#bellatut1

Dina Matar

The Wedding Night

125 x 200 cm

Oil on Canvas

2014

Dina Matar was born in Gaza in 1985 and graduated with a Bachelor Degree in Art Education from Al Aqsa University in Gaza, 2007. I chose Matar as my artist of choice as she works with the notion of remains and memory after destruction. In this case, the brutal war in Palestine and what remains and prevails throughout such decimation.

Armand Boua,Les Shèguès de Djamtala 4, Armand Boua, 2017, Acrylic & collage on carton, 101 × 98 cm.

Armand Boua is an artists who works in  Abidjan, Ivory Coast. He uses his work and medium to illustrate the problems that street children are facing living in West Africa. He wants to show their lives in a different manner so that people take notice. Boua said that “Working in Abidjan, the economic capital at the crossroads of urbanisation and industrialisation and he experienced the place with a heightened sensitivity towards the issue. His observations are drawn mainly from street scenes where the increase in urban migration has created an ethnic,linguistic,cultural and social conflicts . This has started to create problems for the region and many artists are using their artworks to create awareness of  child abductions and terrible human loss.

His process was created out of experimenting with found materials, where his images of children evoke a sense of remembrance. Boua is known for his textures layers where he uses tar,acrylic on found cardboard objects. Each layer is applied and then taken off and the striped back. In the final product it leaves abstract forms which are both in and out of focus.

He also managed to create a careful balance between the heavy gestures and violent execution and also have gentle treatment of the subject matter. Armoud describes his paintings as saying “I wanted to show their suffering, their way of life, so that people are finally aware of this painful reality they pretend not to see.”

His figure of a child alone evokes a sense of loneliness.  The gesture marks of the child suggest an expressionist quality of internal turmoil. The limited tones of the greys and browns next to the intense red suggests an intense emotional space. THe fact that the child has no eyeconnect with the viers this suggests an obiodence and possibly isolation. The figures eye are closed and the figure is crouching in an almost protective manner. On the right side in the background there is either a rope or an invisible figure. We are unsure on her environment as the painting in in and out of focus. Boua has managed even though the image looks incomplete to make it complete, rich with meaning. In the tutorial we discussed the effects of gentrification and forced removals and its effect on the poor and vulnerable.

The mark making look as if it is graphic that has been distressed and peeling over time. Maybe the artist is trying to express the vulnerable lives of the children who are often displaced, homeless and forced to live on the outskirts of society.

Yolocaust by Shahak Shapira deals with subjects in relation to space and the implications of this.

Shahak found facebook photos of twelve individuals posing in amongst the Holocaust memorial, many in inappropriate. Shahak then took these photos and imposed them over visceral imagery from the holocaust. By doing this Shahak reinforces the history of the space, what it stands for and what it means. Since posting the images Shahak has since started a website titled “yolocaust’ where individuals may comment/post on their feelings. This work calls out the abuse of space, how ignorance around the meaning of space is immutable in certain examples. These images remind us that spaces hold meaning, hold memory and should not be glamorized in the pursuit of surface level values.

After today’s tut where we spoke on many topics including gentrification and displacement that is linked directly to the special apartheid of Cape Town today.

SPACIAL APARTHEID: (urban apartheid), refers to segregation of groups to remote areas.

The tut raised a lot of thoughts and questions in my mind as well as memories of first becoming aware that the post-apartheid, “rainbow nation” that I grew up under was yet again just another lie and that apartheid lived on in all spheres of the nation.

Artist Dean Hutton, is a genderqueer multi-media artist working from both Johannesburg and Cape Town, Hutton is most well known for their controversial performance piece,

FUCK WHITE PEOPLE.

Hutton first appeared in the suit during early stages of the Fees Must Fall Movement at Wits and UCT. I Remember being so torn at the time as I was battling a racist and ignorant family who had very questionable opinions on the protests. At a time when white South Africa was unfortunately showing its true colours Hutton’s piece was a launch pad for so many more questions I had.

The work speaks about a battle that is not the artists but one that is relevant, the artist is reflective of their own positionally as a white person in the situation and challenges whiteness and comments on the moment with sympathy but also anger.

I attended a lecture by Hutton where they spoke about their inspiration for the suit, during the begging stages of the fees must fall protests, Hutton was on campus at Wits university where they saw a black man wearing a shirt that said “fuck white people” on the back it said “being black is shit”, someone else saw the student and took a photo, the image ended up in the news and became a highly controversial topic of conversation. During the lecture Hutton explained how they were confused on how the media was so quick to insight outrage for the “fuck white people message” but turn a blind eye to “being black is shit”.

Dumparium, by Masaru Iwai.

Artistic solidarity is the process of creating a work that is based on a unity of interests, objectives or sympathies. This means creating a work that engages with every aspect of its space. From its geography and physicality to its community, culture and challenges. Masaru Iwai’s artwork ‘Dumparium’ does just that. It was created for the Reborn Art Festival - an artistic intervention that took place in Oshika Peninsula after a tragic tsunami devastated the area. The fair was intended to inspire creativity and community that would aid in the efforts of rebuilding of town. Dumparium is a geometric dome structure made from a series of wooden beam triangles. Within each triangle is a found object, resulting in a structure that looks colourful and decorative from afar. Before the tsunami, Oshika struggled with high levels of illegal dumping that happened in the woods. There was also an overpopulation of invasive deer which brought with ticks and leeches. The community dealt with this through seasonal hunting, however, it was never attended to that the large numbers of accumulating deer carcasses were never properly disposed of. Within each triangle in the dome, Iwai has placed objects that he found illegally dumped in the woods, including old deer carcasses. 

Doris Salcedo

Noviembre 6 y 7

2002

Wooden chairs

Doris Salcedo (born 1958) is a Colombian-born visual artist and sculptor. Her work is influenced by her experiences of life in Colombia, and is generally composed of commonplace items such as wooden furniture, clothing, concrete, grass, and rose petals. Salcedo’s work gives form to pain, trauma, and loss, while creating a safe space for individual and collective mourning. These themes originate from her own personal history. Members of her own family were among the many people who have disappeared in politically troubled Colombia. Much of her work deals with the fact that, “while the death of a loved one can be mourned, their disappearance leaves an unbearable emptiness”. (Saldcedo)

Noviembre 6 y 7 was a public installation made in commemoration of  the 17th anniversary of the Palace of Justice Siege in 1985. The Palace of Justice Siege was a brutal attack on the Supreme Court of Colombia by members of the guerrilla terrorist group. The group held approximately 300 hundred people hostage over the span of two days. Over 100 people lost their lives. Amounst those were Supreme Court justices, civilians and police officers. Salcedo’s work Noviembre 6 y 7 , spans over 53 hours on Nov. 6th and 7th 2002. Her piece consisted of lowering wooden chairs from the roof of The Palace of Justice at the particular time of day each victim was believed to have been killed.

Catherine Opie

I chose Catherines portrait series because I felt it connected most the the topic and really intreated me. all Catherines work strives to break patterns within sociable constructs and ideas of masculinity and the LGBTQ+ community but one of her portrait series’ specifically focussed on the spaces in which her subjects used and spent a lot of their time. she photographed a number of people and friends and then photographed their space to try create a more abstract portrait of the person. she used this try they identify coronations between space identity and sexuality. she continues to challenge peoples stereotypical ideas and views by asking people to do little write ups on how they view her subjects and even asks viewers to do the same to them selves almost like an interactive intervention piece to make people step out of their judgement. 

“Catherine Opie is an influential contemporary American photographer. Best known for her color portraits, Opie’s work explores the strata of our society by focusing on particular groups such as high school football players, S&M leather participants, and LGBT communities. Often politically charged, her photographs feature a central figure occupying a flattened space, highlighting her subject’s inner life through the removal of external detail. Throughout her practice, Opie investigates queer culture and personal history, creating work that is often autobiographical and informed by her experiences as a lesbian woman. In describing her iconic self-portrait, in which she appears bloodied and with the word ‘pervert’ carved into her chest, she explained, “I made the piece out of a reaction to all of the sudden gays and lesbians’ bringing on the ‘normal’ dialogue to us,” and wanted to “push the boundaries a little bit here about what you guys think normal is.” Still living and working on the west coast, Opie attended the San Francisco Art Institute and the California Institute of the Arts for her bachelor's and master's degrees, respectively. Born in Sandusky, OH in 1961, she has been the recipient of tremendous critical acclaim, including retrospectives at the Guggenheim Museum in New York in 2008 and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston in 2011.”

Catherine Opie 

Chloe, 1993

Photographs, Chromogenic print