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Karen De Benedetti

SOCIAL FORMS: Art as Global Citizenship

· In partnership with CONVERGE 45 The Reser presents Jorge Tacla, Karl LeClair, Malia Jensen and Miroslav Lovric. ·

We are 5,000, here in this little corner of the city.
How many are we in all the cities of the world?
All of us, our eyes fixed on death.
How terrifying is the face of Fascism
For them, blood is a medal,
carnage is a heroic gesture.

Song, I cannot sing you well 
When I must sing out of fear.
When I am dying of fright.
When I find myself in these endless moments.
Where silence and cries are the echoes of my song.

Lines written by Chilean artist and political activist Victor Jara before being tortured, his hands chopped with an axe, and murdered by Pinochet’s military henchmen in September 1973 at a stadium holding thousands of people rounded up by the Junta, his body thrown out into the streets of Santiago.

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I spent several weeks in Chile some 18 months after that fateful date, traveling from Bolivia through the breathtaking, stark beauty of the Atacama desert of the North with its abandoned nitrate – and open-pit copper mines monopolized by British and later American capital. I stayed in Santiago for a while, where bullet holes remained in plain, demonstrative view, riddling the presidential palace, La Moneda, where the democratically elected, socialist President Salvador Allende had been killed during Pinochet’s Coup d’Etat. I knew of the violence of the new regime, fully supported by American industrial giant I.T.T. and the CIA (U.S. banks also extended more than $150‐million in short‐term credits to Chile and the Pentagon sold it 52 jet fighter and combat support planes in those 18 months,) but had no clue to its extent. Today’s officially recognized number of victims of the Junta, people killed, tortured or imprisoned for political reasons, is 40,018. That might not even account for the many “disappeared,” thrown out of helicopters into the sea. Military officers responsible for Jara’s murder were finally sentenced to 15 years in prison, in 2018, almost half a century later. Slow moving wheels of justice and all that. Barely anyone talked to me in 1975, much less about politics, the country seemed frozen in shock or fear and a nightly curfew was still in place.

Jorge Tacla Injury Report/ Informe de lesions, HD film 4:25 (2016 – 2023) Courtesy of Cristin Tierney Gallery

Although the days of the Junta are over, Chile is currently under duress in other ways, equally threatening to its population, particular the working class and the indigenous folks exposed to the consequences of mining. A United Nations report from two months ago states that Chile faces a daunting series of inter-connected environmental crises that violate human rights, including the fundamental right to live in a clean, healthy and sustainable environment. The country is particularly exposed to the effects of the climate crisis, among the 20 nations with the highest level of water stress in the world. Droughts and water pollution around lithium mining are intense, the latter a major export and subject to fierce struggles over ownership, bringing an unprecedented 1.5 million people out into the streets to protest for environmental justice 4 years ago.

All this as an introduction to Chilean artist Jorge Tacla and his work (his list of many achievements found in the link), currently presented at the Patricia Reser Center for the Arts, in partnership with Converge 45. The local arts organization, comprised of art professionals and business leaders, starts its Biennial officially on August 24, 2023. Planned are 15 exhibitions by international and American artists across multiple venues, tackling, as the organizers put it, “how art interacts with global power shifts in contemporary society, including how art is at the vanguard of societal redefinition and shifts towards more participatory culture.” (Watch for more reviews by various writers on ArtsWatch in weeks to come, covering the full spectrum of the shows.) The list of artist names – I have obviously not yet seen much of the work itself for the upcoming Biennial – suggests a surprising and challenging curation by art critic and author Christian Viveros-Fauné.

I. Jorge Tacla: Stagings/Escenarios.

At a time when the wagons are circled, and exclusionary nationalism (and worse ideological forces) once again raise their ugly head in so many of the countries we thought were steadfast democracies, a transnational approach to art is certainly important. Knowledge of an artist’s background, temporally, geographically and culturally, might help us to gain a greater understanding if not appreciation of his work, surely affected by specific experiential pressures. Tacla came of age in Chile during the time of the military coup and left the country for the United States in 1981, these days sharing his time between New York City and Santiago, Chile. Add to that Syrian and Palestinian ancestry, peoples exposed to inordinate amounts of suffering and oppression across their histories, a heightened sensibility for abuses of power and the consequences of displacement are to be expected. That sensibility indeed influenced the contents of his work that I encountered at The Reser, an exhibition titled Stagings/Escenarios.

There are three exhibits on view, a video, Injury Report/ Informe de lesions, that relates to the book burnings by the Chilean Junta, a timely reminder for us in our own country that the step from banning to burning is but a short one, once autocratic power is fully unleashed, and two paintings. One is extraordinary large, displayed on wooden structures that makes it look like a billboard, the other is traditionally hung. Staging, rather than scenarios, feels like an aptly chosen title for the show, given the way the paintings dramatize catastrophe.

Jorge Tacla Sign of Abandonment/Señal de abandono 60, (Detail) (20121) Oil and cold wax on canvas. Courtesy of Cristin Tierney Gallery

Sign of Abandonment/Señal de abandono 60 (offered with an instruction: interpretation left to the viewer) depicts an interior view of a room that could be a tiled kitchen transformed into a provisional field hospital, or a torture chamber, constructed with hastily thrown together cinderblocks. Central is a kind of operating table, with a side shelf of medical-looking instruments and tinctures, surrounded by amorphous forms that could be shackles or handcuffs, under a hovering cloud of markings that resemble musical notes, the echoes of resounding screams, or, alternatively, buzzing insects attracted by the remnants of bodily fluids. The one unambiguous representation in this monochromatic web of hints and suggestions is the visual anchor of a patch of blood, with a few tiny splashes detectable here or there. It steers our attention to the subjective suffering of a human being, whether harmed in situ or patched back together on a make-shift bed, creating empathy, but also narrowing our focus to victimhood. It forces a gruesome vision of physical harm, drawing us into the literal as well as metaphorical darkness of that chamber. Not much room for interpretation, frankly, if a puddle of blood gets visual place of honor.

Jorge Tacla Sign of Abandonment/Señal de abandono 60, (Details) (20121) Oil and cold wax on canvas. Courtesy of Cristin Tierney Gallery

The larger painting, Sign of Abandonment/Señal de abandono 34, displays a panoramic view of collective suffering, rather than honing in on a singular imagined body under duress. A frontal view of city blocks bombed to shreds evokes the real-life catastrophe of the siege of the Syrian city of Homs, where a three-year-long battle between the military and oppositional forces a decade ago led to indescribable acts of barbarism by Assad’s henchmen, until the rebels withdrew, and the government took hold.

Jorge Tacla Sign of Abandonment/Señal de abandono 34, (2018) Oil and cold wax on canvas Courtesy of Cristin Tierney Gallery

It is a truly interesting painting, despite flirting, at times, with clichéd ambiguity: are the pinks and coral hints at the horizon a hopeful sign of dawn, or are they the glow of still smoldering fires? Are the wispy clouds testimony to an indifferent nature, or plumes of smoke?

Jorge Tacla Sign of Abandonment/Señal de abandono 34, (2018) (Detail) Oil and cold wax on canvas Courtesy of Cristin Tierney Gallery

What made it fascinating to me is the subversive use of columnar arrangements, spatial divisions by means of subtle changes in coloration, vertical lines and actual, distinct columns that overlap on some of the four panels that comprise the entirety of the painting, The columns are enclosed in an unending repetition of violently destroyed human habitat. Columns and repetition were a device of what art historian Meyer Schapiro called “despotic art,” or arts of power, starting with baroque displays of endless columns in churches and cloisters, or colonial architecture in Egypt and India, government buildings with porticos, down to the mass media presentation of his time, then the 1930s, in the new medium of photography capturing hangars filled with rows of airplanes, or military divisions marching en bloc.

Tacla is turning the table, using those elements from the perspective of the displaced, rather than that of the abusive forces, the repetition of block after block of unmitigated destruction inducing horror, rather than awe. In its cityscape expansiveness it called to mind a 19th century painting of another hell, by John Martin – note the columnar repetition of the government buildings or an imaginary reconstruction of cities of antiquity.

Jorge Tacla Sign of Abandonment/Señal de abandono 34, (2018) (Detail) Oil and cold wax on canvas Courtesy of Cristin Tierney Gallery

John Martin Pandemonium (1841), Oil on canvas, 123 x 185 cm. Louvre, Paris. Based on John Milton’s “Paradise Lost”, where Pandemonium is the capital of Hell.

The billboard-like staging reminded me of the billboards seen on many commuter roads, displaying advertisement for (sub)urban neighborhoods: You’d be home now, if you lived here! Well, you’d be dead now, if you lived here, in Homs.

The association includes something of a dialectic, of course. Being reminded of the price of violent political conflict might make you aware of the gathering darkness around us or create empathy for refugees facing a watery Mediterranean grave during their flight. But the reassurance of not living “there” after all, allows us a distancing from those far-away places where genocide happens, enacted by “foreign barbarians,” promoting a false sense of security on our own shores.

The use of cold wax mixed with the oil paints adds to the unnerving feeling caused by the staging. It allows a manipulation of transparency, and so some of what I saw resembled the haze when you look through tears, if not through the dust that gets whipped up when buildings crumble. It also adds body and allows layering; on close inspection, the painting shows scars or buckled skin, as if skin is ripped off or has burnt to the point of melting. The association to skin really was the only direct – and shattering – link to the representation of human beings, rather than architectural ruins.

Jorge Tacla Sign of Abandonment/Señal de abandono 34, (2018) (Details) Oil and cold wax on canvas Courtesy of Cristin Tierney Gallery

I cannot help but wonder how thick-skinned the artist himself must be to make it as a wanderer between worlds, like any displaced person never quite belonging to either the old or the new. Early NYT review doubted his ability to reach high ground as a painter. That didn’t age well. Psychoanalytically absorbed reviewers attest him a profound death anxiety – I guess I’m with Maslow here, “when the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail,” including the aesthetics of destruction as a symbol for one’s psyche to acolytes of psychoanalysis. Critics attacked his monumental work at the Museum of Memory and Human Rights in Santiago, a series of plates that memorialized the place of Jara’s murder and is inscribed with his name – Al mismo tiempo, en el mismo lugar (At The Same Time, in The Same Place), 2010, – as too focused on the individual, particularly when the individual in question devoted his life to collective power.

The paintings on view at The Reser suggested to me something quite different, independent of my admiration of the technical prowess to create these monumental constructions and the artist’s resilience when reenacting suffering in the process of painting. In some ways they bear witness, questioning the relationship between the aesthetic and the social, particularly the violence so ubiquitous in our world. They want us to consider, like all good political art, how we bear or enable or resist social imperatives that are associated with power and its requisite tools.

Does art manage to shape our historical thinking, and does its form help us reconfigure our assumptions about the present? Can works of political art ultimately achieve change of a kind, beyond providing a contemporary label that soothes buyers’ conscience by making them feel “progressive”, sort of an art-washing for the soul of the (neo)liberal collector? I will turn to that question in a bit. Before we get there, let me introduce the other two artists on display at The Reser.

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“A successful work of art is not one which resolves objective contradictions in a spurious harmony, but one which expresses the idea of harmony negatively by embodying the contradictions, pure and un-compromised, in its innermost structure.” 
― Theodor W. Adorno, Essays on Music

The quote by Adorno, though focussed on modern music, could equally well be applied to curation. Curation is hard and often does not get the attention and appreciation it deserves, particularly when un-compromising. If you are a renowned curator charged with constructing large assemblies of artists, you have to balance your ideas and concepts with the interests of the organizing institutions, who have partially mercantilistic aspirations. Biennials, art fairs and the like do infuse a place with economic activity, after all. You might also face an embarrassment of riches – die Qual der Wahl is the German phrase, the torture of choice – with regard to the number of artists at your disposal, amongst whom you have to pick and choose, avoiding the dreaded commodification, pushing an important concept and protecting the state of your reputation simultaneously.

If you are a local curator, no matter how talented, your choices, on the other hand, are often somewhat restricted. If you have to combine the available work with that of heavy hitters (and I consider Tacla in that category) how do you protect the other artists from being overshadowed (no matter how good they might be, they are still less known), unless you believe in clichés like “A rising tide lifts all ships?” I don’t know the answer, but there are two comforting thoughts: for one, these lesser known artists will get exposure, that potentially opens up a larger circle of viewers eventually, if the quality of the art holds its own. More importantly, in my view, is the fact that a public confronted with art that is not yet labeled as awe-inspiring or famous, will find it much more approachable, opening interest in art in general. It might be an inspiration to listen to one’s own creative impulses, or an encouragement that early or mid-career work deserves representation. That said, the work of both artists that Karen de Benedetti picked, again showing her sensitivity for pairings as in previous shows that I reviewed, will reward viewers’ scrutiny. (Malia Jensen‘s sculpture was not yet present when I visited.)

II. Karl LeClair Perceptive Omissions // Miroslav Lovric Subconscious Conversations

What unites the work on display by two very different artist, Karl LeClair and Miroslav Lovric, is how it’s grounded in personal memory. For LeClair, intensely attuned to natural environments, drawing is a way to process the changes brought about by frequent relocations, from the East Coast to Idaho and now to the Pacific Northwest. His mixed media, printmaking techniques include intaglio, relief, and monotype (all of which were generously explained to me in my ignorance, including the preparation of the various papers, if using color, with background washes of layers of thinned acrylic, like watercolor).

Perceptive Omissions is presented almost like an installation, allowing direct, unmitigated access to the paper, reinforcing a tactile quality of the prints, the geometric rigidity softened by the occasional colorwash.

Karl LeClair Perceptive Omissions (2023) All works numbered, not labeled.

His drawings and monoprints capture the shifting characteristics of various geographical environments with a surprising tenderness. I sensed a cautious approach to new objects of his affections, trying to learn about a place, as well as a a hint of nostalgia about what had to be left behind.

The pairing of representational scenes and geometric drawings somehow reminded me of Western Esotericism, like the medieval engravings of Paul Yvan. Not sure why I picked up a hint of mysticism, but there you have it. Interpretation left to the viewer…

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Lovric’s work, Subconscious Conversations, was the most accessible to me, growing up in post-war Europe surrounded by prints of Klee, Kandinsky, Matisse, Calder or Joan Miró. The latter’s simple shapes, strong lines and colors came to mind when I looked at the present paintings and their faint surrealist connotations. Lovric, a refugee from Bosnia, another country with a recent bloody history and unresolved political conflict, works through his displacement with remembering that seems at times indistinguishable from longing. I get it. The acknowledgement that you will never be able to recover what is gone for good, once you have made a life in a different country, does not preclude a yearning for that you left behind, even if it no longer exists.

Miroslav Lovric Soul Catcher #2 (Woman) (2011) Mixed Media on Paper

He stated somewhere that his work is about hope and resilience, and I can certainly pick up a desire for optimism in the saturated, bright colors on display. It will speak to viewers, since we can all use a dose of positivity, even if woes are not grounded in political strife or experiences similar to those of the artists.

From left to right: Miroslav Lovric Autumn Tree (2020) Oil on Canvas; Red Nest (2020) Mixed Media on Paper; Questioning Bird (2015) Mixed Media on Paper.

Miroslav Lovric Garden (2021) Mixed Media on Paper

Yet I thought the strongest of the images on display was one that captured the immediacy of contemporary (pandemic) isolation, not related to the past at all. The monochromatic construction attends to traditional elements of windows and chairs, and adds a body, albeit to my eyes one that’s missing head and heart. There is corporality to the legs, but in the absence of social embrace, of human interaction, the core of a person vanishes. Or is not clearly delineated enough to be easily detected. Tell me about it.

Miroslav Lovric Solitude (2021) Charcoal on Paper

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III. Some considerations about political art.

Citizenship is the right to have rights. – Hanna Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (Ch.9.)

What does it mean to consider “art as global citizenship,” part of the Biennial’s title? Certainly not to have rights, or the corresponding obligations, as expressed in Arendt’s view of what it meant to be a citizen, during an era with many people deprived of any rights as refugees from fascistic regimes. I come back to her, for one, because I’m fussy about terms: citizenship is connected to people, not “art,” with a defined set of political criteria, and secondly, because Arendt’s philosophy is increasingly relevant today in the face of immigration politics, soon to be intensified by climate refugees. Well worth re-reading.

More likely, the intended meaning of “art as global citizenship” runs along the lines of what Hans-Ulrich Obrist, the renowned Swiss curator, uttered here (or everywhere, he utters a lot):

“Art can widen horizons, dissolve borders, is obliged to bring people, ideas, concepts together. A successful piece of art has the power to change expectations and perspectives….(art) is asked to facilitate supranational dialogue.” (My translation.)

Siegfried Kracauer’s phrase from his Weimar Essays, “They were everywhere, and belonged nowhere,” a referral to the masses as a cultural phenomenon during the1920s, could, in my opinion, also be applied to these ubiquitous tropes we hear today when discussing art. One of them, “Entgrenzung,” the act of removing borders and promoting class permeability and global interconnectedness, is among the most frequently used. Can art transcend borders and change perspectives? How would we empirically assess the actual impact of political art, and has anyone done so, beyond simply qualitative reporting that people are moved, or claim to have gained new insights, or flocked to see a particular work of art?

Art as Social Practice: Tania Bruguera and her art movement ‘Arte Útil’ engages in long-term, participatory projects that include a community center, political party for immigrants, and an institution working towards civic literacy and policy change in Cuba.

We have long held that political art, through forms of social commentary, can raise awareness and inspire dialogue. Art, we believe, can provide representation for those who otherwise remain invisible or marginalized, helping to de-stigmatize on occasion. Art can be a form of memorialization of significant events, either transmitting knowledge about them to present generations who are exposed to selective versions of history guarded by those in power, or future generations who can stitch together a picture of past times and events. (I have written about the politics of memory recently here and here.)

Art as instigator: William Blake was one of the first political artists trying to dissolve borders – in this case the church- imposed rigid division between good and evil.

Certainly an early socialist perspective on art suggested artists should serve society by assuming an ethical stance to reveal the workings of ideology by describing the truth. Do we have evidence that it works? Do people still think about new perspectives an hour after they left the museum? How do we find out if people who report being moved or challenged by a piece of art translate that into behavioral changes, voting patterns, a measurable decrease in racist, xenophobic or misogynistic attitudes or some such? If there are data, enlighten me! Me, the social scientist wants to know. Me, the art lover couldn’t care less. (I am excluding visual propaganda here, which has been empirically shown to manipulate people’s values successfully. It differs from single pieces of art by the frequency with which it showers the viewer, being mass produced and co-temporally broadcast across media.)

Art as memorialization: depicting historic events as they unfolded..

Micha Ulman Empty Library (1995) (My photographs)

This is another piece of art to commemorate book burnings, in this case in Germany during the prelude to the Holocaust. The monument at Berlin’s Bebelplatz is an underground library with enough room to fit 20 000 books, totally empty. Unobtrusive, easily missed, it consists of a 5 by 5 by 5 underground space that can be viewed through a glass cover – theoretically. The weather and temperature differential often fogs the glass over, so you only get a glimpse, a vanishing view, just like memory of the era that is slowly disappeared or disappearing.

Maybe the question for evidence of effectiveness is the wrong question. Maybe we should forget about the claimed or actual function of political art, when it is so obvious that artists across history could not help but serve as mirrors for the political and/or philosophical environments and conflicts of their day. Maybe artists are driven to description in face of the uncertainty of their existence within a political system, and really good art goes beyond that by pinpointing what the political functions are of the structures and events their describe: the function of violence, for example, during an authoritarian period, or the function of propaganda to prepare for catastrophe, or the function of assigning value to keep traditional hierarchies intact. It is about expression of the artist’s views on the injustices of the world, or their delineation of possible utopias, not their intended impact on public opinion or belief systems. They have a particular talent or even genius for describing the world as they see it, contemplating possibilities as they weigh them. Whether we, the viewers, actually pick up on that or transform it into action would not affect their production, even if it is desirable that we would.

Max Ernst Europa nach dem Regen (1933) (Europe after the Rain)

Art as premonition: depicted is a post-apocalyptic, new world order with Europe and Asia melting together.

Then again, maybe we can use the fact that art has threatened existing power structures to the point where it was forbidden, persecuted, criminalized or otherwise impeded, as indirect evidence of its effectiveness. The Kampfbund für deutsche Kultur (KfDK, or Fighting League for German Culture), for example, was founded in 1929 by Alfred Rosenberg, with the aim of promoting “German culture” while fighting the cultural threat of liberalism, leading to prohibition of “non-Aryan,” degenerate or progressive political art and the persecution of many artists. Similarly draconian measures can be seen in contemporary Russia or Iran.

Art as warning: Bauhaus artist Mariann Brandt weary of renewed militarization. “They are marching again.”

Art as activism: Photomontage by Hannah Höch Mutter, (1930) shown in the 1931 Berlin exhibition, Women in Distress, which she organized to fight for decriminalization of abortion; the show opened by Käthe Kollwitz.

One thing is empirically established: in times of social rupture, structural change of political systems and power struggles, societies become quite flooded with the depiction of catastrophes. If you look at the Weimar Republic, for example, there was a preoccupation with the visualization and dissection of catastrophes that seemingly emerged from the atrocities experienced during World War I, but seamlessly prepared, in insidious ways, the public for the horrors of its immediate future. The visual politics of people enamored with war and violence as an engine for society, like philosopher Ernst Jünger, filled the zone with imagery that celebrated the moment of danger, the unfolding of catastrophe. The new medium of photography lent itself to such manipulation – its mass distribution was in many cases intended to “produce docile subjects for the dawning spectacle of oppression and war.” (Isabel Gil, The Visuality of Catastrophe in Ernst Jünger’s Der gefährliche Augenblick, KulturPoetik, 2010, Bd. 10,p.87)

The Moment of Danger (Frontal Cover)

Preparing the masses: collective mourning after Lenin’s death, in New York

If we look at the ubiquity of depictions of catastrophes in all their gory details in our own time, with many other parallels to the 1930s looming, one wonders if we are in the process of being desensitized as well. Paintings of destructive consequences of war or torture like Tacla’s might rightfully warn us or make us think about the historical conflicts in parts of the world not our own (though surely underwritten by U.S. hegemonial interests,) or even be premonitions of things to come to our own backyard – I believe his art applies to anyone of those categories. But if they are integrated into a deluge of visual imagery of horror, from art, media and propaganda outlets alike, there might be unintended consequences, including the normalization of catastrophe.

Art as (scientific) witness: Forensic Architecture  uses architectural evidence in cases of war crimes or other human rights abuses, often focused on how the narrative justification differs between state and victims. Nominated for the Turner Prize in 2018.

Georg Simmel, another German sociologist and Neo-Kantian philosopher who died in 1918, anticipated something he called the the Tragedy of Culture. He believed that there was a dialectical relationship between “objective culture” – the art out there, or religion, rituals, etc. – and “subjective culture,” our own development as individuals with creative or intellectual abilities. He was convinced that the onslaught of objective cultural products, massive saturation with cultural information, would stunt our psychological growth, with us shutting down in the face of overwhelming stimulation. The idea reverberates with me, and I often find myself in a balancing act when deciding what should be processed and what should be ignored. In the case of the current exhibition at The Reser, I come fully down on the “Give it a shot” side. The work deserves our contemplation.

And here is another Latin American political artist, Facundo Cabral, assassinated some years back, with a song that describes some of the ways of being an artist in the world. “I did not come to explain to the world, I just came to play.”

Reclaiming Nature: Revelations at the Reser.

The most obvious contribution to social change that literature can make is simply to inform people of something they know nothing about. There are other situations where we believe we know something but don’t really know it in a visceral way, don’t really know it emotionally, to the point where it moves us to action.Howard Zinn in Afterword to American Protest Literature.

HOWARD ZINN’S WORDS echoed when trying to take in the riches of the current exhibition at the Patricia Reser Center for the Arts, Red Thread : Green Earth. Here I was surrounded by narratives (words as well as visual and performative acts of storytelling) offered by a collective of six African American women, telling us about their relationship to nature, history and mythology along ancestral pathways. Many of the stories were unfamiliar to me. At the same time, the work shown would make anyone who is the slightest bit interested in nature feel a bond to the artists who explore their own deep love for it. That combination of differences and similarities makes for a powerful experience, a sense of being invited into an unfamiliar circle and then discovering you belong there in bits and piece as well, easing your way into learning about all that you don’t know.

Intisar Abioto The Black Swan Has Landed

The women of Studio Abioto, mother Midnite and daughters Amenta, Kalimah (Dr. Wood Chopper,) Intisar, Medina and Ni offer a range of work across different media: poetry, assemblage, sculpture, film making, photography, printmaking, computer graphics, music and interactive performance are all on the menu. The different art forms do not dominate (or distract from each other) but rather enhance each other, just as the artists did in real life when I interviewed them, in warm and mutually reenforcing interactions. The art on display provides individual pieces towards the completion of a larger puzzle. Whatever the dynamics in this tightly knit family of artists might be, their work is proof positive of the old German Gestalt Psychology adage: the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Each individual voice contributes, but it is the message sung by the chorus that emerges with clarity and force.

Front Row center: Ni Abioto. Right in yellow jacket: Medinah Abioto. Back Row: Second from Left Dr. Wood Chopper, Center: Midnite, third from Right Intasar Abioto, Second from Right: Amenta Abioto.

Photo Credit: Joe Cantrell

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The Mystery Unfolds.” – Amenta Abioto, Lyrics to Plant It.

BRING TIME, when you visit this exhibition. For that matter, bring the kids, the grandparents, your Thanksgiving guests, uncle Theo, whoever you can think of. There is much to explore and much that would hold interests for everyone across generations. The informality in the display of the work – clothespins to the rescue! – immediately invites you in, curled paper creating a 3 D echo of the sculptural work in its vicinity.

There are planters scattered throughout, plant materials used in the creation of several assemblages, plants dominant in photographs, plant parts used in small sculptures. The red thread, it seems then, is nature and the artists’ relationship to it, winding its way through the gallery and in and out of the works. Dig a little bit deeper, though, and the red thread emerges as a symbol of the strength and suffering of Africans in the Diaspora: the trail of blood created by ruthless slavers, the blood lines conferred by women who brought their children into the world, and taught them the body of knowledge of their ancestors.

Midnite Abioto upper right, The Egungun upper left, details.

Two larger-than-life matriarchal figures can be found in the main gallery and in the upstairs lobby. Created by Midnite, they embody pretty much every possible symbolism representing the experience of slavery and the torturous path through a society that has yet to overcome structural racism. The artist was trained and worked as a lawyer and Civil Rights advocate in Mississippi and Tennessee before she relocated to Portland. Her art reflects both her analytic precision as an attorney and her broad knowledge of the historical backdrop. She attributes her confidence to explore ever new avenues of artistic expression to her upbringing in a Baptist church that empowered young girls to find their own way.

The Egungun Rise From the Depth of the Sea upstairs evokes the millions of lives lost during the Middle Passage, on ships, water and land. The many photographs, historical items, beads, tools, vessels and plant materials, are collaged into a statue that stands in front of a poem, The Egungun’s Song, which provides the frame for thoughts about freedom – or the absence thereof. A small mirror at eye level within the sculpture cleverly reflects the visitor’s own face while exploring the mysteries in front of us – we are drawn into a connection that implies a shared history, linked through the generations, part of the picture but on different sides.

The Forest Queen Descent in the Middle Passage downstairs, again juxtaposed with text, is a marvel constructed of foraged plant materials, pottery, fabric and written documents relating to the slave trade. Full-figured with an emphasis on voluptuous form so often ridiculed, a typical body type of Black women, she proudly lifts up new life and the memories of lost souls emerge through translucent dried leaves of the “silver dollar” plant (Lunaria Annua) also known as Annual Honesty. The concept of money and slave trade are easily understood; some of the other symbolism – river birch as protection, adaptability, and renewal, for example – need a bit of explanation. The European Renaissance tradition of symbolism in art, providing multitudes of clues that (only) the initiated understood, finds a perfect counterpart here, inviting us into a world of meaning that is new for many of us and begs for exploration. In some ways it alerts to the ways how specialized knowledge was used to separate people, historically used to keep power hierarchies intact.

Midnite The Forrest Queen Photo Credit for lower right: Joe Cantrell.

The upstairs Emerging Artist gallery also displays some of the work of the youngest member of the Abioto family, Medina. Her magical and mythological creatures are made with digital art processing programs and display throughout Black features overall still absent in the fantasy arts world. These fairies also contain a multitude of symbols associated with nature, tulips, flame lily, wisteria and, importantly, water, among them. I found them not just whimsical, maybe even enchanting for the younger kids, but suggesting a certain toughness, a brave willingness to engage the world on their own terms.

Medina Abioto, Water Nymph. Photo Credit on Left: Joe Cantrell.

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That by sharing our love of Nature, we might call each other into a better relationship with the Earth and with each other, rather than dismissing those whose views differ from our own. That by revealing what it is we love, we honor our common ground and our common humanity.” by Carolyn Finney, Earth Island Journal, 7/2022

INTISAR ABIOTO’S PHOTOGRAPHS, hung on the walls and etherial against the windows of the Reser Gallery, embrace portraiture and nature – preferably one situated within the other. Some of the images bring the point home by a kind of double exposure – photographing a person and then photographing a print of that portrait in the forest, a crossover in time and place. Next to the beauty and vivacity she reliably captures, both in the very young and the old, the photographer documents the relationship between these women and the environment, in the woods and on the farm. The interaction between Blacks and nature in this country has been often evaluated through a White lens – one claiming that White desire and privilege of embracing, experiencing and conserving nature was not shared. Funny we should think so, given that everything was done to prevent Black citizens from pursuit of existential interaction with the land – namely farming – or recreational experience of nature, hiking in the great Outdoors.

Intisar Abioto Sidony III Photo Credit on Left: Joe Cantrell.

Historic legislation limited both movement and accessibility for African Americans, as well as American Indians, Chinese, and other non-White people in the United States. This included the California Lands Claims Act of 1851, the Black Codes (1861–65), the Dawes Act (1887), and the Curtis Act (1898). The reason to exclude non-White people from nature was a simple one: with the abolition of slavery plantation owners and former slave holders needed a way to force the Freedmen to work during Reconstruction. Their solution, as I’ve written elsewhere,

“…make it so that the former slaves had no independent access to food or others means of survival, so that they were forced to accept working conditions and substandard wages just to stay alive. Previously, slaves had been assigned small garden plots and permitted to forage and hunt on the plantation grounds, so that the owners could save feeding costs. It was theoretically possible for the 4 million freed slaves to go on living from the land, and selling surplus goods if foraging was successful. It had happened before – In the Caribbean Islands slaves from sugar plantations went to live in the hills, and the British colonialists had to import workers from Asia at great cost. So hunting and fishing or grazing livestock on private land was outlawed, and labor laws and vagrancy statutes established that allowed courts “to sentence to hard labor “stubborn servants” and workers who did not accept “customary” wages.” The threat of starvation had to hang over laborers to force them into working the fields.”

These days, access to public land is theoretically no longer tied to race. Yet the remnants of historic exclusion linger, and there are horrifying statistics about how often Black hikers, campers and birdwatchers are threatened, even though their numbers are enormously underrepresented in State parks. The range includes attacks on property and physical safety, from slashing tires and tents, to actual attempts at lynching. Publications like the Sierra Club Magazine, not known for hyped-up commentary, delivers the statistical details.

Intisar Abioto Sidney and the Amaranth

Carolyn Finney’s eye-opening book Black Faces, White Spaces: Reimagining the Relationship of African Americans to the Great Outdoors describes the historical underpinnings of this exclusion, as well as facets of the African American experience of working with the land and regaining farming expertise. One of my favorite photographs in the exhibition is a young girl handling collard greens at the Mudbone Grown farm in Corbett, OR. Thoroughly grounded, clearly in her element, the girls looks like an embodiment of a new farming generation. Mudbone Grown “is a black-owned farm enterprise that promotes inter-generational community-based farming that creates measurable and sustainable environmental, social, cultural, and economic impacts… with a five-year goal to enhance food security, reduce energy use, improve community health and well-being, and stabilize our communities.” Reclaiming green space and production still has a long way to go, but vanguards exist, and Abioto’s documentation will hopefully spread the word as much as remind us that we share common ground in our love of nature.

Intisar Abioto Mone Auset

***

I’m trying to speak––to write––the truth. I’m trying to be clear. I’m not interested in being fancy, or even original. Clarity and truth will be plenty, if I can only achieve them.” – Octavia Butler, Parable of the Sower.

LIKE BUTLER’S PROTAGONIST in the Parable of the Sower, Kalimah a.k.a. Dr. Wood Chopper, desires to present the truth as clearly as possible. She also embraces several of Butler’s recurring themes, the issue of inclusion and exclusion among them. She might not be interested in being fancy or original, but, let me tell you, original she is. Somehow the artist manages to make the deadly serious witty, and the seemingly funny descend into a dark place. The short films on display in the little projection room of the Gallery at the Reser are clever and enormously empathetic when it comes to describing how all that is “different” can be labeled in either constructive or destructive ways. The way that our gaze is directed to perceive something that might be a particular talent as something that is perhaps sinister, reveals the power of labeling, and/or othering. One video is a dire, yet extremely funny warning about climate change and the consequences of our greed undermining restorative action, again echos of Butler’s post-apocalyptic dystopia.

Screen Shots and Stills from the videos.

Kalimah has worked as a teaching artist at NW Film Center, Boedecker Foundation, Caldera Arts and others, centered around documentary and experimental video, story structure, and the technical aspects of making a short film. Take the time to view what is looped at the Reser. Much food for thought.

Amenta Abioto. Dr. Wood Chopper Photo Credit on right: Joe Cantrell.

Next to the video projection, Amenta Abioto’s lyrics can be read on the wall. Here is her music video of Plant It. She is a gifted musician and a notable figure in the Portland music scene and will perform in the context of the current show later this year. Some of her sculptures, fashioned from foraged materials and some of her prints can also be found at the downstairs gallery.

***

Say the people who could fly kept their power […] They kept their secret magic in the land of slavery. .” – Virginia Hamilton, The People Could Fly.

Since last November, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC offers an Afrofuturist Period Room named Before Yesterday We Could Fly. Afrofuturism is a transdisciplinary creative mode that centers Black imagination, excellence, and self-determination. The name of the Period Room is inspired by Virginia Hamilton’s legendary retellings of the Flying African tale, “which celebrates enslaved peoples’ imagination, creative uses of flight, and the significance of spirituality and mysticism to Black communities in the midst of great uncertainty.”

Well, the MET is late to the game. Already over a decade ago, the Abioto sisters co-produced The People Could Fly Project, a 200,000-mile flying arts expedition exploring realities of flight and freedom within the African diasporic myth of the flying Africans. Filmed in New York, Los Angeles, Cairo, Egypt; Djibouti, it traveled across the US, to Morocco, Djibouti, Jamaica, and beyond to seek the reality of this legend in the lives and dreams of people today.

Ni Abioto returns to the issue of dreaming and creating new realities for the world with her contribution to Red Thread:Green Earth, her installation of the Altar of the Emerald Ocelot. The site is intended as a portal into imagination, asking all of us to contribute our hopes and visions, written down on provided slips of paper or sent in via social media, tagged #emeraldocelot @niabioto @studioabioto.

Ni Abioto (Photo from Studio Abioto Website) Imagination Portal.

It is an inclusionary process, stressing the communal action required to imagine and then realize a better, healthier world. It really encapsulates what I took home from this exhibition in general: there should not be an us vs. them, particularly not when it comes to cherishing and protecting our earth. Love for nature is a shared enterprise, and so is stewardship, our responsibility to the planet and each other. The evil of slavery has left ugly scars on souls, bodies and access to nature alike, but these artists embrace all who are willing to work towards change and commit to conservancy. A powerful message of healing.

***.

THE RESER OPENED ITS DOOR IN MARCH, 2022, in Beaverton, OR, one of the most diverse places in this not very diverse state. In these short months, the Art Gallery has established itself as an important player in my book, with multiple exhibitions committed to “multicultural learning experiences” which research has shown to break down barriers between differing cultures and to encourage creative thinking. It helps to have a curator, Karen de Benedetti, who is willing to take on enormously complex exhibits and who seems to have a special radar for impressive local talent. Importantly, the shows I have seen did not sacrifice quality for message. But the commitment to message – one of common ground and shared humanity – seems to be strong at the Reser, and for that we should be grateful. This is all the more important in times like our’s when the teaching of history – ALL aspects of history of our nation – is under assault. From book banning to restricted curricula, there are powers that hope to erase, dismiss or ignore the experiences of whole populations of our nation. Learning about how non-White groups live, suffer, hope and dream is of the essence if we want social change towards a more equitable world. We have a long way to go.

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Red Thread: Green Earth

November 2 – January 7

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Art Gallery at The Reser

12625 SW Crescent Street, Beaverton, OR 97005

Saturday, November 19 | 11:30 am: All Ages Performative Storytime

Wednesday, November 30 | 6:30 pm Artist Talk & Film Screening

Friday, December 2 | 6 – 9 pm First Friday

Friday, January 6 | 6 – 9 pm Closing Reception & First Friday

All gallery events are FREE and open to the public.

The Red Shimmer of Remembering – Celilo Recalled at The Reser

“…Make sure the spirits of these lands are respected and treated with goodwill.
The land is a being who remembers everything.
You will have to answer to your children, and their children, and theirs—
The red shimmer of remembering will compel you up the night to walk the perimeter of truth for understanding
….” – Joy Harjo – Excerpt from Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings (2015)

Analee Fuentes (Mexican-American) Sockeye Salmon, Spawning Oil on Canvas

Joy Harjo, a Musckogee Creek Nation member and 23rd Poet Laureate of the U.S., urged us in a recent collection of poems, Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings, to assess our place in the world, to mind our obligations derived from history, and to fulfill our duty to “speak in the language of justice.”

Celilo, Never Silenced, the remarkable inaugural art exhibition at the newly opened Patricia Reser Center for the Arts in Beaverton, provides memory aides that will help us to “walk the perimeter of truth,” as Harjo phrases it, perhaps the first step in the direction of justice.

What was Celilo? Who were the people displaced by a U.S. governmental decision to dam up a river that provided existential, spiritual and cultural essentials at Celilo falls where salmon fishing and concomitant trade meetings for the Pacific Northwest tribes happened since time immemorial? As I wrote before in OregonArtsWatch, the fates of salmon and the Northwest tribes were intertwined and received an immeasurable blow when the Dalles dam was constructed in 1957. The dam inundated the upstream Celilo Falls and Celilo village, the largest trading center for salmon, with scant compensation for the loss. Subpar housing was built only for a few permanent residents of the village who were displaced, ignoring all those tribal members who lived on reservations but regularly came to Celilo to fish and trade. It took until 2005 to start building the promised structures and no serious reparations have been paid for the immense loss of livelihoods that depend on salmon fishing.

Sara Siestreem (Hanis Coos / Confederated Tribes of Coos / Lower Umpqua / Siuslaw) Disasters of Man Acrylic, Graphite, China Marker, Color Pencil on BFK

I honestly have no idea how many people in Oregon, if approached on the street, would know this history or be aware of its implications. I wager that for most of us there will be few associations, negative or positive. For Pacific Northwest tribes, on the other hand, it was a rupture, endangering fish and river health alike, increasing conflict over ever scarcer resources, and ignoring the spiritual importance of salmon to tribal culture as much as the fact that food security was endangered with less protein available.

Richard Rowland (Hawaiian) Ahikaaroa Firebox Vase Anagama Wood-fired Vase

The Reser exhibition provides an educational starting point for a conversation about Native American losses and the conflict surrounding broken promises, undermined treaties, and the consequences for tribal members in the present and not just some hazy past. That said, the show is also a marvel in the way it collects and displays a wide range of artworks across diverse media, thoughtfully curated by gallery coordinator Karen De Benedetti, showcasing the resilience and power of contemporary tribal artists.

Gail Tremblay (Onondaga and Mi’kmaq) Stone Giants sleeping under the Bear Star Acrylic on Canvas 

De Benedetti knows to give the work room to breathe instead of overstuffing the walls, has a keen eye, and is willing to take risks with selections that vary across styles and accessibility – and all that in a part-time position, which makes the results all the more impressive. Trained as an artist and with a wide repertoire of experiences across educational and exhibitory settings, including positions at two previous art centers started from scratch, she knows the ropes. She managed to compile a set of works that introduce us to a significant number and variety of current Native American artists, one more interesting than the next.

Don Bailey (Hupa tribal member, raised on the Hoopa Valley Reservation in California) Once upon a time on the Columbia Oil on Canvas

Bailey is new to me. I was completely taken with the interplay of ambiguous planes in the painting, as well as the double use of paddle/pestle in the lower right corner, the landscape shifting in and out of configurations belonging to either nature or man.

Fused and blown glass, ceramics, painting, linocut prints, sculpture, photography, archival footage, poetry – smartly arranged, all telling a story, from different perspectives, about a river, a place, a sacred fishing ground and displaced nations – rising in resilience with memory intact and now translated into art. The “perimeter of truth” of which Harjo speaks was really laid out across these walls.

Amply represented is is Lillian Pitt’s intricate work. A member of the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs/ Wasco/ Yakama, she and Rick Bartow, who was an enrolled member of the Mad River Band of Wiyot Indians, and whose work is also included, probably have the highest name recognition.

Lillian Pitt River Stick Indian Cast Crystal, Steel and Granite

Lillian Pitt Ancestors Fused Glass

Lillian Pitt River Guardian Cast Crystal, Steele and Granite

Another familiar name is Joe Feddersen, a member of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation (Okanagan and Arrow Lakes.) His sculptures exhibit an almost clinical serenity I so often associate with good blown glass, letting us perceive light through reflection and cast shadow, belying the insane skill required to produce such quiet elegance.

Joe Feddersen Fishtrap Blown Glass

Joe Feddersen Fishtrap V Blown Glass

There is archival photography capturing the history and contemporary photography by Joe Cantrell, Cherokee, raised in Cherokee County, Oklahoma who also contributed a driftwood sculpture.

Joe Cantrell Totem Enduring Resilience Driftwood

Joe Cantrell Walking Together Digital photograph on aluminum

***

When you exit the gallery towards the main entrance hall, you step into a large space marked by wood, glass, steel and concrete with a motion-sensitive public sculpture of a dandelion shedding its seeds. Brian Libby, my colleague at OregonArtsWatch, wrote about the history, architecture and philanthropy of Patricia Reser regarding the building here.

Jacqueline Metz and Nancy Chew Puff Rearview Mirror Ball

The Reser Center has at its core a state-of-the-art theatre that has multi-purpose use and, come June, will be presenting Portland Chamber Orchestra’s production of a large-scale work by Nancy Ives, Celilo Falls: We were there. The chamber-music piece will be accompanied by text and storytelling by Ed Edmo (Shoshone-Bannock) and projected photographic images by Joe Cantrell (Cherokee) which explores the geologic and human history of Celilo Falls.

It never ceases to amaze me how a single individual with a vision, means and generosity, can set great things in motion.

Pah-Tu Pitt (Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs / Wasco / Yakama / Pitt River (Wintu)) Salish Protector Mask Carved Yellow Cedar – Sean Gallagher (Asuruk, Inupiaq) Arctic Goose Transcendence Acrylic on Canvas

When you walk upstairs you enter a space with a small gallery for emerging artists, which is as light-filled, with giant windows, as the first-floor space that abuts the street. On all levels, the outside is invited in, an openness towards and desire to merge with the community – which is by all reports what the new arts center is all about. Chris Ayzoukian, the Reser’s director, wants to celebrate the different cultures in the community and provide a platform that gives diverse artists a voice with this performing arts center. The building, which makes the inside visible wherever possible, reflects that goal. At the same time, the neighborhood is reflected in the glass of several of the gallery works, including one by Jonnel Covault, also new to me.

Jonnel Covault Undamned Linocut Print

Rick Bartow (Mad River Band of Wiyot Indians,) Fall Hawk I Monotype

Covault’s linocuts capture the landscape in precise and elegant ways, walking a shifting line between abstract patterns and the occasional hyper-representation, often discovered only when you look closely.

Jonnel Covault The Powers that Be Linocut Print

Jonnel Covault Over the Fall Linocut Print

***

Walking around the Reser, art gallery and building alike, I was thinking back to my last visit to The Whitney for the Biennial in 2019. If you imagine a portion of the NYC’s museum for contemporary art, condensed to an elongated miniature block and plopped down in Beaverton, you might find some similarities.

Whitney Museum of Contemporary Art upper left; the rest is The Reser.

Yes, a different world, a different league, but comparable in a shared thematic focus on inclusion of diverse constituencies. Both institutions are partly trying to use art to help us understand, in light of a sometimes violent history, who we and who others are and who we want to be. All of which includes an acknowledgement that there is often a separation between co-existing cultures, driven on one side by anything from racism to ignorance to fleeting guilt-tinged hesitancy to engage in conversation, met potentially by historically justified distrust and desire for inward protection on the other side.

I had written about the Whitney’s approach in 2019 here.

And this is where the power of the exhibition kicks in: demonstrating the brutal division between those of us who are clueless about what many of the artworks imply, and those who get it in the blink of an eye, being familiar with the expressed contents via the reality of one’s daily existence. We might share the same space, in world and museum alike, but we surely do not share a language or the experiences eventually captured by that language when it relates to race, gender, disability, and access.

I tried to explore a possible bridging between worlds by photographing NYC street-art found in Harlem and Bushwick, the East Village and Williamsburg, communal expressions of the issues at the center of the museum pieces, a call and response between cultures.

This year’s Biennial at the Whitney, opening in April, is titled Quiet as it’s kept, addressing our desire to look away from the harm we cause or have experienced, keep it secret and silent, no matter how much trauma ensued. The current Reser exhibition proudly defies keeping it quiet. Like all good art and education, it raises questions, sometimes uncomfortably so, and provides a toolbox so that we ourselves can explore potential answers. In this context it is helpful that there is support through organizations that have a history of engaging in dialogue.

One of those partners is the Confluence Project. The community-based non-profit presents indigenous voices to connect to the ecology, history and culture of the Columbia River System. Besides educational programs – here and here are some about Celilo – there are art landscapes that link present and past, open to be explored by all. One of my favorites is easily reached in the Sandy River Delta. Maya Lin’s bird blind, located at 1000 Acres park, was constructed with black locust, an invasive species to the Northwest. Its use after removal from the landscape underlines the commitment to sustainability. The wooden slats tell the names and current status of 134 species Lewis and Clark noted on their westward journey. As Harjo suggests, the land might be a being that remembers everything. This land art helps us to remember as well.

Make your way to the Reser first, though. Parking is easy with an adjacent structure, (butterfly-adorned, no less, with threatened Fender’s Blues.)

Will Schlough Gather Painted Aluminum

The Max station is a stone’s throw away, and outside seating is available around the arts center to take a break and enjoy spring temperatures, public art,

Jason Klimoski and Lesley Chang, StudioKCA Ribbon Concrete, steel, LED

and a bit of reclaimed duck pond. The Westside is lucky to have a new, important destination. Really, we all are.

Artists talks are coming up. More inclusive exhibitions are being planned. Go check it out!

Saturday, April 30th | 2:00 pm – Artist talk with Joe Cantrell, Ed Edmo & Nancy Ives

Saturday, May 14th / Artist talk with Analeee Fuentes & Richard Rowland

Saturday May 22nd / Artist talk with Lillian Pitt, Sara Siestreem, Greg Archuletta and Greg Robinson More details to come:www.thereser.org

 

Gallery exhibit from March 1 – June 5, 2022. Gallery hours are Wednesday-Saturday 10 am-6 pm.

Patricia Reser Center for the Arts, 12625 SW Crescent St, Beaverton, OR 97005