Turning trash into artistry is an alchemy long overdue for a species who according to the U.N. throws out over a billion tonnes of solid waste every year. The artists in Convergence which opened October 16 at Lumenhouse in Brooklyn, New York, want to draw our attention not only to our excesses, but to the confounding and enchanting ways waste can be diverted from oceans and landfills and resurrected as cultural beauty.
Curator Mariko Tanaka says the idea for Convergence came from her work with Project Vortex, a group committed to repurposing plastics on their way to and already accumulating in the world’s oceans. Their modus operandi of reuse and recycle is through art and design. All of the artists in Convergence belong to Project Vortext (PV) which boasts artist-members from around the world.
Anthony Freda’s illustrations may be familiar to you. They’ve shown up in Time and The New Yorker, in the Rolling Stone and Esquire and Playboy, and more ‘serious’ publications like Business Week and The New York Times. His work at once speaks to contemporary issues of America at war, problems of patriotism, and harkens to earlier decades in which we’ve struggled with the same issues. His work is immediately accessible to any kind of viewer, even those who may not want to consider the deeper messaging. Being the art dork I am I wanted to know first about why he chose to speak to issues this way, and then about why he chose those issues in particular.
Amanda: Let’s start by talking about the physical objects, what media do you use to make these illustrations and what draws you to them?
Last week, I posted about a woman who walked into the Loveland Museum/Gallery and destroyed a piece of artwork by Enrique Chagoya. I questioned at the end of my article whether critiques with the weight and emotional volume of Chagoya’s print – which depicted Jesus in sexual acts (a Christian favourite) and an Islamic prophet kneeling before pigs, among other things.
Under normal circumstances, the immoral act of destroying ones art would likely make an artist completely irate. Chagoya, however, has agreed to work with the pastor of Loveland’s Resurrection Fellowship church to create a piece of artwork depicting Jesus in a positive light. Pastor Jonathan Wiggins wrote Chagoya after opposition to the artwork began asking if Chagoya would be able to “offer [his] artistic ability and compose an image of Christ representing love and understanding, something precious.”
Light enters through a hole in the roof of a house hit by a tank shell in Tuffah, northern Gaza. The family that lived in the house had fled during Operation Cast Lead, the Israeli attack on Gaza that began at the end of December 2008. Mohammed Shuhada Ali Ahmed, 39, had gone back to fetch clothes for his children and was killed when the shell struck. (General News: 1st Prize Singles, Kent Klich, Sweden)
In this digital era it could be argued that the power of the photograph has been degraded. Are photographs still special at a time of infinite cameras? Cameras attached to cell phones, linked to computer screens, screwed to light-posts for state surveillance, the visual documentation of our world is overwhelming, so why the sustaining power of photography?
“With the oil spill you realize it is so vulnerable down there, it’s a way of life but it’s a part of our life. The gulf is a part of us. I’m in New York and I can’t help but just see water around me all day, and just think about as much oil as I saw in the gulf,” Michael Koehler tells me over the phone early last week. “I can’t see a difference between being here and there.”
Koehler’s photo exhibition started on October 6 at GalleryBar in New York City and will remain on view through October 27. The black and white photographs, some pictured above, are framed in driftwood brought back from the east river.
Like pretty much everyone on Twitter Sunday night, I was excited that Banksy had done an intro for The Simpsons. Given that the show has for the last few years struggled to regain any sense of current cultural legitimacy, involving Banksy — the noted British graffiti artist — seemed like a legitimately cool idea, even if it probably was a couple of years too late.
But then I saw it. And, frankly, I don’t get the hype.
The print, titled “The Misadventures of Romantic Cannibals” by Mexican artist and Stanford University professor Enrique Chagoya, is a work meant to mix contemporary issues with humour, and shows images such as Jesus engaged in a sex act and an Islamic prophet kneeling before bikini-clad pigs, among other things.
While protests have taken place all week outside the museum/gallery, the last time the piece was on display (in the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver) there was no such reaction.
Last week, I posted about a woman who walked into the Loveland Museum/Gallery and
