Rise of Rebellion: DailyServing’s latest week-long series

Today, Bean Gilsdorf looks at some of the artists that have broken the art world’s mold in her latest article Rebellion, Four Ways, as a continuation of our week-long series Rise of Rebellion.

Not long ago I had a conversation with a fellow artist.  “I’m thirty years old,” she said, “and I’ve never really rebelled.”  We talked about what rebellion means; it turns out that while I was imagining the traditional route of sex/drugs/rock-n-roll, she had something tamer in mind: “I was thinking about not bathing for a while.”  I admit that I laughed out loud.

She and I were both thinking about social nonconformity in general, yet there are forms of revolt more specific to art and its milieu.  True rebellion is a personal action, a stance to take against the machination of a system whether overt or hidden.  When people talk about “the art world” they refer specifically to the capitalist market-driven system of exchange that takes place in the slim area of overlap between makers, dealers, and buyers.  It’s a system of production and consumption like many others that relies on indoctrination, social pressure, and buy-in to a set of assumptions.  In order to succeed in this world artists must play the game and follow the rules—all very insidious in a field that is purported to be about freedom and expression.  Winners learn to play well and are rewarded for running within the confines of the maze and pressing the lever at the end. But the “art world” is not art, and never should the two be confused.  Below are some of the tacit rules of the art world and the iconoclasts who break them.  Consider this food for thought.

Paul Chan, The laws are my whores (2009). Suite of nine drawings, charcoal on paper, 39.5 x 27.5 inches each.

Paul Chan, Oh why so serious? (2008). Plastic and electronics, computer keyboard, 3.25 x 18.5 x 8 inches.

Paul Chan, Waiting for Godot (2007). Performance view, South Ward, New Orleans.

1.) Make all your work recognizable.  A body of work is consistent and easily identified.

You’re a brand, and if you want to sell you need to make your brand instantly recognizable—just like a Louis Vuitton handbag or an Apple computer.  Tell that to Paul Chan, the 37 year-old auteur of videos, sculpture, drawings, paintings, light projections, computer fonts, and the co-stager of five site-specific performances of “Waiting for Godot” in post-Katrina New Orleans.  There is no “recognizable” here, no direct sense of continuity from show to show or even piece to piece; if you didn’t read the wall label you might not know who made the work.  There is only a joy of making; freedom of expression, indeed.

Cady Noland, SLA #4 (1990). Silkscreen on aluminum, edition 4/4, 78 3/8 x 60 5/8 x 3/8 inches.

2.) Promote your brand incessantly: lectures, residencies, studio visits, and visiting-professor gigs will help you advance.

It’s true that for most artists there is a social context to the work: after all, if no one knows what you make, how will they know if they like it or not?  But is it true that one must exploit every connection, every opportunity, every possible avenue for social growth to create a career in the arts?  Ask Cady Noland…oh, but you can’t.  The reclusive artist won’t answer your email and won’t work with you if you she doesn’t trust you. Despite her many successes, Noland dropped out of the art world; self-promotion is not a game that she plays.  In a 1994 review of Noland’s work, critic David Bussel wrote with keen prescience, “Anyone can be made into a hero or villain because minor celebrity is just another disposable object of mass consumption.”  Despite Noland’s reticence to engage with the public, her work continues to be in demand.

Dana Schutz, Blind Foot Massage (2009). Oil and acrylic on canvas, 36.25 x 34 inches.

3.) Hit the big time: get rich, develop a waiting list, and hire a cadre of laborers to keep up with the demand.

(Bonus points if your laborers live in “developing” countries and you make this part of your schtick.)  This is the model proposed by Andy Warhol and adopted by Jeff Koons.  Some, like Kehinde Wiley and Takeshi Murakami, even make it an overt part of their practice to manage a hive of workers.  In the overheated atmosphere of the art world, it’s easy to think that the artist who doesn’t meet the production quota dictated by collectors is a species of failure.  It is said that Dana Schutz makes all her own paintings (unconfirmed by her gallery at the time of this publication), waiting list be damned.  For an artist of her stature to do so is a very passionate and hopeful gesture, proof that rebellion isn’t always some kind of adolescent sneer: sometimes it’s just sticking to one’s principles.

Marina Abramović, The Artist is Present, (2010). Performance at MOMA, New York.

4.) Be famous, get old, drop out.

You’ve got enough money, and maybe university tenure.  This is the time to take it easy: make work that just repeats your best years ad nauseum, or even stop working altogether.  Disproving this are John Baldessari and Marina Abramović, who continue to work hard and push beyond previous limits.  Baldessari is 79 years old; in the last five years he designed the exhibition Magritte and Contemporary Art, had strong new work at his show at Sprüth Magers (Berlin) earlier this year, and currently has a long-overdue retrospective, Pure Beauty, at LACMA.  Abramović, now 64, describes herself as “the grandmother of performance art.”  Performing The Artist is Present this past spring at MOMA, she asserted the right and privilege of the artist to continue to explore her own work, to mine it and delve ever-deeper into unknown territory.  This is the benefit of utilizing a lifetime of knowledge, growth, and experience to make innovative art.  May we all be so blessed.

Rise of Rebellion: DailyServing’s latest week-long series

On the heels of our week-long themed series 7 Days of Myth and Summer of Utopia, DailyServing is proud to bring you a collection of writings that explore the use of rebellion in contemporary art in this week’s series Rise of Rebellion. In this latest week-long series, our writers will explore the ways in which contemporary artists are using rebellion as a central concept in their artwork through exclusive interviews, articles, essays and daily features. Check in each day to examine the rebel that lives in all of us.

Today we begin our investigation into rebellion with Jobs Suck and Art Rules: Today I Made Nothing at Elizabeth Dee by Michael Tomeo.

Today I Made Nothing, Organized by Tim Saltarelli, Elizabeth Dee, New York, NY, July 27 – September 18, 2010, Installation view Courtesy Elizabeth Dee, New York

I’m so over jobs right now. Sure, we need them, we’re thankful for the paycheck and it’s fun to hang out with coworkers (sometimes), but let’s face it, jobs blow.  While the total freedom associated with making art seems antithetical to the 9 to 5 slog, there are definite correlations between art and work and they are given form in the impeccably timed Today I Made Nothing at Elizabeth Dee Gallery.

Virginia Overton, Untitled (chairs with lights), 2009, chairs, light fixture, ratchet strap, Dimensions variable, Courtesy the artist and Elizabeth Dee, New York

There are two types of workplace rebellion on view here. In one, the artist is an outsider, fighting for equal rights and clashing against the system. Works like Alejandro Cesarco’s Why Work?, Duncan Campbell’s Factories Act 1961, and Jonathan Monk’s The Sound of Music (A Record With the Sound Of Its Own Making), each use techniques and ideas from the 1960s and ‘70s such as appropriation and institutional critique. Vaguely recalling the efforts of the late-60s collectives such as the Art Workers Coalition, these works feel a bit dated, but they lend the show a historic scope.

Joseph Strau, title forthcoming, 2010, mixed media installation with floor lamp and two paintings, dimensions variable, Courtesy the artist and Elizabeth Dee, New York

Another group of artists is more successfully subversive. Mika Tajima, Renée Green, Joseph Strau and Virginia Overton each use the visual vocabulary of today’s corporate world as if they are involved in a diabolical inside job. Overton’s Untitled (chairs with lights) reconfigures mordant institutional design to create what is ostensibly a badass floor lamp/sculpture.  Joseph Strau’s title forthcoming, presents two dainty abstractions with a lamp in front of them, as if Franz West were the display manager at IKEA. Mika Tajima’s A Facility Based on Change, an impenetrable work cubicle, updates the underlying claustrophobia in minimal sculpture for the middle management set. Renée Green’s banners take on the look of corporate brainstorming lists in what she calls Space Poems. They’re funny, off-putting and deceptively smart. In a room full of works attempting to challenge the boundaries of what art is, these might take the cake.

Renée Green, United Space of Conditioned Becoming: Space Poem #1, From My Institution Corporation Factory Blackberry Cellphone Mouth To Yours, 2007, double-sided color banner 42 x 32 inches (106.7 x 81.3 cm), Courtesy the artist and Elizabeth Dee, New York

It’s a sign of progress that, in a show about working, women have the strongest presence.  However, other forms of advancement prove more difficult to measure. In the ‘60s, artists protested museums at a level unheard of today. As rebellious as this show portends to be, many of the artists on view are up and coming museum stars in their own right. Museums have begun to absorb rebellion as part of their aesthetic and they increasingly embrace and reward all forms of institutional critique and artist manipulation.  By welcoming more acts of critique into their halls, they glean the benefit of appearing like nurturing patrons, but they also anesthetize any sense of real rebellion. We still have a long way to go, but Today I Made Nothing is an excellent place to start the conversation.

Babak Golkar is a multi-disciplinary artist whose practice, at its fundamental roots, takes aim to deconstruct, recontextualize and rearrange our perceptions of the world around us. Like Zen koans, Golkar’s work seems to arrive at new understandings by setting up impossible questions. At it’s core is a spirit of unbridled philosophical investigation; one that exhibits a Duchampian twist on the visual pun mixed with a Gestalt sense of multistability and reification. Golkar’s work understands both the destructive and regenerative aspects of perspective and shifting visions; and fundamentally contests the fixity of subject and object and space. And, like his work, Golkar’s visual language maneuvers between seemingly oppositional realms–East and West, politics and revolution, Modernity and antiquity, Minimalism and ornament—ultimately exposing not the dialectical relationship between polarities, but rather the poeticism in the world around us.

Sasha M. Lee: I wanted to begin with your series “Negotiating Space,” in which you use Nomadic Persian Carpets as a kind of architectural support, transforming its geometric twists and turns into rough blueprints for gleaming, white, three-dimensional models, rising from the woven geometric patterns. I thought the title and the conceptual framework of the work, for me, was actually a poetic way to summarize many of the themes that run through your work. Can you talk about how these forms interact, and why you chose to juxtapose these particular forms in this manner?

Babak Golkar: I’m interested in the alchemy of the art practice…arriving at gold, metaphorically of course, some sort of proposal for new understandings, the creation of new meaning. I like the idea of a particular piece transforming from two dimensions to three dimensions; something non-existent becoming a possible structure, and the subsequent interaction between the two. I like to talk about my work in terms of “becoming,” of interdependency between these two forms. In the case of the series “Negotiating Space” I don’t like to look at the nomadic Persian carpet as the origin of the whole thing per say…but rather one visual form constantly becoming the other and vise versa.

Hence the title—I like to use titles as materials in and of themselves– it is carefully chosen to hint at a state of uncertainty, a fluid or malleable state of existence. Really, I call the works “proposals,” rather than installations or sculptures.

Even though the carpet is technically the blueprint for the architectural scale-models, the structure adds a vertical dimension, which, as you move above the piece it collapses back to carpet once again. I like to talk about this idea of 2D to 3D, and its reversal; in particular the Duchampian aspect of playing with space. I’m inspired by Duchamp’s alchemical approaches to art making. In some ways I make a reference to Duchamp, in particular his piece, 3 Standard Stoppages. Do you know that piece?

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Colin Quashie’s recently completed mural, entitled Service, focuses on the intricacy of interactions between art and politics in a complex, expressive artwork commissioned by the University of North Carolina’s School of Government. Noted as a controversial artist, Quashie, based in Charleston, South Carolina, undertook the completion of this project sustained by the patronage of the Local Government Federal Credit Union. The painting commemorates the contributions of African Americans to North Carolina’s local history, and addresses omissions from popular cultural memory. The circumstances of this image, and its commission offer a rich opportunity for social commentary and a dialogue on culture, race, reasoning, community, and the aesthetics of public memorials in America.

Although Service is presented as a traditional mural painting, its placement, combined with the artist’s contrived design motifs and the mural’s contextual cultural inferences, morphs the work’s significance away from being a “history painting” into a nexus of relevant political issues. Approximately 5’ high and 50’ long, the figures represented are rendered in thin, translucent oil glazes. Despite its concessions to the conventions of naturalistic figurative art, this work’s conceptual richness and informative, amusing, complexity make it more than a simple mural; it is a “conversation piece” in the very best sense of that term.

The ideas suggested in this work obliquely confront visitors to the ground floor dining room of the Knapp-Sanders Building on the Chapel Hill campus. Operating more like a satirically conceived installation rather than the simple mural, it coyly seeks to pacify us with a history painting, yet its complex ideas correspond with the socially critical and ironic implications associated with other works by Quashie, whose rambunctious contentions with our American culture often simultaneously entertain while interrogating the presumed motivations and assumptions of his audiences. Quashie seduces us into believing that this image is “safe” and the mural seems initially to offer few surprises: that is to say, it does the work that it was expected to do by representing a series of figures of historic significance. Service, however deals with more than simple appearances.

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Vortex 2006, Gunpowder on paper, 400 x 900 cm, Collection of Deutsche Bank Collection, commissioned by Deutsche Bank AG, Mathias Schormann © Cai Guo-Qiang

Cai Guo-Qiang began experimenting with the properties of gunpowder in his drawings in the 1980s. He used gunpowder of various grades and forms and exploded it on paper, leaving burnt and smoky charcoal-stained residue marks behind.  Born out of his desire to subject his practice to the dynamic elements, Cai’s work expresses how beauty and violence are often intertwined. Much of this experimentation has lead to a practice which encompasses the use of explosives on a massive scale, and Vortex, a drawing depicting hundreds and thousands of wolves chasing one another in a circular motion, as if sucked into a vortex, is emblematic of Cai’s work.

Head On, 99 life-sized replicas of wolves and glass wall. Wolves: gauze, resin, and painted hide, Dimensions variable, 2006 Deutsche Bank Collection, commissioned by Deutsche Bank AG. Photography by John Yuen, Fotograffiti

Cai’s work are also recognized by a strong sense of movement, weaving together the extremes of emotions and states within nature. Head On was created in the wake of the 10th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, and reflects on the remaining fissures in spite of the political reunification of East and West Germany. Ninety-nine life-sized replicas of wolves are seen to be leaping in a pack towards a glass wall. While those leading the pack strike the glass wall and collapse in a heap, the wolves at the rear continue surging forward. Seen from afar, the leaping wolves form an arc of force and power, a reminder of the power of collective ideas and actions, and also, its consequence of blind pursuit.

Reflection - A Gift from Iwaki installed at MAMAC in Nice. Copyright: Crédits Ville de Nice

While Cai’s work often relies on context, it also draws on symbols and materials from Chinese culture. His works are marked by a certain theatricality and require a sizable production crew, perhaps a vestige of his background in stage design at the Shanghai Theatre Academy. His aggressive, set-like design brings together historical context and theatricality in Reflection – A Gift from Iwaki, comprised of a 15-meter long boat, excavated by ship makers of the Iwaki village in Japan where the work was created. The beauty of destruction is evident from the decaying shipwreck lying against a mountain of broken ceramic deities. The placement of broken deities in a museum was a deliberate gesture to question the point at which a religious statue relinquishes its spiritual significance, towards its function as mere artistic representations and commercial goods. First presented in 2004, Reflection – A Gift from Iwaki is reconstituted for each exhibition by seven fishermen from Iwaki.

Head on and Vortex are currently on view at Cai Guo-Qiang: Head On which runs till 31 August 2010 at the National Museum of Singapore. Reflection – A Gift from Iwaki is presented in Cai Guo-Qiang: Travels in the Mediterranean at Musée d’Art moderne et d’Art contemporain, Nice, France till 9 January 2011. Cai was born in 1957 in the city of Quanzhou, Fujian Province, China. He was awarded the Golden Lion at the 48th Venice Biennale in 1999, the 7th Hiroshima Art Prize in 2007, and the 20th Fukuoka Asian Culture Prize in 2009. He also held the title of Director of Visual and Special Effects for the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. In 2008, he was the subject of a large mid-career retrospective at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. He has lived in New York since 1995.

"No Olvidado - Not Forgotten", 2010. 23 graphite on paper drawings. Courtesy of Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects. Photo credit Robert Wedemeyer.

There are very few artists today who willingly take a direct political position in their work. Often artists neglect how powerful artwork can be as an instigator for social and political change. In many ways art and politics, or art and activism, have gone hand in hand throughout history, helping to over come social injustice. But, just as often, artwork has acted as a tool to help further social and economic inequalities by declaring ownership and possession.

As an artist that has committed her work to implementing social activism through art making, Andrea Bowers’ drawings and video eloquently document the lives of those who directly interact with the political system, through such issues as illegal immigration and land ownership. Her methods of representation help to humanize and quantify abstract concepts, such as the number of deaths caused by border crossing, through subtle interactions and involvement with her documented subjects. When modern media often explores these issues in a removed and politicized manner, Bower’s work reminds us of the individual. The simple act of documentation gives a face to those who are otherwise overshadowed by the dominating political sphere.

After viewing her recent exhibition at Susanne Veilmetter Los Angeles Projects, which closed last week, I had the privilege of meeting with the artist to discuss the roles of artists and activists, the function of memorials, and personal commitment to public issues.

"No Olvidado - Not Forgotten", 2010. 23 graphite on paper drawings. Courtesy of Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects. Photo credit Robert Wedemeyer.

Julie Henson: To start with, could you tell me a little bit about your show, The Political Landscape, at Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects?

Andrea Bowers: The Political Landscape continues my recent exploration of contemporary issues associated with the genre of landscape.  It focuses on contentious locations where countries and corporations are willing to cause environmental degradation or human rights violations for the purpose of attaining or maintaining power.  One of the earliest functions of the landscape picture has been to provide evidence of ownership; in this project I aim to reveal the abuse of ownership. For the exhibition, I have made two different projects that focus on two different sites in the American West: public land in the state of Utah and the Mexican/American border.

JH: I find it interesting that you choose to use drawing as a method to interact with those that are on the forefront of the current immigration debate. It seems to me that the act of creating a photorealistic drawing becomes documentation of the individual’s personal narrative. How do you relate to the individuals that you portray? How does visually capturing the individual relate to the dialogue around the social issue that affects them?

AB: First of all I should explain that one strategy that I use in my work is photorealist drawing. In the current exhibition at Vielmetter, I made a series of black and white pencil drawings of protesters at the recent Mayday March here in Los Angeles. Each drawing contains a protester holding a sign or wearing a slogan somewhere on their clothing. I am focusing on their political position at that particular moment. I’m choosing to honor these individuals in my drawings because I agree with the political ideologies they’re promoting and I think that these political subjects should be apart of historical discourse as well as art discourse.

"Study from May Day March, Los Angeles 2010 (We voted for a change We are waiting for it)", 2010. Graphite on paper. Courtesy of Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects. Photo credit Robert Wedemeyer.

JH: It seems to me that one consistent element of the show at Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects is this idea of honoring those who are otherwise forgotten in the mainstream media and current political sphere. The large drawings clearly have a strong relationship to many large public memorials, like Maya Lin’s Vietnam Veterans Memorial. How does the memorial function for you and in what ways does it change once presented in the gallery versus the public realm?

AB: No Olvidado (Not Forgotten) is the largest drawing project I have yet made.  It is comprised of 23 graphite drawings, 50” x 120” each. The piece acts as a memorial honoring those who have died crossing the Mexican/American border.  Unlike most memorials, this is an incomplete list and will always remain that way no matter how many names are added or collected.  So many people that have died migrating to the U.S. from Mexico over the years will never be identified.  The list of immigrant deaths comes from the organization Border Angels, whose mission is to stop unnecessary deaths of individuals traveling through the Imperial Valley desert region and the mountains surrounding San Diego County, as well as the area located around the Mexican/American border. A high percentage of these unnecessary deaths have been the result of extreme weather conditions, while some have, sadly, been the results of racial discrimination crimes. The Vietnam Memorial is government sanctioned and paid for—I wanted to make this memorial because I don’t believe the government would ever sanction and pay for a memorial like this.

JH: I also find it very intriguing that the drawings are more delicate and fragile than the traditional memorial and the list of names visually represents something seemingly abstract. There is something very precious about how seemingly impermanent the drawings are. What are your thoughts on the repetitious act of drawing and listing a record of an almost indefinite number of lives?

AB: I think the impermanence of graphite and paper versus a more traditional material for monuments, like stone or bronze relates to not only the fragility of the situation at the border but also, again, the lack of  U.S. government sanctioned support for people migrating to this county. The issues have only been abstracted by the American corporate media and most of our government officials. I don’t think there is anything abstract about thousands of people dying in the desert who are simply trying to make a better life for themselves and their families. The act of drawing or mark making reveals my personal involvement with the subject matter.

JH: I completely agree that the nature of the border situation is a product of our political system. One thing that I really love about No Olvidado (Not Forgotten) is that it initially comes across as a finite recording of lives lost, and the more time you look at the drawing, the more you realize the innumerable nature of it. And the shear time invested in the act of drawing so many names gives you a place to recognize and humanize the political questions around the border. It seems to me that you assume a different position in The United States v. Tim DeChristopher than you do in No Olvidado (Not Forgotten). Somehow, you smoothly transition from what seems to me as a recording of a story to physically intersecting and numbering the seemingly boundless environment that Tim DeChristopher saved. What happens when you inject yourself into the video?

"The United States v. Tim DeChristopher", 2010. Single Channel HD video (color with sound). Courtesy of Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects. Photo credit Robert Wedemeyer.

AB: I don’t see them as all that different. The action of drawing is somehow in line or is similar to walking through the landscape. I have spent a great deal of time studying and teaching the history of gestural mark making in both painting and performance.  Paul Schimmel’s exhibition, “Out of Actions” had big impact on me when I was a young artist.  Some of the mark making in No Olividado was made by using a really big brush coated in powdered graphite.  Walking through the landscapes and brushing the negative space of the drawings are both forms of gesture for me.  Both reveal my personal commitment to the issues. This is where my subjectivity enters the work. As an artist, attempting to be neutral or appearing to not have a position only serves the powers that be.

JH: Well, there are definite similarities in your approach. The difference to me is that there is a visual representation of your presence in The United States v. Tim DeChristopher that I read as more involved, or at least more active, than in the drawings. To place yourself within the landscape rather than just documenting through drawing makes me more aware of your presence and your position within the work. It enforces the idea that you are standing in solidarity with the issues at hand, as opposed to simply documenting someone else’s point of view. It allows the work to be more subjective in nature and instills it with a sense of personal passion and investment that is evident to the viewer. This leads me to one thing I find really interesting, which is how your work relates to role of the artist and the role of the activist. Can you talk a little about these two roles and how you think they work together?

AB: Art and activism have always been intricately tied throughout history. It’s just the market of commodification that encourages us to believe they are at odds. I’m always looking for the commonalities between art and activism, as well as thinking through how each might serve the other.  My work is always very opinionated in its political stance.

The exhibition, The Political Landscape, corresponded with multiple events at the gallery, including a fundraiser and information session with Tim DeChristopher, an afternoon of talks, music and conversation toward humane migration reform and a performance by artist Cindy Short in response to the exhibition. Andrea Bowers upcoming projects include “Collection: MOCA’s First Thirty Years (1980 – Now),” The Geffen Contemporary at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), Los Angeles, and  “Stowaways”, The Centro Cultural Montehermoso, Vitoria-Gasteiz, Araba, Spain, among others.

DailyServing.com selects two notable artists each month from the submissions we receive to be featured in our series, Fan Mail. For a chance to have your work appear below, with an article written by one of the DailyServing contributors, please submit a link to your website to info@dailyserving.com, subject: Fan Mail. You could be the next artist in the series! (We will try to contact chosen artists prior to publication, but please be sure to check the site everyday.)

Jeanne Jo’s diverse body of work, which includes video art, performance, sculpture, and collaborations with other artists, successfully evades categorization, reflecting the interdisciplinary nature of contemporary culture. Often impermanent, her projects are theoretically sophisticated, aesthetically uncomplicated, and profoundly personal. After receiving her B.F.A. from the University of Nevada, Reno, Jo completed her M.F.A. in Digital Media at Rhode Island School of Design in 2008. She lives and works in Los Angeles, where she is currently pursuing her Ph.D. in Digital Media at the University of Southern California, with an expected graduation date of 2014.

In her video series Ephemeral Interventions (2007), Jo performs simple activities in front of surveillance cameras situated around her Providence, RI. In the video seen above, Jo writes on a city street, at night, with powdered sugar. The ephemeral white text reads “When I look up from my mind, I see what you are:”, a fragment of poetry by Michael Collier. In this series, Jo inverts the function of surveillance by actively, as opposed to passively, providing content for the camera. The growing presence of surveillance in urban space, and the awareness of constant observation, has triggered a creative response from artists, most cleverly utilizing the mechanics of surveillance technology itself.

This simple but profound manipulation of chosen medium is seen in Jo’s more tangible works as well. Intrigued by the intersections of craft (specifically female  handicraft, i.e. crochet) and technology, Jo produces woven sculptures that reference the historical connections between the fields of weaving and modern computing. The Jacquard Loom, a mechanical loom invented in 1801, simplified the process of manufacturing textiles with complex patterns and was an important precedent to the development of computer programming, with punch cards controlling a sequence of actions. Jo’s knit sculpture, If a Mouth were to Whisper.. (2010), which resembles a giant cream-colored scarf, is a crocheted love letter, woven in alphanumeric code, with words spelled out in crochet knots. According to Studio Fuse art blog, the artist plans to engineer a computer program that would encrypt any text into a knitting or crochet pattern.

Jeanne Jo will be participating in The Business of Aura, an upcoming group show at Broadway Gallery in New York, opening on August 19th. The exhibition addresses the multiple interpretations of “aura” and seeks to reclaim a broader understanding of the term in contemporary practices. The Business of Aura will remain on view until September 10th.