Sentences:

Pinder: Pinder focuses on the duality of representations of multiraciality and their sociopoltical currency in popular culture.

Waegner: Waegner calls the trend of yellowface/blackface impersonation a performative playful passing instead of cultural appropriation.

Response:

In Pinder’s article, Lorraine O’Grady addressed biraciality by stating the ‘mixed product’ will not only negate the idea of purity but also the idea of superiority, commentating on the perceived dualism and hierarchy in multiracial people. However, this amount of responsibility and consumer status given to multiracial people is problematic. For example, the article states there is a growing trend of multiraciality as superior and a ‘perfect hybrid’, blending together the so called Melting Pot. This status as the ‘Universal Child’, given to Tiger Woods due to his African, European and Asian descent negates the individualist cultural and heritage that the multiracial people have, by ‘melting’ them together into a elite hybrid resembling all the parts of the globe. Thus, how is “mixing to be a great strength of multiethnic people”? (394) By assimilating a multitude of cultures and backgrounds so that no racial and cultural tensions become absorbed in this union and birth of a multiracial child? By generating the power given to white privilege and the complexity of cross racial unions so that the “color of the skin makes you think I [can] be lucky”? (395). I have a problem with authors stating multiraciality is now superior because it’s still another form of eugenics and designing human biology for a desired outcome and product. I think O’Grady highlights this problem of assigning values to people based on race in her The Clearing series, juxtaposing unions of multiracial people and historical names, broadening the viewer’s sense of the consequences and appropriation that has come out of these unions.

Lorraine O’Grady Photo credit David Velasco Lorraine O’Grady The Clearing: or Cortez and La Malinche, Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, N. and Me, 1991;

Sentences:

Julien: Looking for Langston exhibits an ethereal non-linear narrative following the life and thoughts of a gay black man in the Harlem Renaissance.

Golden: The endangerment, Sweet Sweetback’s  Badassss Song, Black Power era, the rise of Hip hop, and the Rodney King incident contributed to Golden’s program for her exhibition of black male representation.

Kobena-Mercer: Fani-Kayodes contributions to the transatlantic black gay cultural diaspora encapture his role as a migrant translator.

 Response:

I thought the film Looking for Langston used beautiful prose and images of the life of a gay black man living in the Harlem Renaissance, intertwined with meditation, dreams, and reality. The invisibility of the gay black man’s life in this film in the way the main character never engages with another person, talking to them directly. He becomes ignored even in gay culture itself, and his actions become a secret due to dangerous consequences, when a mob of angry white men storm through the club while everyone is dancing. The film i id dedicated to Langston Hughes, presented as an icon and cultural metaphor for black gay men who were ostracized because they did not conform to the overbearing pressure given to black men to be masculine and heterosexual. These goals for the black man were formed due to assimilationist methods pushed by the NAACP and existing structures and norms in social behavior. Kodera Mercer’s article stresses there has been an extreme sexualized role given to the black man, as the brutal aggressor  stemming from colonialism and whites fear of blackness. However, artists such as Mapplethorpe has repurposed and appropriated these stigmas and turned it into beautiful compositions of black mens bodies. The question becomes where the line is drawn between appropriation and the examining of new purposes for the body in art. It’s interesting to me that art examining the representation of black men deal with the incorporation of homosexuality in a different way than Zanele Muholi or other queer artists of color. How do these representation differ across different parts of the queer community, and what is being emphasized? How does the body change when it’s labeled as ‘queer’? These artists explore the different meanings  and layers their art can take as a queer producer of color, and how these might be different from the subjection to ‘black art’ and art dealing primarily with race.

Fani-Kayode

Zanele Muholi

Shakhsari: The Iranian queer community became a hyper-visible political contender after 9/11 through internet blogs and transnational publications.

Taylor: Post colonial migration, capitalism, and political change allowed contemporary artists to critique hegemonic structures and create art that was individualistic.

I thought Shakhsari’s From Homoerotics of Exile to Homopolitics of Diaspora: Cyberspace, the War on Terror, and the Hypervisibile Iranian Queer should be applauded for giving insight into the queer community as an academic subject and its transnational political contender and social influence. However, the article didn’t prove there was a shift in the representation of the Iranian queer community, since they are still marginalized within Iran due to religious and social norms, and did not offer a significant source that the Iranian queer community became visible or “hypervisible” in an international arena or instilled in a international public knowledge. This could stem from the perceived notions of blogs as a non-academic form of publication that is largely drawing from personal opinion.

Parsi, head of the Iranian Queer Railroad, has seemingly become a figurehead for the group of Iranian queers, appearing to be the sole representative basing his organization in Canada for queer refugees. I wonder if there are more outlets for the queer community besides Parsi, and if there are issues or beliefs in the Iranian queer community that Shakhsari could not represent. For example, why did the Iranian queer become an issue of importance at American university commencement speeches and use 9/11 as a significant demarcation of visible change? Did the Iranian queer community feel misrepresented during the heightened political turmoil of the War on Terror, and wasn’t receiving any address by the government? How has their representation changed post 9/11, and why was this an important issue that needed to be addressed? Shakhsari notes that “the shift to the homopolitics of diaspora does not suggest that Iranian queers have only become political subjects after the war on terror, but that they have been recognized for their political usefulness in liberatory missions” (33). Are Iranian queers only applauded for their liberatory missions or actually have a larger political usefulness in social and political change? True, the Iranian cyberspace may be a new frontier for challenging heteronormativity, but I did not see how their importance and visibility began in the wake of 9/11.

Taylor gives background to various artists who paved the way for performance art such as Carolee Scheemann.

Andrea Fraser’s institutional critique of art museums disrupts the audience’s notion of authenticity and authority.

Fred Wilson counteracts Maryland’s colonist history and focuses on racial victimization, anonymity, and the influence of slavery.

Response:

Fraser and Wilson use the basis of their performance art by having the museum act as the actor, in which they commentate or position items in a particular fashion. In this way, they themselves are not necessarily performing but the museum is, on which they act as the intermediate between the relationship of the viewer and the museum. The question of artistry is questionable for some who believe that their work is not art, for it doesn’t involve any craft and only manipulation of objects or words to create the work. However, in this manipulation, the viewer (sometimes) becomes aware of the authority placed onto them as the viewer and the authority automatically given to the museum and its employees.

Wilson’s performance is clear, for he arranges items found in the archive and pairs them with another or positions them in a certain way, as to provoke a historical narrative that often is in contrast with the typical grandiose or “extension of European history” narrative of museums. Wilson’s rendition encourages the viewer to contemplate the forgotten, transgressive times of American history, by highlighting black servant faces within portraits of a large white family, and positioning finely crafted wooden chairs that mark American artistry around a somber, formidable whipping post.

Wilson turns Native American Tobacco store figures away from the viewer.

Fraser calls into question the authority placed on the patron and the authority granted to the museums employees, for the patron expects the usual tour of what works to pay attention to, which are famous etc. However, she offers little consolation and rambles about facts about the history of the museum itself, as she did in Hartford, or about herself, as a Daughter of the American Revolution, boosting not only her claim of artistic authority but of genealogical heritage to the town itself.  She becomes unnecessary and almost a nuisance, distracting the patrons away from the art encouraging them to question her presence and her academic ability.

Fraser talks to a group of museum patrons.

Lopez: “Our Lady” interrogates the layers of the Virgen’s image and Chicana gender, sexual, and spiritual ideology.

Latorre: Employing the taboo of gender and sexuality, Chicana artists broke with the nationalist Chicano platform.

Response:

Latorre in her article Chicana art and Scholarship on the Interstices of our Disciplines remarks that the Chicana artists felt marginalized by the feminist women’s movement in the 1970s, which was supposed to be an inclusive platform for all women. However, as the movement increased and was thrust into the national spotlight, it excluded many identities and issues, resulting into a homogenous “middle class, white woman’s movement”.

Many of these excluded identities had different issues they wanted acknowledged which one movement would not suffice. For example, in Alva Lopez’s work Our Lady, she addresses discontent with feminist reinterpretations of religious images within the Chicano sphere. I thought the gender divide of the supporters and antagonists was interesting because it was so readily apparent, that women, Chicanas and professors admired her work, while men and religious leaders not only wanted her work taken down but tried to appeal to the courts and fast until their demands were instated. Lopez’s remark that people have no problem with naked depictions of Jesus and men in church, but that the bare breasts, stomach, and legs of women created a fury within the culture.

Our Lady Book cover

Our Lady represents the Virgen as a dynamic figure, a woman and ideology that many cultures interpret due to their own experiences, upbringing, and values. Because of this, her image has been reinterpreted and (re)presented to instill spirituality in the modern era. Some would argue that the proliferation of her image has debased her religious nature, and others would comment that it adds to the universality and prominence of her influence in daily life. Therefore, Lopez has every right to (re)present the Virgin as Virgen, a Chicana modern woman, unafraid of her sexuality and body in the face of misogynistic, fundamentalist beliefs.

Marina Abramovic in the documentary “The Artist is Present” is a tour de force, her preparation as an artist borders on a monastic rigor, fasting and engaging with the self conscious by blocking off the external world for a three month exhibit. The simple, not simplistic, ideology of her work is transparent but the inaction of herself and the viewer morphs into a therapeutic session, granting agency to the viewer to journey into various emotions all while confronted in her gaze. The gaze becomes attention, often neglected and transitory in many people lives, which is why this work has such a profound impact on visitors. Abramovic becomes a mirror, forcing the viewer to immediately becomes self reflective at the precise moment when they believe they will engage with the artist. The work is so powerful that museum visitors look toward one another, staring, stopping time by being truly present. Only when we are completely inactive, we are forced to assess ourselves, often surfacing emotions that we have suppressed. A mirror would be insufficient especially in this galley setting, because you are no removed for other patrons nor are you confronted with another person looking at you. I think this work is so successful because it is mediated by the individual and their emotions and their performance, for she is static. The performance is flipped on is head and the external  pressures and conceptions are removed once you sit in the chair.

Nochlin: Nochlin invalidates the excuses as to why there have not been great women artists and argues that the structures and definitions of great art were made by and associated with men.

Wark: Rosler, Piper, Antin, and Wilson linked art and politics of the 1960s and 70s to challenge dominant values and artistic traditions.

Abramovic: “The Artist is Present” marks a critical moment in performance art, not only engaging the viewer but making the viewer’s performance and vulnerability the work.

Taylor: Taylor gives background and artistic examples  that joined sexual politics and visual art during the feminist art movement in the 1970s.

Raiford: Throughout its duration, the Black Panther Party struggled with their media representation, wanting to overturn the image of the compliant Black but encourage a sympathetic following and a questioning of ‘racial seeing’.

Jones: Kellie Jones introduces artists exhibiting in “Now Dig This!”, showcasing the essential role of African American artists in Southern California.

Johnson: Ken Johnson in his harsh review of “Now Dig This!” critiques Black artists’ use of assemblage, seeking to promote their own solidarity and (re)presentation of Black history, as stemming from white artists like Marcel Duchamp.

Response

The image of the Black Panther superseded its message that the group was desperate to convey to the American public. The outfit, hair, and sunglasses became iconic and displayed an “unapproachable cool” and  an alluring romance for an anti-establishment subculture. Their images were dangerous to white America, their message hushed by mainstream media and the FBI, who were concerned that the Black Panthers’ were sympathizing with Communists in China and Cuba. Even representations of the Black Panthers were skewed towards children. I thought it was especially provoking that the FBI would make a children’s book “advocating violence towards white establishments” to exacerbate rivalries and guarantee the extremism of the BPP. This shows that the American government was forceful in sustaining its image as the Righteous and place of the American Dream. Even today, the history and true message of the BPP as American patriots fighting for equal rights, overcoming the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., and turning propaganda on its head, is hidden from American education and portrayed as cool, suave gangsters, intent on violence and destruction of democracy. The visual identity of a violent black male is often encouraged to the detriment of female occupation. I thought it was interesting that female leaders of the Black Panthers are often ignored, opting for images of men with guns and sunglasses instead; and that incarceration and assassination of BPP leaders only perpetuated their cause and image further in the press. Even the image of the fist, abstracted and black, is void of other context besides breaking, violence, race, power, and uprising, rarely resulting in self questioning, and questioning of the mainstream historical narrative that has been presented to us in textbooks.