Jumaadi’s project is an interdiscplinary exploration in mixed-media of cross-cultural experience. Informed by Indonesian oral and visual folkloric traditions and modernist avante-garde aesthetics, the project engages with contemporary identity politics in which the individual, the family, the village, communal memory and the environment are interwoven with larger issues of national identity, post-colonialism and globalisation. Jumaadi’s ’audience with himself’ is an autobiographical expression of longing and belonging that documents his memory of his Javanese village in order to offer evidence of what has changed, and what has not, within himself and the world. Combining Indonesian and Australian iconography, Jumaadi has developed a highly idiosyncratic visual language of symbols, myths and metaphors, familiar and yet foreign, the apparent simplicity of which discloses a complex narrative rich in suggestion that communicates with layered meanings the ecological, political, social and aesthetic changes he has experienced.

Cerita. Drawing on Paper

Jumaadi is a 36 year old painter, poet and performance artist from the Javanese village of Pecantingan. In the years before his emigration to Australia he had been a very active participant in the cultural life of the area. He wrote complex poetic narratives for theatre and performance groups and developed skills as a grass puppet-maker in order to enrich the telling of these narratives. Painting, in the western sense of a contained representation, was not, at that time, a major factor in his creative output.

Jumaadi settled in Sydney in 1998 and began studying Fine Art. He has completed his Master of Fine Arts (in painting) at the National Art School. He maintains close links with Indonesia and makes frequent visits to his family and village. Pecantingan is only 10km from the edge of the mud spill that in May 2006 swallowed about twelve villages after a mining incident that left 12,000 people homeless. This disaster, and the 2004 tsunami, prompted many questions for Jumaadi, leading him to wonder about the nature of creation and destruction, death, love and hope, in relation to his homeland. To document his feelings and express his emotions he produced a series of small drawings and watercolours of the bodies of pregnant women floating on water. Impromptu and automatist in character, Jumaadi’s working method is fast and informal, a spontaneous creative energy from the subconscious that manifests in imagery imbued with such powerful symbolism and semiotic complexity that it is able to operate on a variety of metaphorical levels.

The resultant layers of meaning within the work render his particular vision, although personal and idiosyncratic, with a universal significance. A desire to embrace and preserve his memories of his village and its folkloric traditions thus motivates Jumaadi’s project, and his efforts to articulate his personal experience from the point of view of an artist working between cultures endows his project with a freshness and originality that reinvigorates the notion of research within an academic visual arts context. Indeed, it is a project that resists easy classification.

On the one hand, his project deals with the particular minutiae of local Javanese creative activity, of stories, poems and social interaction, and on the other with wider issues of globalisation and the dominance of western cultural practice and discourse. His project is thus located within a local Indonesian artistic tradition as well as within the contemporary context of displacement, dislocation and cultural identity that is the preocupation of much recent visual arts practice. At the same time, Jumaadi identifies with Australian Indigenous painters, such as Ian Abdullah, whose preoccupation with country evokes a sense of place that is at once personal, communal, spiritual and ecological in its concern with the past and the social and environmental threats of the future. Jumaadi addresses and elaborates upon these issues, which establishes a context for a project that brings together such Indonesian artists as Sujoyono Kerton, Hendra Gunawan and Dadang Christianto with a diversity of Western influences that range from Chagall to Frida Kahlo; Utrillo to William Robinson; and from Clemente to McCahon.

The death of his father in 2007 has moved Jumaadi to record and preserve the stories of his village as told by his mother and friends. These stories provide the subject-matter of his drawings and paintings and have inspired his collaboration with poets and performace artists in Indonesia and Australia. Jumaadi’s work embodies the notion of discovery rather than conventional ideas of research. But although it is not merely an illustration of a concept, the work is grounded in an informed awareness of the issues that, in terms of research, are aligned with conventional notions of knowledge acquisition. Jumaadi’s methodology spans anthropological and ethnographic approaches to data collecting, such as interviews and conversations with the people of his village; the identification of particular symbols; and the performative interaction with his audience that draws on a variety of traditional oral, visual, and theatrical artforms and social practices.

Jatayu to the Rescue. Wayang Puppet Show based on the Ramayana.

Jumaadi’s desire to not only preserve the traditional practices of his region but enlist them in order to communicate with a wider audience is underpinned by his awareness of the social role of the artist. In these terms, his work is a kind of visual poetry in which each image cannot be separated from its context in relation to the whole, a pictorial strategy by which meaning is generated as a cumulative process of reading the images as a form of text. In its execution and apparent simplicity, the work almost contradicts the sophistication of its agenda. In this project the work truly is the embodiment of the research; the result of a consistent engagement with and a sustained investigation of a cluster of deeply resonant issues – an approach that negotiates that fine line between conscious research and intuitive ceativity that is the hallmark of all creative practices. It is a true example of reflective practice.

By:  Michael Downs, Dr Ian Greig and Bernard Ollis

Jumaadi is opening his first solo exhibition for 2010 Rain Rain Come Again and his 12th solo show to date at 6 pm tonight at Watters Gallery 109 Riley Street East Sydney.  It runs from 20 January - 6 February, 2010, with solo shows in Singapore, Kuala Lumpur and Indonesia to follow and several other group shows in Australia most notably Public Laundry.  He is co-artistic director of The Museum of Memory an ongoing project between Indonesian poets, musicians, composers and visual artist which raises awareness on the Lapindo Mud Disaster near his hometown in Java and the Carabaoist Collective in Australia which is currently working on various poly-media performances utilising a fusion of traditional & contemporary Asian aesthetic practices.

Manly Art Gallery & Museum.

Australian Ceramic Triennale Sydney 2009

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Coca-Colonization. White Stoneware. Installation. Size Variable 2006

Meng-shu You’s installation Coca-colonisation part of the White Heat exhibition at Manly Art Gallery & Museum, features blue and white stoneware replicas of soft drink bottles displayed en-masse as merchandise on an industrial grocery shelf. Painted on in a calligraphic style are bamboos and fishes. They seem reminiscent of  the traditional blue and white porcelain wares which are mass produced as kitschy replicas , sold the world over. The installation acts as a marker for both American popular culture which has embedded itself in an intractable position of influence globally and recent shifts in economic centres with the rise  of China. Made in 2006, it is interesting to reflect on the installation in the midst of a global economic recession as issues of cultural imperialism have become even more complicated.

Coca-Colonization. White Stoneware. Installation. Size Variable 2006

In contemporary arts the traditional delineation of centre and periphery (with the west as the centre and the rest of the world the periphery) is slowly being upended as a side-effect of globalisation. Some idealists go so far as to claim the absence of a centre for contemporary art (anywhere is a possible centre/the centre is where you are) and the emergence of a global vernacular where visual codes function cross-culturally. An over statement perhaps - given the insensitivity of the market to service needs other than its own.

You has studied in the west (she has previously completed her MFA at Michigan State University in the United States and has just completed her studio based Doctorate in Visual Arts at the University of Sydney) and seem to intentionally utilise a visual language that is legible to an international audience exposed to or educated in western art – referencing signs and symbols that critiques western popular culture. A rational approach given that until very recently, the onus was often on non-western artists, especially those living in the west (and even for many of those who did not) to grasp the sign system of western contemporary art culture – in order to interpret, re-interpret and participate in it.

Chinese New Year Sale. Cement. Mixed-Media Installation. 2007

Not to disregard the pain of cultural transition or the stresses of living under the shadows of a foreign culture (generally speaking/artistically speaking) – it is useful to observe such cultural clashes. Equally interesting is to understand not only what is directly articulated by the artist (via conversations or through personal statements) about their work but to also feel the conflicting strands of influence against the grain of their intentions.

In her curatorial statement Bartholomew describes white heat as “the stage during a kiln firing that stretches the limits of reason and safety. Some clay materials distort, contort and are subject to a process of unforgiving melt-down. Others are transformed into exquisite and unexpected treasures, inspiring change, innovation and creativity. ” If white heat is a metaphor for difficult life experiences or the curse of living in history’s more “interesting times” - it is fortunate that many do survive and experience greater creativity in spite of or because of such experiences. Not only to come to terms with the imposed language and culture, but to utilise it intentionally in a self reflexive way as critique.

Meng-shu You is a Taiwanese artist currently residing in Sydney. Her works often comments on the negative effects of mass production and consumption. Her most recent solo shows include Melting Down at Immersion Therapy Art Space in Melbourne and Selling Out at Gallery 4a Sydney. Selected group exhibitions include: From Mao to Now at Armory Gallery Olympic Park Sydney; the 4th World Ceramic Biennale Korea; Design Globalization at the Museum of Communication Frankfurt; Kneading the Clay to Rebuild, Firing the Ware to Reborn at the National Taiwan Craft Museum in Taipei; the International Biennial Exhibition of Ceramic Art” at National History Museum Taiwan.

White Heat at Manly Art Gallery and Museum is part of the 2009 Ceramic Triennale Sydney. It was curated by Dr. Julie Bartholomew. Participating artists in the show included: Avi Amesbury, Penny Byrne, Lynda Draper, Kate Dunn, Bern Emmerichs, Fiona Fell, Honor Freeman, Madhulika Ghosh, Irene Grishin-Selzer, Christopher Headley, Andrea Hylands, Virginia Jones, Dr. Cathy Keys, Laura McEwan, Pru Morisson, Biljana Novakovich, Mel Robson, Avital Sheffer, Penny Smith, Liz Stops, David Tucker, Kenji Uranishi, Gerry Wedd, Rachel V. Williams and Meng-shu You.

The 2009 Ceramic Triennale Sydney had close to 40 local galleries showing contemporary works simultaneously. Participating galleries included: Rex Irwin Art, Ivan Dougherty Gallery, Australian Galleries at Mary Place Gallery, Hogarth Galleries, COFA Space, Global Gallery, Freeland Gallery, Barry Stern Galleries, National Art School Gallery, Robin Gibson Gallery, planet, Flinders Street Gallery, Ray Hughes Gallery, Evan Hughes Gallery, Sabbia Gallery, Object Gallery, Mori Gallery, Horus and Deloris Contemporary Art Space, Birrung Gallery World Vision Australia, Gallery 4a, Art Gallery of NSW, Brenda May Gallery, Stella Downer Fine Art, Legge Gallery, Chrissie Cotter Gallery, MOP Projects, Tin Sheds Gallery, Kerrie Lowe Gallery, Gallery Adagio, Inner City Clayworkers Gallery, Gallery Red, Sydney College of the Arts Gallery, Delmar Gallery, Manly Art Gallery & Museum, Mosman Gallery, Helen Stephens Gallery & All Handmade Gallery, Nepean TAFE Gallery.

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Action speaks louder than words. Art in times of Global Recession.

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For the month of January Gallery 4a has turned its ground floor gallery into a public-private studio space and experimental laboratory. Rice paper meets spontaneous drips and improvised splatters from blood red to charcoal black – on the ground, off the wall, at street level in full view. As each work is born the world is born – leaving behind a spectrum of mark making vocabularies. Some have resulted in elegant well-turned phrases, others in the stilted grappling for form chasing elusive time.

Saturday drew a diverse group  - there was a visiting Indonesian artist currently studying at a local business college, a visiting Dutch artist who’s a full-time housepainter by trade, the local art-sibling duo  Leanne and Naomi Shedlezki from Match Box Projects and random passersby. We (that is all the participants) were given half an hour each, with painting materials supplied by the gallery for everyone to create works on the spot. Most however took longer than the allocated minutes, working and hanging out till closing time.

Action vs. Action is currently ongoing. For more information on how to take part/participate please check Gallery 4a’s website.

The Folding Wife

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Written by Paschal Daantos Berry and directed by Deborah Pollard in a solo performance by actress Valerie Berry, The Anino Shadow Collective/Urban Theatre Project’s The Folding Wife weaves the stories of three generation of Filipina women in the one family.

Both Berry’s in a series of 13 fragments and moments captures the burden of social and familial pressures – where even charms are for hire and love simply becomes another bargaining chip in an economic transaction. Of a nation whose people’s lives are increasingly being dispersed, landing wherever the wind takes them.

From naive faith in political sleights of hands to the dawning realization between the difference between appearance and reality, the playwright captures a distinct psycho-geography - of women caught in flux within a social milieu that can be quite contradictory, leaving a person floundering for cues on how best to live.

Valerie Berry in The Folding Wife

Puppetry - of social ventriloquy is a strong motif that runs through the work - visually in the symbolic tableaus and psychologically through the subtext of the text. A pointed observation that the “voice” a person might speak in is at times no longer their own - especially when human hope dissipates and reality bites hard. Of torch songs referenced for the very reasons that they are dramatic - and will tug at the heart.

The play does not make excuses for itself or for the lives of its characters nor for the nation that the characters’ symbolically represent as a whole however. It simply says this is who we are – in our unruliness and our comic tragedy. Rather it actually provides a social mirror to the Australian majority – which can at times be quite dismissive of the lives of those who had another life before setting foot in this land of ‘lamingtons and lemon slice’ -as Dolores, the central character pointedly tells her daughter (also played by Berry).

Inundated by Tupperware and speaking of things that no longer matter in the new world - Dolores finds herself wanting to be a part off and yet forever excluded from the micro-society she lands in. Simultaneously feeling out of depth and yet superior - pining with nostalgia for past achievements and glories, both real and imagined.

Torn between archaic values and a mother in permanent flux, the third character in the triptych - the second generation is seen to end up paying. Material security costs. I appreciated that the play didn’t try to please nor was it shrill or angry - it was just what it was. When your second-chance (and let’s face it, migrating in many instances is a wish for another go at one thing or another, be it economic or otherwise) - is at the bequest of somebody else, it carries with it an unspoken social obligation it feels - to be grateful and to be polite at the very least, to the hand that feeds.

The play & production was not polite - it was however intelligent, poignant, funny.

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images courtesy of the artist

Its been 10 years since the hand-over - after 156 years of British rule Hong Kong reverted back to Chinese rule in 1997 and is now officially known as Hong Kong Special Administrative Region ( HKSAR). From being an international centre of trade and commerce with a population that was largely not interested in politics at all, the new Hong Kong with three very different cultures fighting for dominance – traditional Chinese, communist Chinese and British capitalism/democracy – is becoming increasingly political. Especially for the younger generation- most of whom are well educated, articulate and are aware of the suppression of the many rights they used to enjoy and take for granted before the hand over.

The artist Tsang Kin- Wah reflects on some of these social and political realities.

Tsang Kin Wah was born in 1976 in Guangdong China and migrated to Hong Kong in 1984 with his parents as a child where he studied and worked for some time. He later travelled and studied at the Camberwell College of Arts, the London Institute under a British Chevening Postgraduate Scholarship before returning to Hong Kong where he currently lives. His work which at the most direct level plays between the difference between appearance and reality and can be described at the same time as both quaint and acidic (this does not seem possible- but here lies the beauty and attraction of Wah’s works); and has been shown in The Room with a View Gallery in Shanghai (2004)  the Hong Kong Art Biennale (2003) amongst many other places (recently at Yvon Lambert Project Space New York) and has also been bought for private collections in Hong Kong, the United Kingdom, the United States, the Netherlands and Australia. Tsang has also received the Prize of Excellence in the 2001 Hong Kong Biennale as well as various prizes in painting, watercolour and drawing - which shows through in the obvious attention to craftsmanship of his series of ‘Wall Paper’ installations - a surface of beauty and elegance that masks a deep anger, dissatisfaction and frustration that only becomes apparent clear to the viewer on close examination.

Wah’s ‘ Wall paper series’ (Untitled works 2003/2004, Interior 2003) are hand printed wall papers in the pattern design of William Morris which covers every inch of the gallery space it is shown in . On the surface it appears very “British “, very elegant, very controlled and very tranquil.

It uses text as visual image not unlike another Chinese artist Xu Bing and Wah acknowledges that both calligraphy- which in Chinese culture is considered one of the highest art forms; and Xu Bing, has in fact been an influence. Unlike Xu Bing however who makes it a point that his calligraphy is unreadable – where the Chinese calligraphy is in fact not Chinese characters, but something that was invented by artist and does not mean anything; the point of Wah’s work is that while on the surface they look like patterns they actually need to be read as text for the whole work to emerge.

However, when you move closer to see the patterns and read the text, you realise that the text which makes up the patterns of plants and flowers which intertwine the way wall papers do are actually made up of foul language (”fuck”, “fuckers”, “fuckingwealthycunts”, ” Fuckingmaterialists”, “fuckthepoorman” and so on). It simmers with anger and resentment.

We asked him about this duality in his work, and asked whether this play on a beautiful surface which hides an ugly reality was the essence of his work. He replied, “This is one of the main idea or you can say that is the most powerful thing in my works which switch the viewer’s point of view from one to another extreme. For me, this is one of the things that we experience a lot but forgot sometimes. Nice appearance = nice interior? I don’t think so. To some extent, my work is also a reflection of myself which seems pretty shy and quiet but has much anger towards different things that happens around me.”

In another interview about his work, this time for Shanghai Magazine Wah once said, ‘It is a space of criticism, of contradiction, of nastiness. What the viewer see is selectively presented by the creator, it indicates that some information is either consciously or unconsciously being left out by the creator. To doubt, to explore, to challenge the traditional perspectives that exist can create a new dimension, to enable you investigating what is considered as normal or obvious around you in a critical manner. You can then create a new perspective to inspect everything around us.’ What Wah seems to  highlighting is the difference between the illusion and the truth of the reality it masks - that by somehow being aware of this difference one can engage with the world not as it seems but as it actually is….

This anger perhaps stems from his background. In general, based on current political events, it is safe to say that the people of Hong Kong are angry. It’s the kind of anger that runs deep, the kind of anger that may not be noticeable on the surface but it is definitely simmering away beneath the surface. Speaking about his work Wah comments, ‘This contradictory space is like human condition. To live in the society, we have to suppress our emotions be it happiness or sadness. There is just no way out to express it. When you see the foul languages in these wallpapers, you will suddenly realise those are the messages you want to scream out aloud, messages which are left behind or hidden in your heart.”

Before the handover Hong Kong and its people were essentially not interested in politics. What mattered was commerce, the market, profit, having a good life style – you can say that Hong Kong despite its ties to communist China was the essence and a symbol of free market economy at its best. In fact making money and staying out from politics seemed to be almost a lifestyle. Very few people seemed to want to disrupt the system that was giving them access to an excess of material goods and a lifestyle that was comparable, perhaps even better than many of those found in western countries.

After 1997 however the arrangement “one country, two systems’ meant that China could restrict the rule of law and many basic democratic right. On the 1st July 2003 for example the Chinese/Hong Kong Government decided to control freedom of public speech and proposed to amend the basic law article No. 23 which meant censorship of the kind Hong Kong people have not experienced before. In response to it there emerged a new class of well educated young professionals (with western tradition and values) that formed a very big popular democratic movement all over the territory. People started missing thing that they used to take for granted and which existed in the background like freedom of speech (although still limited under British rule but was there), freedom of free assembly and free expression - be it economic, political or artistic. What was taken away became the focus for many people.

Wah’s work is a reflection of this political reality and is thus intended to be read on several layers - the floral image for example is highly indicative of sex and sexual organs – again another cultural taboo in the new Hong Kong. By using floral imagery however Wah manages to address this taboo and yet be “acceptable”.

We asked Wah whether the play between appearance and reality in his work was a way of subverting certain types of cultural taboos, or even censorship of presenting a somewhat harmless looking work on the surface but which is actually quite subversive underneath and he replied, “The socio-political situation in Hong Kong did affect me quite a lot in the past and still at this moment. I would watch the news report everyday and look at the people or things that happened around. Many queer or weird things/phenomenon (this is my point of view, may be the majority would think that they are normal) gave me much inspiration for my creation. Hong Kong is not subversive and that’s why I want to challenge or may be because I really hate it.”

The younger generation, of which Wah belongs to, have now post hand-over little expressive channels in the face of censorship and the unique problems created by an education under the notion of one country with two systems. Currently schools teach in two languages and two set of values. Young people in Hong Kong also have to deal with values, propaganda/ information from a media controlled by the communist Chinese and the values of their parents and grand-parents that came from a more free democratic past.

Hong Kong never really belonged to the British nor the Chinese. Its peope really are a mixture of both British and Chinese culture- and yet is not identified wholly by either country. Passports are stamped with the phrase “British National Overseas” - but without any of the rights or privileges that come with being a recognised citizen of the United Kingdom - an illusion, an appearance of belonging to something that really does not matches with the reality. For years the joke of ‘having no identity was a unique identity’, was the common response by many Hong Kong people to somehow deal with this schizophrenic identity the hand over had caused.

Wah’s artistic career is in fact is a bit like watching Hong Kong – he belong to the long history and culture of China but maybe he does not, he lived for some time with British culture and can function well in it, reference it, play with it as one would something that is not only familiar but one that you have internalized as his own- and yet it is not his own – the invitation to stay has expired.

At the end of the interview we went back to an earlier phrase that struck us, when he said, ‘When you see the foul languages in these wallpapers, you will suddenly realise those are the messages you want to scream out aloud, messages which are left behind or hidden in your heart.’

This to us spoke of repression and yet it seemed to us at the end of the day that he was still quite a successful artist, his work has been shown in some prestigious exhibitions, he has received numerous prizes, accolades, scholarship and residencies. It seems that instead of being repressed or censored that his work is actually accepted, shown, praised. That he has valuable venue for expressing what message he may want to express. So we said perhaps Hong Kong may have become slightly become more repressive but not so much as he or many others perhaps claimed and his reply was, “Yes, my work has been shown in some ‘prestigious’ exhibitions and it seems that my work has been accepted but I don’t think that they really understand or accept my works. I remember some cultural administrator once told me that they like the images of my works but not the text…

Interview/Collaborative Writing by: KYT + VP & their 5 funny friends…
Artlife 2007
http://artlife.blogspot.com/2007/07/wall-paper-art-life-in-hong-kong-sar.html

For images of other recent works by Tsang Kin-Wah:
[Our personal favourite is the "Fucking Art" series]
http://s218.photobucket.com/albums/cc235/kinwah02/

Tsang Kin Wah Video on Vernissage TV: http://vernissage.tv/blog/2007/10/09/tsang-kin-wah-at-yvon-lambert-new-york-project-space/

]]> http://www.exhibitionfootnotes.net/?feed=rss2&p=6 http://www.exhibitionfootnotes.net/?p=19 http://www.exhibitionfootnotes.net/?p=19#comments Fri, 28 Nov 2008 08:49:40 +0000 admin http://www.exhibitionfootnotes.net/?p=19 Share

From the exhibition Anonymity by the Filipino artist Poklong Anading at Cross Art Projects in Sydney. Anading was the winner of the 2006 Ateneo Art Prize Studio Residency Grant selected by Jo Holder the director of Cross Arts Projects, after being one of the three short-listed winners selected by Ateneo Musem, the premiere museum for contemporary art in the Philippines. The exhibition ran from November 10 - 19, 2006 & included a curators talk by Richie Lerma the Director & Curator of Ateneo Museum Manila.

The famous, the infamous and the anonymous - each in turn are rich subject matters for photographers, it is the latter however which is the focus of Poklong Anading’s series of photographic installation which was shown at the Cross Arts Projects in Kings Cross in 2006.

Anading was one of the three prize-winners of the annual Ateneo Art Awards held by the Ateneo Art Gallery in Manila, the premiere museum for modern art in the Philippines. The other winners being Wawi Navarozza and Maya Munoz of Hiraya Gallery. Of the three, Anading was chosen by Jo Holder the director of Cross Arts Projects as the recipient of the Sydney Studio Residency.

The work is comprised of 14 A3 light-boxes of backlit Duratrans based on black and white portraits photographs of various individuals shot in-situ in the streets of Cubao in Manila. The difference here (as opposed to traditional portraits) was that as the shot was being taken Anading asked each of his subject to hold a mirror in front of their face - so that the flash was reflected back to the camera (its point of origin) and all traces of their features as a result, was obliterated in a circle of white light in the final image.

Simple and conceptually elegant, the work is part performance, part processed based work and part photographic installation. Jose Tence Ruiz describes the process in the exhibition catalogue; “He requests strangers and on occasion, acquaintances, to stand naturally, facing a digital camera, in the center of the viewfinder to the point that, as with Renaissance convention, the subject is framed by the perspective of its background and is its compositional nexus. This subject/nexus is asked to hold a six-inch circular mirror in front of his/her face. Photography is usually done near noon and the mirror is made to catch the blinding reflection, resulting in a quotidian portrait whose visage is an unbearable white shimmer. Each subject has particularities, say a specific street, an ice-cream cart, a political mass action, an amputated limb yet all faces collapse into one over-illuminated, anonymity.”

The voyeuristic and parasitic tendency of the photographic image is well known and has been the topic of many discussions. I recall an old issue of Parkett that focused on the French photographer Sophie Calle documenting a “monospondence” of some 35 postcards sent to Calle by another artist called Joseph Grigely.

According to the article he was neither a friend nor an acquaintance but someone who was simply moved to write to her his thoughts after viewing her work The Blind, a photographic exhibition at the Luhring Augustine Gallery in New York some two years before the magazine’s publication…

I remembered the exhibition, having seen it second hand from somewhere else - a series of black and white head shots of blind people with text printed next to it based on what each person’s image of ‘beauty’ was -

“Green is beautiful. Because every time I like something, I’m told it’s green…”

“… I’m told white is beautiful…”

“…The sea must be beautiful too. They tell me it is blue and green and that when the sun reflects in it, it hurts your eyes…”

And next to the text - colour photographs of the very things described.

I remembered it for the ambivalence I felt – seduced by the work for giving me access to an experience not my own, of the other – in this instance the world through the eyes of the sightless…and yet disturbed because the access had to come, it felt - at the expense of someone else’s misfortune or position of marginality along the way… That because of its visual modality and therefore failed representation of the experience of blindness, The Blind represented not the experience of blindness by the blind – but the blindness of those of us with sight, perhaps the blindness of the photographer if she – and by complicity -we - believe that by representing the experience of those not our own, she/we could understand physiological otherness – or any other the state of otherness for that matter…

“It is easy to tell disabled people what they are missing; much more difficult to listen to, and understand, what they have.

Deafness, as Victor Hugo once said, is an illness of the mind, not of the ears…”

Dear Sophie… Grigely writes, “Beguiled now, I am almost afraid to face the photographs that supplement these texts, almost afraid to go past the honest audacity of this language to that which lies beyond: images that presume to be of the objects, people, places, and passions described. Yet, the most troubling part remains: your photographs of the faces of these blind people, their signatures. I am arrested by the fact that these images do not, because of their visual modality, return themselves to the blind… Since your face is not available to me, why should my face be available to you? An echo from somewhere, but I cannot pin it down. Something seems wrong to me: I am able to gaze, look, stare into the faces, into the eyes, of faces and eyes that cannot stare back. “Subjects,” they are called. I feel I am in the presence of a social experiment…. ”

Taking a rather eccentric route, Grigely’s correspondence with Calle crystallises aspects of photographic representation that is problematic and which Anading in a simple gesture has managed to subvert and upend.

As photographers - we frame a subject, capture and shoot… Even the language we use – capture, frame, shoot – are predatory as Susan Sontag has noted; and not dissimilar to the language we would use if we were at an African hunting safari.

We often impose our subjective passions, ideas and sometimes even well-meaning intentions upon those we gaze at. Photo-journalism, social anthropological photographic studies, even tourist snapshots are all guilty in one way or another - of never being objective.

As with deafness - blindness too is at times an illness of the mind, not of the eye…

Taking photographs in the Philippines - a country well known for its overwhelming economic and class problems, it is all together possible to face people living in abject poverty - and simply aestheticize the experience. To turn it into an object for retinal fodder. To see its representation but not understand what it means.

Some cultures believe that having a photograph taken of oneself is akin to having one’s soul stolen - and given the amount of subjective reframing that happens when dealing with experiences outside our own, perhaps the belief is not so much a superstition - but the precaution of a more advanced wisdom.

Anonymity

By deflecting our photographic gaze, Anading in this instance has shifted some of the imbalance of power away from himself and back to those who through their generosity lent him of themselves for a fraction of moment in time and space. The images – black and white not quite sharp photographs – reminds one of the quality of reportage photography. Something that a photojournalist-flaneur doing a study of locals from Cubao might have taken. By giving his subject a mirror however – Anading turns the tables – and frames a different set of relationships – no longer a portrait of a subject – but a portrait that asks a question – who are your really taking a photograph of? Is this about me the subject or you the photographer? For what is a mirror but a tool we use to view our own reflection?
It seems as if the subject has learnt to talk back. To further complicate things however it is neither the subject nor the photographer who is represented in the final work - but the blinding illumination of the sun’s reflected light.

Since your face is not available to me, why should my face be available to you?
A voice interjects from somewhere…

Hirst’s For the Love of God - a memento mori in the face of blinding BLING.

In the age of the hyper-celebrity and the artist as surrogate rock star (the [not so] Young [anymore] British Artists of the 90s – Damien Hirst, Tracy Emin, Sarah Lucas et all who were representative of this phenomenon) - one can read this work as a critique of the shallow vain-gloriousness that has permeated many aspects of our lives- which have just accelerated and become even more pronounced as time have passed, more than a decade later.

These days from Friendster postings (very popular in the Philippines) to YouTube (whose tagline is broadcast yourself) to Multiply blogs– every Tom, Dick and LonelyGirl5 can have their lives posted online for immediate momentary fame or infamy.

Savvy marketing trend-spotters have even come-up with a neologism - of demographic ‘youniverse’. No longer content in watching the famous be famous - these days we believe that our lives are just as worthy and just as interesting as those we read about in the daily press… From MyFace to RealityTV we get our fill of self-validation, praise and fame in our virtual lives if not in our real one.

Our narcissisms have been given full flight by the tools at our disposal. So much technology to do a myriad of things - and sections of a generation (this author not discounting) simply hole up at home to gaze at the glassy surface of a computer screen and bask in the reflected glory of our online nemesis. We bespoke our clothes to our furniture - trying to find that small difference that would differentiate us from our peers- who are themselves trying to do the same. We no longer want to be like the Joneses - we want to be the Joneses that others try to emulate through our superior taste, flawless custom-designed goods and celebrity-status earned via 6 weeks on Big Brother or top of the charts on YouTube. To rephrase a caustic wit - I guess we all believe that we are special and unique in a way that no one else have been before or ever will be - all 6.5 billion of us.

Anonymity

The metaphors therefore pile up in a series of nuanced readings in Anading’s work. In alternating cycle of references it reminds one of Icarus who falls crashing down to earth for having flown to close to the sun, of Louis XIV of France who was known as the Sun King (for everything revolved around him), of photography and over-exposure figuratively and literally speaking - even the blinding flash-photography of the paparazzi in pursuit of the celebrity-god. Of mirrors as aide-ccomplice to our narcissistic tendencies and at the same instance - if used thoughtfully - can provide us with a brutally honest vision of all our deficiencies.

A more positive reading given by many in the audience during the curators talk was the images’ similarity to religious representation of saints where a halo of light are often found behind the subjects head. If I was to follow this track I suppose I would say that real illumination is achieved when we move from the self-conscious and self-important “I” - to the “we” that is represented by the anonymous every-man.

As the director of the Ateneo Museum Richie Lerma recounted, during their deliberation for the prize, many in the nine person judging panel commented that because the subjects’ face is not available to the viewer, because of each subjects’ anonymity – “it is no longer about one man but instead becomes a collective portrait of every man… of humanity itself. ”

According to the artist the process he used when taking his photograph is not so much about capturing or framing or shooting – but in some ways akin to begging. By asking random strangers in the streets of Cubao, a lower middle class suburb of Manila where he currently resides - who may or may not be receptive to an artists’ inspired compulsion to follow a train of thought peculiar to no one else but his own – he puts himself at the world’s mercy, at the disposal of random stranger’s kindness. The process becomes one of a favour given or a gift bestowed by the subject to the photographer – rather than a license taken for granted.

It’s a process quite different from earlier representations of photographers, specifically the male photographer as a mythic figure in popular culture – of Thomas from Antonioni’s film Blow Up who with camera in hand and long lens attached as surrogate penile extension ‘all but fucks the model Verushka who erotically twists and writhes on the floor…’

Instead of representing an otherness that cannot be represented Anading presents several mirrors -metaphoric and literal - to who we are.

Perhaps photography is often exploitative, but not necessarily so. As with many things, individual sensitivities comes into play.

Its interesting because it shows us the exploitation we might not be aware of, and the exploitation we think we, in our sophistication are above off. More importantly it shows us that there are ways of participating, interjecting and shaping the world around us - always.

That agency is never impossibility whatever the relationship - and what is exploitative - is only exploitative to the point where we follow the rules given us.

It stops at the point where we make our own rules to go by.

VB40: The Effects of Rules in Aesthetics

Performance
Vanessa Beecroft
Museum of Contemporary Art Sydney
August 2-5, 1999

Using models that stood motionless in the middle of the gallery for the duration of the performance VB40 - reminded us of how mesmerizing the surface/the veneer of things can be. How undeniable the strong magnetic pull of beautiful bodies and beautiful faces will always be - short circuiting thinking in many instances.

Though structured as a fashion shoot, in a performance event a different set of sign-systems and values comes to play. While much of fashion is about layers of veneer and thus can be taken purely as an aesthetic experience if one wishes - in the framework of an art project the luggage of socio-historical and theoretical frameworks insists that one reads the work through a different prism. No matter that it walks and talks like fashion, we are forced to step back and reflect beyond the surface - whether it is in fact a parody, a critique or something else entirely.

The representation of women in the arts and popular culture, especially when nudity is involved will perhaps always be problematic. Is it exploitation? Is it eye candy? And in the case of women consciously participating in the deed - is it an appeal to a gendered gaze? Many marginalized groups of course have reclaimed what was in the past states of oppression - reinscribing new meaning to previous politics of (in this instance female) representation. For example these days when we hear the word ‘queer’ we either think of news footage from the 80s with ACT-UP protesters chanting “We’re here, we’re queer, we’re fabulous get used to it”, or more recently the TV-shows ‘Queer Eye for the Straight Guy‘ or ‘Queer as Folks‘ - a word of identification, celebration and pride - as opposed to the insult it used to be.

an army of me

In an interview about the work Beecroft calls her models an ‘army that empowers women’ and refers to her instructions to them as ‘rules’. She says that ‘the true beauty of women has never been reflected in art or fashion (an overstatement perhaps), implying that she aims for greater accuracy by presenting the real thing in the highly artificial, structured form of a performance event at a major public gallery. She claims indifference to the presence of men in the audience. “Men - they can look. I don’t mind.” Reading up on her past works provide some interesting clues. In her first exhibition Despair she showed a group of drawings and a diary she has been keeping for some eight years before the show. The diary - containing obsessive daily records of her eating habits, guilty feelings and psychiatric visits as someone who suffered from an eating disorder. By restricting the models movements and appearance, perhaps Beecroft in some ways was trying to reenact the societal pressure on women to look and behave after a certain ..fashion. VB - in the VB40 - can be anything but I am guessing its V- for Vanessa and B- for Beecroft - a self-portrait in the format of a performance event. The women she used were of a very specific type - the type of women fashion houses and fashion magazines often use. The the work in its presentation however seem largely mute of obvious authorial intent -  and thus seem to just subserviently accept the rules and conventions imposed rather than provide an alternative. There doesnt seem to be a sense of rebellion or critique, only a placid acceptance. Art aside - perhaps a failed interjection into personal obsession through an artwork is better than literally dying from an obsession - as eating disorders have the highest mortality rates of any mental illness.*

different but the same - its a lot of legs

On the other hand because the models were mannequin-like, disengaged and motionless it  gave one a sense of what writers mean when they speak of a certain Warholian emptiness - cool, detached and superficial and for that very reason even more mysterious, fascinating. The use of repetition and variation was also intriguing. The models themselves looked very similar to each other - reasonably tall, with soft curves and brown Botticelli like curls. All were dressed in fire-truck stockings with matching Prada shoes, topless except for skin coloured bras. Apparently the same performance has been performed the same way since its inception in 1994. The drill being - 15 to 20 females are handpicked by Beecroft and arranged to be stared at for the duration of the piece - while they in turn stare into empty space, remaining speechless and indifferent. Only occasionally stretching and moving around. The paradox of trying to repeat oneself over and over of course is that it is always a near miss - close but never the same. Different sets of models participate, the city is different (somewhere in Europe…somewhere in the United States…) the gallery is different - but essentially whether here or there a flattening out of context in each place/space occurs…a much of muchness - a somewhere nowhere… Fashion is an extremely strong social force. It dictates many social practices, tastes and conventions. To map one’s personal identity and values onto ones physical appearance seems simplistic, and yet its a widespread cultural practice. Like Beecroft’s work however, fashion is a case of the never ending near miss - a constant chase for the elusive.  What is ‘the effects of rules on aesthetics’?. I suppose what the effects of rules have on most things is a certain homegenization. Models that look alike, a work that from city to city remains essentially the same. But most importantly a homegenisation which excludes. Another effect of being mesmerised and awed by the beautiful faces and bodies was a shutting down of one’s ability to critically think. What the Polish experimental director Jerzy Grotowski once called ‘the beautiful lie’. Meaning style over substance, packaging over content, which is one of our contemporary dilemmas.

fab-abs

There was one model however who broke the pattern of repetition - a muscular blonde completely nude except for her high heels - who paradoxically didn’t seem nude at all, but in fact seemed armoured by her nudity.

VB40: The Affects of Rules in Aesthetics
1999/2007

*National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders United States