having "surprising vitality....This was not about a name or an exhibition.  It was the energy accumulating when different worlds meet."

Self-taught, Enwezor launched his career by publishing a journal about contemporary African art and curating exhibitions, including one on African photography at the Guggenheim Museum.   Remarkably, without any formal training in art history or criticism, he went on to direct major exhibitions around the world:  Germany's Documenta 11, a Paris Triennial, and biennials in Johannesburg, Seville, South Korea, Mexico and Japan. Now he is the first Venice Biennale leader from Africa. And, he's a Marxist!

So, how has this extraordinary individual approached the opportunity to make a statement about the world of art, and the world itself? With an exhibition that presents an alternative to living in complacency and silence, and relentlessly alerts us to the dangers around us.  Enwezor explains:

The principal question the exhibition will pose is this:  how can artists, thinkers, writers, composers, choreographers, singers, and musicians, through images, objects, words, movements, actions, lyrics, and sounds, bring together publics in acts of looking, listening, responding, engaging, and speaking in order to make sense of the current upheaval? -- Okwul Enwezor, Exhibition Catatlogue

But it is largely directed at the mind instead of the senses and the heart.  Why are there so few works with the stop-you-in-your-tracks beauty of an El Anatsui, who was awarded the festival's Golden Lion awards on Enwezor's recommendation?  Did Enwezor feel beauty and wonder would detract from his central message, that we must look at the world around us with clear eyes and a critical understanding?

Enwezor commissioned this monumental site-specific work from Ibrahim Mahama.  It runs the length of the first building in the Arsenale complex, creating a somber corridor. Burlap bags from cacao, coffee and other exports are stitched together in manner reminiscent of the resplendent tapestries by fellow Ghanian artist, El Anatsui, who was awarded the Golden Lion for life time achievement at this Biennale.  El Anatsui created a legendary piece for the 2009 Biennale, draping a wall of Palazzo Fortuny with gold. Is Mahama's work an homage or a refutation?

A typical work by El Anatsui, woven from the metal caps of thousands of liquor bottles.

Energy Accumulates When Different Worlds Meet

Enwezor has brought together voices from around the globe -- 136 artists from 53 countries.  Many of these artists speak on behalf of the marginalized, oppressed, or endangered; they grapple with mystification, history and its omissions, memory and forgetting.  Reference to Karl Marx and revolutionary movements are woven through the exhibition spaces.

While curating one of the most established and long-standing (120 years) presentations of art in the world, Enwezor implicitly challenges the authority of the mainstream contemporary art scene by including many artists who operate outside of it and omitting work that is commercially appealing.  "'Art isn’t just made by white people in Europe with great patrons,' Enwezor told the Wall Street Journal. 'Sorry.'" (Quoted by Andrew Goldstein in ArtSpace -- reference below.)

As you make your way through the sprawling exhibition, hundreds of paintings and photos hanging on the walls (and if an artist can show one piece, why not show three, or ten, or twenty?), rooms of sculpture and installation work, the sounds floating in from video screening dens -- all clamor urgently for your attention.  Work by 136 artists from 53 countries has been shipped to Venice, harking back to the city's history as a crossroads and center of trade.  The exhibition is exhilarating and exhausting.  You do have the sense that indeed, all the world has been brought together to form a cacophonous labyrinth for visitors to explore.  You could spend months camped out, investigating. What you learn is not easy, though.

The Central Pavilion and spaces in the Arsenale are filled with urgent stories -- about violence, abuse of money and power, degradation of the environment.  There is a sustained and serious curatorial intent, not just to reveal important truths, but to honor the work of revealing truths.  The exhibition illuminates a meaningful, activist role for art that presents a difficult, but compelling, alternative to the ridiculous excesses of trophy art for the oligarchy.

Enwezor has said: "keeping art and political moods and events apart?  That wouldn't work.  An aesthetic choice is always also a political one." In fact, the exhibition makes the case that it is more urgent then ever that artists take on social critique -- exposing racism and nationalism, the exploitation of human, animal and environmental resources that accompanies global capitalism, inequities in wealth, power, and freedom of action -- precisely because "all the world's futures" are at stake.

But will it work?

In the white box of the exhibition venue, there is no context for the artwork.  With the exception of a "world poll" by Hans Haacke (where we can register opposition to our government's response to climate change) and Adrian Piper's invitation to take several vows of integrity ("I will always be too expensive to buy," "I will always mean what I say" "I will always do what I say I will do") there are few opportunities for action. Moreover, much of this art is intellectual, conceptual, and obscure -- requiring time and self-education to comprehend.  Moments of beauty and wonder are rare.  Without the emotional pull of compelling aesthetic experiences, will this exhibition achieve its hoped for effect? Will it wake up visitors, change their minds and actions, remove the layers of cultural mystification that support compliance and complacency?

But let's hope for the best, and admire this noble effort on behalf of humanity and the planet. Andrew Goldstein, writing for ArtSpace, put it well:

[All the World's Futures] could be a sleeper masterpiece, if the artists, curators, and writers who come to see the Biennale over the next half year internalize its message about an engaged artistic discourse. We need much more of that in our staggeringly venal art world, at a time when people around the world are rising up against injustice and need inspiration and direction. 

Engaged art and social activism is also alive and well in many of the national pavilions in the Giardini and Arsenale, and often with more immediate aesthetic or emotional effect.  I will write about some of these in other posts.

More about Okwei Enwezor and All the World's Futures:
How to Understand Okwei Enwezor's Venice Line-Up, Andrew M. Goldstein, ArtSpace
Observations on "All the World's Futures" at the 2015 Venice Biennale, Andrew M. Goldstein, ArtSpace
Art for the Planet's Sake at the Venice Biennale, Roberta Smith, The New York Times

A Contour Map at Headland Sculpture on the Gulf

Landform by Veronica Herber

A simple but effective installation consisting of 1,850 meters of paper masking tape held in place by 4,000+ wire staples created by Veronica Herber was one of the most successful works in the biennial Headland Sculpture on the Gulf in 2015.  It stops you in your tracks, and engages you in looking at a "landform" selected by the artist that you would otherwise casually walk by, without taking any particular notice.  The application of swirling white bands along the curves of a gentle hill call attention to the contours of the land and the history of its use.  The white lines suggest the measuring and mapping carried out by explorers, the inventories and surveys taken by developers.  What used to be here? What plans are underway for the future of this place?

The site is reminiscent of typical hills and vistas seen on the North Island in New Zealand, where the shape of the terrain was first revealed when the land was stripped of trees by loggers and the bush was cleared for farms and ranches. Now vast fields are used for grazing sheep; New Zealand is home to millions of sheep, three for every human inhabitant, is the rumor.

When the field was cleared, one lone tree was left standing off center, perhaps spared to offer shade to a lone shepherd.  What will be its fate?

Of course, I am just spinning my own associations.  Herber describes her approach to art as process-based, and, when you think about it, affixing the tape to the ground in enormous concentric circles must have been an intense, iterative process, like planting fine seeds or mending fault lines:

My practice is based on an interest in process and materiality, I combine this with the chance element of site specific work. The site itself determines the starting point and the ensuing conversation.

The material I have been exploring for the past two years is masking tape. Over time I have developed a masking tape webbing that has qualities of camouflage and the ability to shapeshift its way from surface to surface transforming spaces and ultimately itself.

When becoming deeply engrossed in materiality there is a stripping away of meaning and a possibility of direct experience with the material....To stop myself getting bound up in the short-term gain of visual aesthetic rewards, I always go back to the material itself and seek the answers there.

 

More information about Veronica Herber: www.veronicaherber.com
More information about Headland Sculpture on the Gulf, Waiheke Island, New Zealand: sculptureonthegulf.co.nz/