Everyday Miracles

I wrote up this review for a short exploratory paper about an LA art event for Prof. Lyford's Contemporary Art class and I thought I would share it here also.


I recently attended Redcat’s exhibition Everyday Miracles featuring the work of contemporary Asian female artists Hamra Abbas, Ringo Bunoan, Chen Hui-Chiao, Shilpa Gupta, Kan Xuan, Minouk Lim and Jewyo Rhii. The show uses a variety of media including sculpture, video, photography and installations to explore themes of race, society and politics—along with the miraculous—across contemporary Asia through quotidian materials and various elements of the everyday.

I was particularly intrigued by a photographic work by Hamra Abbas entitled Paradise Bath of 2009. Abbas was born in Kuwait and now lives and works in Islamabad and Boston. Traditionally Abbas works in sculptural forms but for this piece she hired a photographer, Serkan Taycan to take the shots. The photos depict a white female being luxuriously and sensuously bathed by a darker woman in an ancient Ottoman Bath House in Thessaloniki, Greece. Interestingly, this was the only piece in the show which had an accompanying description below the work’s tombstone information. These images intend to subvert the archetypal Orientalist scene and the female nude to investigate themes of Greece’s muslim past, highlighting issues of race, memory and power. The work also examines notions of purity and washing which are essential in Islam. The use of female nudity is also noteworthy considering Abbas is a Pakistani artist and the work deals with Islamic themes.


Another provoking piece is Shilpa Gupta’s Untitled Don’t See Don’t Hear Don’t Speak from 2008. The three photos depict dozens of young Indian boys dressed in western clothing, one wearing a large, gaudy gold watch, covering one another’s eyes, mouths, and ears in various poses. These over life size digital prints are printed on flex material, giving the piece the feeling of a mural. Previously Gupta has photographed persons of all ethnicities doing these same gestures and plastered the photos on billboards throughout Bolzano, Italy. Gupta generally works in diverse media including interactive video, websites, objects, photographs, sound and public performances, As her website explains, her work “probe[s] and examine[s] subversively such themes as desire, religion, notions of security on the street and on the imagined border.” Don’t See Don’t Hear Don’t Speak plays on the story of the three monkeys with the adage see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil which has been associated with Mahatma Gandhi. Gupta uses the allusion to comment on the tendency towards obliviousness and senselessness in the face of capitalism and strident individualism.

Everyday Miracles is a successful show in that it showcases provocative, avant-garde work by artists who do not fit into the often male dominated world of contemporary art—particularly in Asian countries. The works in Everyday Miracles move beyond a feminist discourse into a wider arena of social and political commentary using fresh alternative media. From Chen Hui-Chiao’s use of ping-pong balls in Here and Now: Sound Falling II to Ringo Bunoan’s wood pallets which make up Bridge, the works presented are vibrant and have an urgency in their execution which is difficult to ignore.

My Barbarian at MOCA's 30th Birthday Party - Review #4

On Saturday, November 21 The Museum of Contemporary Art of Los Angeles had its 30th birthday party/members opening party for it’s show Collection: MOCA’s First Thirty Years. The party featured performances by the Los Angeles-based artist troupe My Barbarian which was founded in 2000. The party took place on the Grand Avenue plaza, centered around the large Nancy Rubins sculpture. Put on by MOCA’s Engagement Party, My Barbarian’s performance was entitled "The Fourth Wall" and engaged with themes from Augusto Boal’s Invisible Theater where, as MOCA’s website describes, “social and legal constructions are interrogated by stealth performances: performers enact the conflict/situation within a public space and engage directly with bystanders in an attempt to address political issues.”

To achieve this effect My Barbarian interviewed museum staff, from curators to accountants, and created performance, music and video which directly addressed the institution of the museum. Focusing on issues of transparency, the group used the museum interviews to more critically delve into the institution of MOCA and the creation and development of Collection: MOCA’s First Thirty Years.

At various points throughout the evening the group (in various costumes/guises) infiltrated the party goers, dancing and participating in various performances where it seemed as though one artist was giving vague performance instructions to two other artists who then acted out the directions as they saw fit. The performances had a feeling of improvisation and spontaneity and the artists were extremely gestural, focusing on the visceral body in space. Although the Barbarians performed throughout the party space, including by the bar and around the line while museum-goers were waiting to go inside to see the show, the majority of the dancing took place in a semi-cordoned off space which unfortunately obstructed much of the view of these performances.

Throughout the evening a group of actors performed scripts written by Alexandro Segade from interviews with MOCA staff. I found these readings to be the most provocative element of My Barbarian’s performance as they directly interrogated MOCA and the museum as institution, openly contemplating MOCA’s financial hardships—why they occurred and how they could be mediated. One interesting topic they brought up was the controversial act of deaccessioning and selling works of art to raise badly-needed finances. The various actors debated the pros and cons of such an act, making specific references to works on show in MOCA’s Collection (such as how much money the museum’s famous Jackson Pollock would bring in). While one of the actors argued that the deaccessioning of work must be done, another contended that to deaccession donated works was tantamount to treason against donators and also damaged the integrity of the museum and its collection. By bringing up these critical issues at MOCA’s 30th birthday party, a time for celebration and revelry, My Barbarian was engaging the musuem-going audience in important issues for the museum’s future. The actors also critiqued MOCA’s architecture by criticizing Arata Isozaki’s postmodern structure as dated and unsightly—all this while museum members are lounging around the plaza, drinking cocktails and socializing.

In addition the goup wrote and performed a song entitled “Transparency” about the development and maintenance of a public art museum. The lyrics were inspired by interviews with all different types of MOCA staff. Some provocative sections are:

Do you feel secure in your job?
Oo oo oo oo oo oo oo oo oo
Can you describe the feeling within the institution during the period of crisis?
Oo oo oo oo oo oo oo oo oo
What would be so bad about selling off the collection?
Oo oo oo oo oo oo oo oo oo

The theme of My Barbian’s performance was transparency in the museum institution and to bring some of the inner workings of the museum to light and give a behind-the-scenes look at the development of such a monumental exhibition as Collection. Working in a lineage of institutional critique, My Barbarian used provocative performances which engaged with the museum-goer’s space and changed the way one may view an exhibition, particularly one of a museum’s permanent collection during a financial crisis.