Lois

Felted landscape of the house from kiki’s delivery service

a plan for the final show :)

Male identity in art

Kehinde Wiley is a New York based visual artist blending together traditional ideas of monarchical portrait painting with modern black culture and masculinity. Wiley paints his models in a detailed hyper-realistic style alike prominent figures in historical portraits. Wiley was the first black artist to receive a commission for the official presidential portrait; a tradition stretching over 200 years, where he painted Barack Obama surrounded by flowers.

Classic art has typically been devoid of diverse expressions, Wiley’s work directly opposes this dynamic. Through displaying masculinity in a modern way and having minority groups at the forefront of his work. Hypermasculinity has been extremely prominent in male portraiture, with themes of strength, violence, and resilience surrounding the male individuals in metaphorical and physical terms. Wiley works to juxtapose this through more vulnerable poses involving the model laying down, sometimes not fully clothed.

A muted colour palette and use of intricate pattern inspired by typically feminine textile design, is used in the background of Wiley’s pieces. Straying away from typical dark blacks and blues usually used to represent masculinity and utilising saturated impactful colours creates a different and impactful atmosphere in his paintings, putting the individual in context rather than in isolation gives a valuable insight in considering external factors when it comes to masculinity.

Themes of nature are also prominent in his work through vines, leaves and flowers. Using nature as a defining feature in portraits of stereotypically masculine men creates an effective contrast of man-made and natural. Two forces which typically work against each other coming together to represent their individual masculinity in a new way. His portraits also work in dismantling harmful stereotypes of black men through displaying their identity in this context. Showing they are more than the stereotypes that act as a force against them.

Female identity in art

Juno Calypso is a London based artist working in installation, photography, and film. In ‘What to do with a million years’ she explores highly stylised ironic imagery of femininity through the lens of a character she dresses up as named ‘Joyce’. Joyce is used as a vessel to display the construct of femininity through her exploration in pursuit of perfection. Testing out body improvement devices and beauty treatments, Joyce is used as a pinnacle stereotype of feminine women, surrounded by pink frills, wearing promiscuous lingerie highlighting her silhouette and showing skin.

Calypso extenuates this hyperbole of a character to highlight the judgement women face for consuming feminine media and products. She is quoted saying “I’ve always liked to work with things that people sneer at, anything that people considered tacky, low-brow, or that makes people say ‘women are so stupid for liking this’ – that’s exactly the stuff I want more of.”

Self-awareness is a concept at the forefront of Calypso’s work. Women are aware of the role they play and the rituals they invest in and yet, are still patronised no matter what they choose to do. Typically feminine interests such as Makeup, Fashion, Sewing and Cooking are all belittled and valued less than male dominated subjects for only being associated with femininity. Calypso is quoted saying “The real problem is the way women are considered moronic for wanting to indulge in those things. Stop patronising us. We know what we’re doing.” The character of Joyce is in on the joke and invites the viewer to laugh with her.

Exploring the private underlife of a Woman in terms of being consumed by the laboured and artificial construct of femininity is prevalent in ‘What to do with a million years’. Calypso has been asked by male critics asking if she can call herself a feminist in a pose like ‘that’. As if to say if you tick the arbitrary to be considered typically feminine, you’re doing feminism wrong. In response she goes on to say ‘ I hate it when the privileged tell the oppressed how to protest.".

Social Commentary - Ableism

Panteha Aberashi is an artist from Los Angeles, California. She has a genetic blood disorder; sickle cell zero based thalassemia, which causes debilitating pain and bodily deterioration. Her work surrounds her experience with being chronically ill and the isolation that comes as a result. In particular the inaccessibility of our society as well as the violence, erasure, and marginalisation her and others have experienced. Ableism and lack of representation and accessibility in our society is a vital issue, making life much harder for those with disabilities.

Aberashi’s main focus within her work is to bring the representation the disabled community desperately needs. She explores and alters her body into abstracted disembodied physical forms to represent the complexities of living whilst being so highly examined and monitored. Photographs of her gestural forms is a direct contrast to her body’s dissection and objectification in hospital and the dehumanisation she feels due to this.

Using her own experience and displaying this through photography of her in the vulnerable state of near nakedness; propped up by crutches, is an emotive and interactive way to comment upon societies mistreatment of disabled bodies. The ability to be able to move around without a second thought is a privilege, most who are able-bodied don’t even know to acknowledge. The architectural failure of having steps up to a building is something so often overlooked but is vital in creating a society accessible to everyone.

https://www.panteha.com/selectedpress

https://www.panteha.com/new-page

Prejudice in art

Adrian Brandon is an artist from Brooklyn, he creates portraits using alcohol markers capturing the black experience. Most of his work aims to raise awareness and highlight the injustices the black community have to face. In 2019 Brandon started his series titled ‘Stolen’ involving him creating a portrait of individuals who have been killed as a result of police brutality and inherent racism in the system. He first works in pencil before colouring in the portrait each minute representing one year of their life.

He is quoted saying ‘Unfortunately, much of America has become numb to the loss of Black lives. My goal is to create art that creates an understanding of Black culture, Black love and Black pain so that we can move forward together.’

The above image on the left is Aiyana Stanley-Jones who was the youngest of the series at 7 years old, meaning 7 minutes of colour. Aiyana was sleeping in her Grandmother’s house when police conducted a home raid. After using a flash grenade, Officer Weekly fired one shot killing Aiyana. He claimed there was a struggle with her Grandmother causing his gun to fire. He walked free of manslaughter and reckless use of firearm charges. Nine years later, Aiyana’s family is still dealing with wrongful death lawsuits.

Stolen is an incredibly impactful and harrowing portrayal of the prejudice the black community is forced to live with. The portraits could almost be seen as a performance piece as a result of the enforced time limit Brandon set for himself and emotional process he has to go through to ‘complete’ a piece, reflecting on the persons life and how cruelly it was cut short. There is no chance to go back and add more colour just as these people had their chance to live a full life taken away. The people deserved a full portrait as well as a full life.

https://www.adrianbrandon.com/bio

Watch my animation!

Andy Goldsworthy is a British Sculptor who creates site specific land art in natural settings. Using organic materials such as: leaves, rocks and sticks align with his ethical viewpoint as an environmentalist. These materials leave no negative impact on the environment as they are all found outside and can decay. This adds a finite beauty to Goldsworthy’s work, temporality is a valuable aspect of his Land art in the way that it mirrors nature. He was quoted saying “When I make something, in a field, street or altering the landscape, it may vanish, but it’s part of the history of those places,”.

However, there is a certain artificial look to some of his work with leaves as a result of collective, similar natural tones appearing together. In the context of his careful organisation the colours appear much brighter and striking, something out of place when seen amongst nature due to its randomness. This juxtaposition of character, turning something usually so irregular and unplanned into meticulous patterns is something unique to Andy Goldsworthy and plays a part in why his work is so impactful.

Yayoi Kusama is a Japanese artist widely known for her sculptures, performance art and intricate paintings. She was inspired by a bizarre hallucination she had as a young girl where a field of flowers started talking to her. She felt as if she was disappearing into the flowers or as she describes it ‘self-obliterating’ into a field of endless dots. Her experience heavily influenced her later work including ‘dots obsession’. She was quoted saying ‘Our earth is only one polka dot among a million stars in the cosmos. Polka dots are a way to infinity. When we obliterate nature and our bodies with polka dots, we become part of the unity of our environment’. She uses the dots in her artwork as a way to become a part of; or melt into, the bigger universe.

The ‘dots obsession’ installation was created specifically for the Rice gallery in Houston, Texas. The gallery was entirely transformed into bright yellow with black dots of varying sizes. As well as containing large anthropomorphic balloons made of latex and covered in her signature dots. The sheer scale of Kusama's installation pieces is a factor of why they are so impactful. Taking up an entire gallery with such strong colours and shapes creates an almost other-worldly atmosphere. Kusama also explores Mental illness with themes of obsession and repetition which is displayed in ‘dots obsession’ and other work. Being able to stand within her artwork gives a vulnerable insight into Kusama's mind providing a moving psychological impression on the viewer.

An example of assemblage art is Tony Cragg’s ‘Stack’ consisting of a plethora of various materials and objects such as bricks, magazines and discarded wood. It resembles a cross section diagram of geographical layers with the planks of wood running horizontally along the width acting as sections. However, the materials used juxtapose the natural aspect of geography as these are all man made, mostly artificial and would otherwise have been discarded.

Notable themes within Cragg’s work include the relationship between humankind and the natural world. The overproduction of single use plastics and impact of the vast number of items we throw away are illustrated in this assemblage piece as well as the other four stacks he created. Cragg aims to create a ‘poetic mythology’ around industrially produced objects of our time, this is effectively displayed in ‘stack’. Spending so much time organising objects that seem to be thrown away in a second illustrates an element of care and precision otherwise not shown in relation to these disposable materials; creating an impactful contrast and bizarre element to the structure that engages viewers and engages in the mythology he was aiming to create.

Henri Gaudier-Brzeska was a French artist and sculptor known for his paintings and symbolic stone sculptures. He took inspiration from various cultures in his work, particularly objects and artefacts from the British Museum. Gaudier-Brzeska was also inspired by the Romanian sculptor Constantin Brancusi’s artwork, who took influence from Polynesian and African masks. Brancusi’s simplified representation of human features played a part in influencing Gaudier-Brzeska's work. The face is represented by a triangle in the ‘Red Stone Dancer’ as well as in other works by the artist, use of shapes and symbols to represent meaning is seen within some Chinese and Japanese art which Gaudier-Brzeska was interested in.

The stance of the body effectively captures the dancing movement of the figure into a moment of stillness. Using a brown/red toned material such as red Mansfield stone gives a natural earthy effect to the piece. The colour and texture of the form give an almost wood like effect alike that of the African masks he took inspiration from. Light reflects from the smooth stones various planes; the shiny surface enhances the interpreted movement of the dancer and effectively distracts from the static nature of a sculpted piece.