#ci13

The 215 portraits of neighborhood residents that she gifted to the museum at the close of the exhibition reflect the relationships that she formed during her time there. These street photographs, taken around the neighborhood outside the portrait studio, document some of the first encounters the artist had in Homestead—with characters ranging from the town mayor, Betty “Bo Bo” Esper, and a factory worker named Diane to a shirtless young man on the Homestead Grays Bridge—as well as the homes and businesses that were to become familiar sights over the course of her stay.

Mladen Stilinović Croatian, b. 1947 Potatoes, Potatoes (Krumpira, Krumpira), 2001 Joining two other works by this 2013 Carnegie International artist already in the collection, Krumpira, Krumpira shows Stilinović crouching in a snow bank—a peddler in what appears to be a remote wilderness. Repeatedly, he calls out the word krumpira (Croatian for “potato”), though no one is nearby to hear him. The goods stacked on his cardboard box-cum-sales table, however, are not potatoes but thick, square pieces of vanilla cake. Cake is a symbol Stilinović has often used—in his series Geometry of Cakes (1993), for example—to evoke the cynicism of power, referring to the famous phrase allegedly spoken by Marie Antoinette: “If they have no bread, let them eat cake.” With cutting irony and shades of self-deprecating humor, in this video the artist seems to suggest both the cruel absurdity of that sentiment and an attempt to transfigure a symbol of decadence into something common. His meager entrepreneurial endeavor—whether we take him for the hawker he purports to be or the artist he actually is—is revealed as a sham, as selling frivolities under the guise of substance to a nonexistent audience.

Chapter XVII is one of the most written-about and provocative components of the series. Its subject is a group of Ukrainian orphans, united by their lack of discernible bloodline. Well-dressed in jackets, ties, and button-down shirts, these children, ages 6–16, appear in portraits arranged in ordered grid. Simon’s text tells us that the children are allowed to stay at the orphanage until age 16, when they are released and become susceptible to targeting “for human trafficking, prostitution, and child pornography.”

Since the mid-1960s, filmmaker Kamran Shirdel has made bold documentary films that address issues of everyday life, especially in his native Iran. Banned and censored for many years, Shirdel’s extraordinary work has not been widely seen until recently, and achieved a new level of visibility with his inclusion in the 2013 Carnegie International. This group of films represents nearly the entirety of Shirdel’s life’s work, from his surrealistic student work Mirrors through the peak of his subversive documentary period, his subsequent industrial commissions, and his late portrait film, Solitude Opus.

Pierre Leguillon French, b. 1969 Arbus Bonus, 2014 Pierre Leguillon’s artwork-as-exhibition Arbus Bonus encompasses 256 photographs by famed photographer Diane Arbus, bringing together hundreds of published magazine spreads that feature her editorial photography (rather than prints of street photography and the portraiture for which she is best known). Leguillon’s consideration of this major yet overlooked aspect of her oeuvre exposes a fascinating web of allusions and coincidences between image, history, and text. His project makes apparent how significant Arbus has been in defining the images of our popular culture.

Rodney Graham’s Phonokinetoscope installation combines a record player and a looping film, producing a strange and beautiful window into the mechanics of perception and the artist’s interior world. In the film—which only starts when a visitor places the needle on the record—the artist rides a bicycle through a Berlin park while tripping on acid. Because the soundtrack can be triggered at any point in the film, image and sound never quite link up, mirroring the disconnection between Graham’s hallucinogenic mind and the calm, quiet park visible to the viewer. Between the film image, music, and the mechanics of their presentation, questions of time, perception, and philosophy circle the idyllic ramble in the park.

Jestem, 2013 One of our visitors’ most loved and discussed works from the 2013 Carnegie International, Lara Favaretto’s sculpture Jestem invites wonder and myriad associations. The four cubes of compressed confetti, each weighing hundreds of pounds, perfectly capture the combination of spectacle, danger, and collapse that are at the heart of Favaretto’s important practice. This work, made especially for CMOA, disintegrates over the duration of its display, only to be reformed and shown again.