CAN has been an opportunity for me to take a fresh look at image-making and to explore themes that I have not touched before. It has been a bit of a surprise for me that identity has come to the fore, as it has in Assignments 2 and 4. Rather than turn to another broad theme at the end of CAN I am inclined to push myself with another aspect of the identity question.
Assignment 2 looked at the issue of family origins — most of us are interested in where we came from and founding myths can be very powerful. Assignment 3 touched on a closely-held fear that has dogged me since I was a teenager. Even Assignment 4, my reading of Paul Strand’s Wall Street, 1915, was an identity exploration of sorts: a chance to delve into the reasons why the photograph has captured my imagination for so long.
For Assignment 5, I have decided to touch on the issue of aging. I am at a point in my life where I have noticed that I am thinking about the next stage of my career and am finding that the attitudes of others around me are changing subtly. Some of it comes from personal interest while some of it appears to be rooted in stereotypical expectations or even forms of ageism.
I discussed a few possible approaches with my tutor during our last Zoom meeting and he was encouraging. He was also good enough to follow up with some examples from Hannah Starkey, Larry Sultan and Rembrandt that I can use for reference and/or guide points for research.
One of the key elements that I took away from my earlier CAN assignments and from my tutorials is the need to pay close attention to every element in the frame of a constructed image. Just as I labour over each aspect of an image I am reading, I need to give the same consideration to every piece of the image I am building: lighting, props, costumes/clothes, colours, foreground, background, gesture, expression, etc. I am essentially dressing a set for a one-frame play.
Àbadakone(Algonquin for “continuous fire”) is the second exhibition “in the National Gallery of Canada’s series of presentations of contemporary international Indigenous art, features works by more than 70 artists identifying with almost 40 Indigenous Nations, ethnicities and tribal affiliations from 16 countries, including Canada.”
According to the National Gallery, “the title Àbadakone was provided by the Elders Language Committee of Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg. They felt that its connotation of a fire within each artist that continues to burn would be an appropriate title for the second presentation of this ongoing series of exhibitions showcasing Indigenous art from around the world.”
Indigenous art and culture is drawing a lot of attention in Canada and other countries dealing with the history and ongoing impacts of colonization of the “New World” by European powers.
I found the exhibit exciting as it opens up a broad range of discussions that are important not only for Indigenous people, but for anyone who has an interest in place, identity, the construction and evolution of culture, and the importance of narrative for creating and bearing meaning. The introduction at the entry to the exhibit indicates that the broad theme behind its curation is one of “Relatedness, Continuity and Activation.” In brief, this refers to the interconnection of all things, the links across time and generations, and “how an artist animates a space, an object, or an idea through performance, video or viewer engagement.”
Between Dreams, by Eleng Luluan
Spanish Window, by Tracey Moffatt
K’ómoks Imperial Stormtrooper (Andy Everson), Citizen of the K’ómoks First Nation, 2017, by Will Wilson
CIPX series, by Will Wilson
A Light, a Shadow, by Poyón Fernando
Part of the installation, Teiakwanahstahsontéhrha’ We Extend the Rafters, by Skawennati
Nigik Makizinan – Otter Moccasins, by Barry Ace
But There’s No Scar?, by Catherine Blacxkburn
(All images taken on my cellphone.)
For me, there were several threads that ran through the exhibit, particularly the challenges of:
colonization;
industrialization;
globalization;
environmental degradation;
technology;
migration; and
tradition.
Without taking anything away from the specific issues and questions facing the Indigenous artists who created these works, it seems to me that many of the challenges are also faced by non-Indigenous people. As a result of the challenges I’ve listed above, very few of us can simply take for granted the place where we stand, the identities we have inherited, the histories that have shaped us or the futures that lie before us. In a time of profound uncertainties, it will be important to draw selectively on our knowledge of the past, on our best understanding of our times and on the most promising paths forward. It is fascinating to see that while Postmodernism rejected meta-narratives, we continue to need overarching stories to interpret the past, create meaning in the present and have hope for the future.
Àbadakone has given me a number of ideas for the theme / concept I would like to explore for C&N A5 (“Making it up”), and perhaps even an approach for realising my ideas. I see Indigenous artists opening long-overdue conversations and I think we will all do well to participate in them honestly.
Born and BFA in Photography at Chung-Ang College of the Arts, University of Korea, 1993; moved to NYC for MFA and stayed. New York University, New York, 1997–99; Fashion Institute of Technology, New York, 1994–96.
Works in both photography and film. Interest in notions of identity, particularly identity that is dynamic and negotiated through relationships.
Performance art.
Projects series (1997–2001) on sub-cultures, including yuppies, swing dancers, drag queens, hip hop fans, and senior citizens recorded with a point-and-shoot camera, wielded by a member of the selected group or a passerby.
Parts series (2002–2005), in which she appears in ‘candid’ snapshots with only parts visible of a male from a failed relationship.
Directed 2006 film, “A.K.A. Nikki S. Lee,” in which played two fictional versions of herself.
Lee’s work makes me think of what might happen if Cindy Sherman got out of the studio and interacted with people. There is just as much reliance on costume, but less so on makeup and prosthetics. But Sherman relies on creating an artificial world whose artifice is often obvious, while Lee works to fit in with the an existing group or context and draws on her resemblance to them for effect. If she is interested in confronting the viewer, she goes about it in a much subtler way.
Trish Morrissey (Dublin, Ireland; 1967– )
Combines performance and self-portraiture with photography and film.
Uses archives to explore class, family relationships, body and gesture, gender and role-play, power and control and what it means to be human.
Trish Morrissey: a certain slant of light at Francesca Maffeo Gallery in June 2018. Thirteen photographs and two films of archive material gathered about the last two female residents of Hestercombe House, a stately home and gardens in Somerset, England.
Solo publications: Seven Years (2004) and Front (2009).
Featured in The Photograph as Contemporary Art by Charlotte Cotton; Vitamin Ph, Survey of International Contemporary Photography; Auto Focus: The Self-Portrait in Contemporary Photography, by Susan Bright; Photography and Ireland by Justin Carville, and Making It Up: Photographic Fictions by Marta Weiss.
Tracey Moffatt (Brisbane, Australia; 1960– )
BA in visual communications from the Queensland College of Art, 1982. Honorary doctorate, 2004.
Uses text, collage, and set design to explore childhood trauma, Aboriginal people, and popular Australian culture.
Series Up in the Sky (1997) portrays violence in an outback town. “There is a storyline, but there isn’t a traditional beginning, middle, and end.”
Over 100 solo exhibitions.
Represented Australia in the 2017 Venice Biennale with My Horizon.
Works held in the Tate Gallery in London, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, and the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra.
Reflection
I don’t know that Lee’s work is necessarily voyeuristic or exploitative. It seems as though she introduces herself as an artist to her new groups and spends quite a bit of time with them. The whole exercise could be read as both a comment on her own identity as well as that of the group: the group has established a set of codes by which they can show belonging and identify one another (a social construction); and Lee, by adopting their identity and being accepted by the group indicates just how malleable her own identity can be (another social construction).
As for Morrissey’s request, it might depend upon my frame of mind at the moment and how she presented herself / her project. I do not usually enjoy having my picture taken, but I might go along with it for a laugh or for the novelty. And given that I take more and more pictures of strangers myself—sometimes with, sometimes without their permission—I feel that I have less and less right to deny them the same access to me. It would be hypocritical of me, so I am gradually agreeing to lower my guard. I also recognize that we live in a surveillance society and the idea that we have a veto over the capture of our image is largely an illusion. We are being imaged all the time, for all sorts of purposes, so a snap for a random photographer or tourist seems relatively benign.
Images from Cindy Sherman’s “Society Portraits” (National Portrait Gallery, 28 June 2019)
The visit, led by OCA tutor Jayne Taylor, began with a brief overview of the Sherman retrospective by Giselle Torres from the National Portrait Gallery. While a good idea, the overview went over a lot of the material already covered in the suggested readings. This suggests two things: the reading/viewings may be sufficient on their own and, if there is to be a speaker, it might be helpful to let her know what has been provided to participants. (To be fair, speakers may already have a prepared text to work from and it may not be reasonable to ask them to customize it for groups.)
The exhibit covered a broad sweep of Sherman’s career, from the time of her student days in Buffalo to works of the last couple of years. The photographer has been dressing up since she was a child and has stayed true to her means of expression, even while evolving in her practice and picking up technical skill along the way. Her earliest works are in series of black and white photographs where the print size is uniformly small. Over time, Sherman moved to colour photography, and from analogue processes to digital, in progressively-larger print sizes. She has also taken on a movie/video production at different points, from brief stop-action animation using photographic cut-outs, to short videos, to a feature-length, low-budget horror movie (Sherman’s favourite film genre).
What struck me across the rooms of the exhibit was how consistent Sherman has been in her approach, even as her work has evolved and become more sophisticated. It seems to me that she has collected a set of types — or stereotypes — and she has used them to challenge viewers about the ambiguity of the images we see every day. The best, and most accessible, example of this is her “Untitled Film Stills” series that offers up familiar-looking images that could have been shot on a movie set. None of the photographs is drawn from a particular movie, however, so the sense of familiarity comes not from having seen the film but from being immersed in the visual language of many films. Without much effort or prompting, we imagine narratives about the women in the images because we have seen this visual language at play in countless films.
ItItSherman’s later series similarly draw on stock elements of a visual language or rhetoric, some of it quite familiar (centrefolds, cover girls, pornography, horror movies, clowns and medieval paintings) and some of it less so (her later work parodying wealthy patrons of fashion shows and society women). Much of this work is designed to subvert visual tropes that we have taken for granted in Western culture, particularly those that customarily reduce women to vulnerable victims or objects of desire. It is cleverly done, with its artifice lying in plain view: Sherman frequently leaves the camera’s cable release lying in the frame, or uses garish lighting and/or makeup, or does not attempt to hide the edges of the prosthesis that she is wearing.
I have to say that I have not always appreciated all of Sherman’s work and thought that she has perhaps more attention than was deserved. After this visit, however, I believe I have a better understanding of what she has been trying to accomplish and think she has done it masterfully.
I still have some questions, however:
Could it have been possible for a man to create a similar body of work with similar effect? Or was no male “Cindy Sherman” possible? (Or necessary?)
If much of Sherman’s work calls into question or confronts the “male gaze,” does any of it demonstrate a female gaze? Is that what some of her ‘society women’ portraits are meant to do, or is female concern over aging and social standing a response to male standards?
How effective is parody once you become part of the very class that you purport to parody? (I have the same question about comedians.) What does it mean when major corporations know you are attempting to subvert their worlds, but pay you to do it because they know they will make a profit anyway?
Is Cindy Sherman’s time up? Some students suggested as much during the post-visit discussion. Or is it more the case that superstars in the art world simply move into another sphere of recognition as brands and commodities?
Context and Narrative 