The Wonder Women 11: Eye of the Storm Exhibition was the first exhibition I went to on my own. The exhibition was about climate change and our environment is being affected by mankind's pollution. Climate change is often ignored or not taken seriously because the media portrays it to be a hoax or a something not to be taken seriously. President Donald Trump does not believe in climate change and thinks that having Global Warming is a good thing. He thinks that Global Warming is a hoax which can influence countless of people. The Wonder Women 11 consist of only women artist show casing their art about the importance of climate change. Hopefully their art can influence people to take climate change seriously and how humankind is affecting the environment. The exhibition consists of only women which is great because the art world is dominated by men. The Guerrilla Girls have been fighting for women's equality in art museums. Much like the Guerrilla Girls who spread their awareness through their art the Wonder Women doing this exhibition are demonstrating their art to spread awareness about climate change through art. The name Wonder Women 11 is perfect for empowering feminism because it references Wonder Woman. All of the art that the Wonder Women 11 created made the viewer stare and ponder the meaning of how pollution is affecting our environment. Next to the art pieces there is a small summary explaining the artists inspiration and intent with creating the art piece.
 |
| Glacial Ablation by Gwen Charles |
The art piece that stood out to me first was
Glacial Ablation by Gwen Charles. Her art piece was a video of plastic being put over a woman. When I visited the exhibition, Professor Cacoilo and she told me that it was a her under that plastic sheet. I was really surprised because someone, a human being was under the sheets rather than placing an object instead of a person. But that is the reason why she used a herself because the plastic represents how women are being suffocated by the patriarchy. According to Bell Hooks "Patriarchy is a political-social system that insists that males are inherently dominating superior to everything and everyone deemed weak, especially females and endowed with the right to dominate and rule over the weak and to maintain that dominance through various forms of psychological terrorism and violence." This art made me think about how the artist under there is suffocating under the plastic. I was thinking the plastic was the pollution that is in our air and how are all slowly suffocating under it. At least that is how I interpreted it when I was first told that the artist was under the silver mylar and plastic sheets. The artist Gwen Charles created the piece by making a video that loops that speeds up and slows down around 25 percent. This piece was inspired by the icebergs that break into the ocean which is caused by Global Warming. Due to increasing temperatures the sea levels are rising due to icebergs and glaciers melting into the ocean.
 |
The Forest of Shadows and Memories
by Jessica Demcsak |
The second piece that I picked is
The Forest of Shadows and Memories by Jessica Demcsak. This stood out to me because of the wooden logs that were stacked still in the middle of the room. Jessica Demcsak made this art piece for the residency project which was inspired from all of the recent hurricanes. She was in Florida two weeks before Hurricane Katrina hit Florida. Also, she returned to Florida after Hurricane Katrina hit Florida and saw all of the homes that were destroyed hence the broken wood stacked on the ground. She also witnessed all of the homes that were destroyed by Hurricane Sandy and made her want to spread awareness on the increase of hurricanes in the last couple of years. Due to all of the homes that were destroyed by the hurricanes many people became homeless. She wanted to spread awareness of climate change to prevent further hurricanes so people do not lose their homes. She also made this art piece to honor the families that lost their homes, memories, and loved ones. Much like her inspirations to show how the people were affected by the hurricane Chan wanted to create a project that helped the people homes were destroyed by the hurricane. Michael Rakowitz made the
ParaSITE as a test project to make temporary/portable homes for the homeless. He wanted to spread awareness of the homeless and made seven prototypes and placed them around New York. This was to make people see what it would be like if more of these temporary homes were around buildings. In a similar way to the
ParaSite project the
Snail Shell System is also a mobile home that is used to combat homelessness.
The Snail Shell System was created by the N55.
 |
| Re-appropriating Nature and Bonding with Plastic/ Silicon, Leaves and Plastic debris by Olga Mercedes Bautista |
The last piece that I picked from the Wonder Women 11: Eye of the Storm Art Exhibition is the
Bonding with Plastic art piece by Olga Mercedes Bautista. This piece was the last piece I looked at before I left the exhibition because the plastic tree bark caught my attention. The tree bark looked like it was connected to plastic and how it was being infused with it. The plastic being infused with the wood makes it seem like Earth's inevitable outcome with the plastic that is covering our oceans. Professor Cacoilo pointed out that the plastic being apart of wood is like Garbage Island which is trash that is collected over the years to create a large body of garbage. According to USAtoday.com Garbage Island is twice the size of Texas. The garbage is not only plastic but an accumulated gathering of debris. The trash is also harming the wild life that is in the sea around garbage island. In Olga Mercedes Bautista paper she mentioned that "Plastics have outgrown most other man-made materials, causing many threats to the planet." Plastic has become a big part of objects created in the U.S. I remember in class we talked about how plastic is in every product we use and we do not even realize we are using them. I also recall Professor Caciolo explaining to the class how plastic is expensive and how we are basically buying the plastic bottle. Companies want our money so they taint our waters with chemicals so that we buy more plastic water bottles from them. The plastic ends up polluting the earth which kills our environment. Olga Mercedes Bautista created this piece because of "Hurricane Sandy and humanity's complicated relationship with plastic." She also wanted to show to others the consumerism and materialism in today's society. In Seeing Power by Nato Thompson "These are not easy political riddles to solve, but they force us to recognize the tangled web developed by entrenched capitalism." The companies that sell us products now how to sell the products to people even though we know their goal is money we do not understand their methods on how they are going to sell their products to us. At least thats how I interpret the quote.
State of the DysUnion by Joyce Yu-Jean Lee
 |
| DysUnion by Joyce Yu-Jean Lee |
In Joyce Yu-Jean Lee's State of the DysUnion, she created her pieces to spread awareness on how media is manipulated by major news corporations. The pieces she made are created from her anger and distrust. Joyce Yu-Jean Lee looks for reactions in people's faces when they watch her video. She believes she can capture peoples reactions better if her art was a video instead of a still picture. Originally she was not interested in becoming a political artist until Hilary lost the elections. Joyce was overjoyed when Hilary won the nominations but that joy was ruined by Hilary's defeat in the elections. Her first activism project was when she visited China and used the internet as a way to be an activist. This was due to China's censorship which caused one of her friends to commit suicide. She uses Installation art to manipulate the environment to place people around the art and make them stare longer at her pieces. In her Dysunion piece contains articles when Hilary the nominations and when Hilary lost the elections. The art piece then moves to wild fires in California, which was caused by Global Warming. The increasing temperatures caused the fires. Trump does not believe in Global Warming and persist on ignoring the problem that is Global Warming. Like what the WW11 are fighting for, Joyce Yu-Jean Lee is spreading awareness on how our President is ignoring a big issue that will only grow over the years. In the noise that she used was static with tome poem from a Finnish Fable. This was used to provoke the audience to think about the piece. So not only are they watching the piece but also listening to the piece as well. Her work and the work of the WW11 are made for the audience to think and hopefully inspire them to change the current state of where we are with the media and environmentally. Like in Gwen Charles work
Glacial Ablation, they both use a video to capture their audience. Joyce Yu-Jean Lee knows that our ecosystem is off balance and that is a major problem in our society. She uses pictures in her DysUnion piece to show this. The UneasyPeace art piece is about the advertisements that pop up frequently on the phone or internet. The companies use this to make people buy their products by appealing to the consumers mind by telling them that there is a "sale" or that their product is the best on the market. This is capitalism, where companies are just out for peoples money, much like what Olga Mercedes Bautista art piece in WW11
Re-appropriating Nature. Art can challenge capitalism by creating more art pieces that captures peoples attentions. Sometimes its art pieces that stand out the most that captures peoples attentions, like Joyce Lee's Installations art style. The last Joyce Yu-Jean Lee's art work I decided to share and caught my interest was the
WaterWisdom art piece. The words that are swirling down are news paper articles that she cut out. She made the swirling motion so that the words spin into the center. This was created by the lies that companies and the media spreads by getting our attention with certain words. Both the art work in both exhibitions are about activism and share a power of feminism, The main point of both exhibitions are about how we as humans use our media consumption, while being aware of our environment, and how much power we as humans have to change our problem with Global Warming.
 |
| UneasyPeace by Joyce Yu-Jean Lee |
 |
| WaterWisdom by Joyce Yu-Jean Lee |
Citations:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/climate/trump-tweet-global-warming.html
https://www.guerrillagirls.com/
https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/science/2018/03/22/great-pacific-garbage-patch-grows/446405002/
Reference:
Guerrilla Girls- website and what we discussed in class
Bell Hooks- page 17
Michael Rakowitz- ParaSITE page 34 in The Interventionists
N55- The Snail Shell System Page 60
Chan- page 109 Story of New Orleans
Seeing Power page 102 Money and Professionalism
No comments:
Post a Comment