Since arts organizations began emphasizing equity, diversity, and inclusion, commendable efforts have emerged, resulting in tangible changes, often at the institutional level. These efforts have led to the opening of doors, the dismantling of barriers, and the establishment of genuinely welcoming environments that offer opportunities to ethnic minorities, women, Black artists, and neglected communities, as well as authentic stories about nations. However, a critical question remains: how prepared are these art organizations to fully commit to advancing equity and implementing actions that speak louder than land acknowledgement words? Are measures being taken on national and international levels to move such efforts forward and prevent them from stagnating in the past? Is developing an action plan enough, or is more concrete action required? Recent years witnessed a growing recognition … [Read more...] about CULTURAL CATALYSTS AT TUFTS: INDIGENOUS ART AND EQUITY IN THE CONTEMPORARY LANDSCAPE
Artscope Issues
UNPREDICTABLE VISUAL ERRORS: ALLISON TANENHAUS BRINGS HER GLITCHKRAFT TO SIMMONS COLLEGE
Allison Tanenhaus is here to make friends. Glitch artist extraordinaire, she collaborates with musicians, sculptors and other glitch and digital artists to bring immersive, dynamic and other worldly art to audiences around New England. What is glitch art? Several decades old, it began with artists experimenting with altering analog signals, manipulating them with magnets and messing with wiring to intentionally create unpredictable visual “errors.” Tanenhaus started to be curious about glitch art when her computer crashed, and jagged lines appeared on the screen. Her reaction was contradictory, “Gorgeous! Terrible!” (because her computer was broken), but then willed the screen to stay still so she could grab her camera. After a lifetime of searching for her visual medium, she had finally found it in a computer glitch. Tanenhaus began her artistic journey with words and humor, composing … [Read more...] about UNPREDICTABLE VISUAL ERRORS: ALLISON TANENHAUS BRINGS HER GLITCHKRAFT TO SIMMONS COLLEGE
BRANCHING OUT INTO SCULPTURE: JO NANAJIAN, KLEDIA SPIRO & FEDA EID’S HEAVY LOAD
“Bag lady, you gon' hurt your back / Dragging all them bags like that / I guess nobody ever told you / All you must hold on to / Is you, is you, is you” — Erykah Badu, “Bag Lady” My hand reaches for my shoulders. Sure, I often have a tote bag on one side, a backpack, or if I am trying to look sophisticated, a handbag like the movie depictions of 20-something women in the workforce, but I found out that this area of my body carries my stress, anxiety and socio-political cargo. Although it is important to mention that I am not first-generation, I understand when the parasympathetic system is out of whack from the invisible burdens we carry. Every time I describe this, I think of Ernie Barnes’s “Miss America” with elongated limbs, carrying buckets with an unknown substance, an uneven stride into a forced contrapposto; for a while, she was the profile image of “Elbow Grease,” an Instagram … [Read more...] about BRANCHING OUT INTO SCULPTURE: JO NANAJIAN, KLEDIA SPIRO & FEDA EID’S HEAVY LOAD
NBMAA’S EXPANDING COLOR FIELD: CAREY & GOURLAY SHOWCASED IN NEW BRITAIN & WEST HARTFORD
The large format experimental photography in “Ellen Carey: Struck by Light,” on view at New Britain Museum of American Art (NBMAA) through January 28, 2024, delivers a feast of process for the eyes. Her work has the sensibility of color-field painting brought into photographic context relating similar minimalist simplicity, elegance and color-saturation. It is remarkable to see the physicality of Carey’s nearly floor-to-ceiling unframed polaroid prints. The artist’s “pulls” are installed pinned to the walls and hanging unframed, exposed and tactile. The beauty of her photographic experimentation keys to size and color, and the positive/negative aspect of showing both print and emulsion sheets side-by-side with equal emphasis. Remembering NBMAA Director Brett Abbott’s specialization in photography from my interview with him for Artscope’s March/April 2022 issue, I asked NBMAA curator … [Read more...] about NBMAA’S EXPANDING COLOR FIELD: CAREY & GOURLAY SHOWCASED IN NEW BRITAIN & WEST HARTFORD
UÝRA’S LIVING FOREST: BRAZILIAN ARTIST’S BOLD U.S. DEBUT AT THE CURRIER
Through performance art, photography and film, trans-Indigenous/Brazilian artist UÝRA tries to make sense, and advocate, in a hostile world. UÝRA — who identifies with she/her/they/them pronouns — has created a tight exhibition that focuses on prejudice and oppression, biodiversity and dispossession, ritual, the lasting wounds of colonialism and the goings-on of their young compatriots in the industrial center of Manaus, which sits central in the sprawling state of Amazonas. The threats directed at UÝRA and her ilk are real, the socio-economic status quo seemingly insurmountable. It’s fitting that “The Living Forest: UÝRA,” on view at the Currier Museum of Art in Manchester, New Hampshire through September 24, is the artist’s first exhibition in the United States. The current similarities between the two countries are unsettling, from our rickety tri-branch federal systems to our … [Read more...] about UÝRA’S LIVING FOREST: BRAZILIAN ARTIST’S BOLD U.S. DEBUT AT THE CURRIER
FIERCE, FRESH AND FURIOUS: MR. HOPPER’S NEIGHBORHOOD STARTS AT CAPE ANN MUSEUM
Surreal, puckish touches everywhere: An unimposing wall of a sea captain’s mansion blares as if with a spotlight for a celebrity to enter or exit; or perhaps an invitation for the honored viewer – yourself – but there is no door, just the leaves of high bushes full of light. Are bushes being honored, while the majestic facade’s portal is ignored? Everyone knows Edward Hopper’s iconic 1942 “Nighthawks,” but are they fully aware of how his touches of individuality in the clothes, the attitude of bodies in themselves and in relation to the other bodies, fills a scene, inert in other hands, with drama. Hopper, shy and reticent as a person, as an artist he loves to steal upon a scene with hidden meanings, open it up for his delectation, then share it with anyone around who cares to peer over his shoulder. All shyness and reticence laid aside, when he takes up his brushes, Hopper becomes an … [Read more...] about FIERCE, FRESH AND FURIOUS: MR. HOPPER’S NEIGHBORHOOD STARTS AT CAPE ANN MUSEUM