Check out some reviews of Bi-Lingual

Being in Two Places,  by Doug Max Utter, Cleveland Scene, September 16, 2008

Exhibit by artists who straddle two cultures offers fresh perspective,  by Steve Litt, The Plain Dealer,September 17, 2008

Bi-Lingual opening night!

A guest and Sana Musasama's work

Angelica Pozo and Michelangelo Lovelace

Executive Director Christopher Lynn with son Moses

Viewing Shani Richards

Viewing Juan-Si & Paloma's installation

Juan-Si Gonzalez & Paloma Dallas in Action!

Click here to view Juan-Si and Paloma’s process and the opening night of the show.

Responding to Bi-Lingual–the redux

Today it is popular to think of the terms race and culture as other to whiteness. Race is a human made, social construct not a biological fact. Culture, suggests intellectual, moral and aesthetic cultivation. Is it not ironic, that some people are raced while others are not? Some are constantly invited to scrutinize who they are, while others granted the privilege of invisibility. How does this phenomenon impact the expectations of artists in general, and artists of color in particular? How did we get into this position? Critically analyzing the source of such popular constructions is worthwhile.

After declining the invitation to exhibit in Bi-Lingual, I praised the efforts of the show but suggested that my artwork was not a good fit. I feared the curatorial framework might reduce the layers of complexity I’ve worked so hard to achieve. In response to my criticism, I was invited to lead an on-line discussion/panel capturing views I expressed. The essay would not be a review of the Bi-Lingual artists’ works, but rather a re-articulation of the critique that informed my decline—namely that some art exhibitions limit the interpretation of artists of color.

By posing questions about whiteness, my aim was to expand how race and culture are engaged today. I am concerned about the ways in which curatorial frameworks restrict dialogue by and about artists of color. What happens when curatorial vision reinforces the very problems it seeks to challenge? Should we instead aim to deconstruct systems that have created the boxes we’ve been taught to play in? Just as my own work examines gender and popular culture, it also addresses the medium of printmaking and the history of portraiture. While offers to speak about form or the techniques I employ are rare, I am frequently invited to probe identity and victimization issues.

The goal of “Identity Shows: Invisible Whiteness and Colored Display” is to challenge and hopefully inspire a more inclusive commentary about the politics of cultural showcases like Bi-Lingual. It is my hope that this on-line forum will elicit a more informed dialogue.

Ayanah Moor–

Bilingual exhibition installation — a team effort

 

Juan-Si Gonzalez is the fall 2008 SPACES World Artist Program (SWAP) artist-in-residence. Here he is assisted by Katie, a Baldwin-Wallace College work-study student.

Rafael Valdivieso-Troya wraps up his installation.

Here's B-W work-study student Nick Meloro making important connections. Using "migration stories" collected by artists Juan-Si Gonzalez and Paloma Dallas, he creates paper chains for their installation.

Saskia Jorda hangs her work using multiple strands of fishing line.

CIA work-study student Skye Kellerman has no fear of heights as she installs a digital projector

Identity Shows: Invisible Whiteness and Colored Display

During a live nationally televised celebrity fundraiser in 2005, rapper Kanye West harshly criticized the government’s response to Hurricane Katrina. Departing from a script designed to educate the public about the hurricane disaster, West offered personal commentary about the tragedy challenging the public to donate to the struggling people of New Orleans and offering sharp indictment of law enforcement behavior and the U.S. president. West’s claim “George Bush doesn’t care about Black people” was widely publicized after the broadcast. But little attention was paid to West’s full statement, a rant that included, “I hate the way they portray us in the media. You see a black family, it says, “They’re looting.” You see a white family, it says, “They’re looking for food…” Why didn’t news outlets examine these words? Why no public discussion of West’s attack of media representation? Is it easier to grab the public’s attention with a titillating sound byte about black victimization, rather than address the subjectivity of television news programming?

Solely reducing Kanye West’s critique to “George Bush doesn’t care about Black people” not only disregarded West’s insightful media literacy, it also sold a lot of newspapers. The spectacle of race has always generated buzz, and in America when cleverly packaged, it sells product. There is an interesting correlation between the selective highlight of West’s words and the curatorial framing of shows designed to address race and featuring artists of color. Most race-themed exhibitions don’t include white artists and are rarely conceived with white identity in mind. Rather than address race as a social construction, only the mark of blackness (color) is examined. Disregarding the history of race’s function as a hierarchy of meaning and value, whiteness is left unassigned. The byproduct of such omission suggests that race is an issue for non-whites. And so art exhibitions about race, albeit well intentioned, become a spectacle of otherness—communicating that whiteness means status quo (normal) and non-white implies difference. How does this selective staging of race effect how we perceive images and people? Does such a showcase amount to little more than a cultural safari of victimization?

Challenging the ghettoization of cultural programming is not an effort to transcend race. Cultural production is important and so are the voices of all artists. But it is crucial that curators, and artists avoid the trap of one-sided examinations. When artists participate in limited frameworks, they run the risk of self-exploitation. In Black Looks: Race and Representation, cultural critic bell hooks says, “Within commodity culture, ethnicity becomes spice, seasoning that can liven up the dull dish that is mainstream white culture.” How do you view the selection of artworks in Bi-Lingual? Does it dare to depart, like Kanye West, from the limited script of most race-based public dialogues? Or does it offer bi-lingual palettes for the public to consume?

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de Moraes, Lisa, Kanye West’s Torrent of Criticism, Live on NBC, (washingtonpost.com) Sept. 3, 2005; pg. C01, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2005/09/03/AR2005090300165.html

hooks, bell, Black Looks: Race and Representation. (South End Press, Cambridge, MA, 1992), pg. 21.

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Ayanah Moor is a visual artist and associate professor in the School of Art at Carnegie Mellon University. Moor’s artwork addresses contemporary popular culture through an interrogation of gender identity and vernacular aesthetics and has been featured in publications such as: Critical Inquiry (University of Chicago Press); Home Girls Make Some Noise: A Hip Hop Feminism Anthology (Parker Publishing); Deconstructing Tyrone: A New Look at Black Masculinity in the Hip Hop Generation (Cleis Press) and Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism (Indiana University Press). Moor completed her BFA at Virginia Commonwealth University and her MFA at Tyler School of Art.

Eleven Artists, Many Worlds

This blog serves as a forum to discuss the SPACES exhibition Bi-Lingual. Our guest moderator is Ayanah Moor, Associate Professor of Art at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Bi-Lingual is an exhibition of African American and Latino artists who live and create in two worlds—that of their own cultural community and that of the contemporary art scene. While crossing boundaries of politics, race, gender, and stereotype, each artist expresses a desire to remain relevant in both domains.

Curated by artist Angelica Pozo, Bi-Lingual is on view September 9-October 17, 2008, at SPACES, 2220 Superior Viaduct, Cleveland, Ohio.