February 2022
Passages. Curations. Process. Definitions.
Work in progress
My work new desk at the home studio
Notes from Emotional Inheritance by Galit Atlas
My mother after the war
I had a great studio visit with my advisers Michael Bowdridge Lisa Osborne and Julia Carroll which was encouraging and reaffirming to me, not only about the physical artwork but also about the research that I’m pursuing. One issue with creating mosaic work is photography does not describe or communicate the depths, the texture or details that (my work in particular) contains. When one sees my work in person, they gain a contextual understanding of a multitude of sensory experiences - this medium that I seemed on some level ‘boxed myself into’ it is a more expansive art form than many of the preconceived notions of the defining terms of mosaic.
https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms
Assemblage is art that is made by assembling disparate elements – often everyday objects – scavenged by the artist or bought specially
https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/a/assemblage
A mosaic is a picture made up of small parts which are traditionally tiny tiles made out of terracotta, pieces of glass, ceramics or marble and usually inlayed into floors and walls
https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/m/mosaic
This workaday ethic became popular again in the 1970s when artists began rediscovering craft-based techniques. The British artist Mat Collishaw made a ceramic tile mosaic of a woman’s face taken from a grainy photograph of a woman found on the internet.
Chiaroscuro is an Italian term which translates as light-dark, and refers to the balance and pattern of light and shade in a painting or drawing
https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/c/collage
Collage describes both the technique and the resulting work of art in which pieces of paper, photographs, fabric and other ephemera are arranged and stuck down onto a supporting surface
https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/m/montage
A montage is an assembly of images that relate to each other in some way to create a single work or part of a work of art
https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/m/mixed-media
Mixed media is a term used to describe artworks composed from a combination of different media or materials
What are the relationships between Mosaic, Assemblage, Collage, Bricolage? (LAGE-haha)
Read Krauses’ Expanded Field, Lucy Lippard, Speculative Realism, Jane Bennet and the Articulation of Materials, Art of Assemblage at MOMA 1961
Mosaic as a method as applied to other ART mediums, as a metaphor, new ways of making expanded Notions of how it relates to other mediums. Mosaic is metaphor suggest in practice and making breaking remaking, look more deeply into what mosaics suggest in practice.
How do mosaics work within the three main principles of making with in sculpture? Reductive, additive, replicative.
USING THE WALL…….. AS A LIVE BASE!!!!!
Wall, page, words, information, compacted, fragment – dispersing environmental installation
White Cube white wall what is revealed and what is hidden.
Richard Mannary on writing thinking.
STUDY CONSTELLATIONS
Artistic Citizenship
What is it? it is a responsibility to creativity, Community, culture, ethnicity and diversity, active reflection, ethno graphical practice. Artistic citizenship can also mean activism and radical art. art practice is essential research to connecting us to others. We are quotation impact producers quotation. Practice paste versus practice LED research contextualizes the entanglements. It is also one responsibility to consider the marketing and the audience and pandering to institutions. Who decides what artistic community is? The curators? The Institution? Diversity and inclusion relay a collective consciousness that empowers communities and gets voices heard. Amazing cohorts.
From Body to Words
Very honored to be part of this very intimate group where we can learn from our individual and Collective experiences as women, daughters, mothers, partners. I am excited to bring ideas of movement and body awareness into my own practice so much of my work is physical not only in the creating but also in the subject matter. So many of my drawings are done as expressions of how my body is feeling ie: Heavy, bold, strong, hungry, dense, etc. I use positions and poses that Express the subject that I am exploring in any particular work. I know this practice of writing as well as drawing about aging and ageism well help me gain clarity in my own work as well as being inspired by the incredible women that are part of this study constellation.
Reading Blogs 2/22
Who has power and who is oppressed? And who is controlling the message…..
Ariella Aisha Azouley - Imagine Going on Strike
Imagine Going on Strike, Unlearning Imperialism
Yes lets dream. This concept is not unlike a day without art to bring attention to the aids crisis or black wall/white walls which is a strike in that it deprives one the arts an bring awareness to whatever. https://visualaids.org/projects/day-without-art .Decolonization anti imperialism in museums , institutional collections blah blah yes all the work was acquired /looted with violence. Museum workers as protesters. Historians as protestors. Imperialism. Pre colonial knowledge. Historians can strike to repair the world. sure, jan. nah. I’m too cynical to believe that. Curation as political action is an opportunity to give voice to the oppressed, disconnected, those without ‘parasitic’ connection.
Ariella Aïsha Azoulay - the natural history of rape
The natural history of rape Documentation without curation, censorship.
This is an excellent piece and I am quite thankful to have been introduced to it particularly due to my own family history and perspective particularly on Berlin - bombings, and women - my family was directly witness to and victimized by. There are aggressors in war and there are aggressors in victory
When victims become victors - elements of repercussion or revenge or Justice? Is it unjust to “do unto others as was done unto you”. ?
I traveled to Berlin to see the place where my mother was hidden as a child during the war and where my grandparents had been deported and murdered in the camps. In my travels I met a man who was of German descent. many generations if not all generations German. We spoke of our family histories end connections to Berlin end how our families suffered in different ways.
I told him of my mother who was a baby, hidden in a room for the first 4 years of her life, no toys no laughter no friends and no parents because they had been deported and perished. He told me of his mother, 19 years old in 1945 in Berlin when the Russians came at the end of the war. He told me she was raped repeatedly for weeks by multitudes of of the Russian soldiers. Her home and possessions lost and destroyed, her family gone, her body abused and violated. She was held accountable for the acts of her government, for the brutalities of the country in which she was born. This shocked and disturbed me completely. I had not considered the suffering of the Germans people in any way- I had no compassion for “Germans”. It was a ‘good versus evil’ issue and there needed to be Justice for what had been done to my family and to the millions of victims of Nazi brutality. Propaganda is a powerful tool. Where were/are the photographers of these rapes? Why had I not considered the brutality of the victors? Photographs of rapes and murders and brutalities the just and the Victorious is a great equalizer… we are all victims and we are all brutes. Until we see the humanity in one another… compassion -we will be lost.
Generationally, both of our lives had been impacted by the violence of that war. Although our families were on opposing sides neither was an aggressor and neither was a victor. Our damaged mothers passed on their trauma to us.
Ariella Aïsha Azoulay Unshowable Photographs
An interesting segway for me to go from Berlin to discussing Palestine as these narratives are part of my own family history.
Again - propaganda is a powerful tool in creating and/or dispersing stories of humanity and suffering that can incite outrage or inhibit action. How do we decipher what is false and imbalanced? How do we promote or curate TRUTH? Define truth!
When is art propaganda and what is the difference? Who controls messaging and why? How does one present “fair and balanced” viewpoints (ewww– the Fox Propaganda Network ‘slogan’) ? CONTROLLING THE NARRATIVE.
I appreciated seeing the unshowable and how art can transcend limitations, rules, narratives to show ‘the other’. Just as courtroom scenarios in the US are deemed too private or intense for cameras, graphic artists- specialized courtroom artists, fill the void and our imaginations.
More Studio stuff…..
Process documentation. From drawing to form to sculpture to carving to firing to positioning to mortaring to composing. This piece based on drawings for the matriarch seeds - musings on fertility, infertility, loss and longing. I never think to document my process because I am so in it. This is uncomfortable to post these because I see it and hear it in my head - the potential and the whole song, and it is hidden, I get to expose it.
