A Melon on a Stem
Posted: November 28, 2016 Filed under: Art, Painting/Drawing, Photography, Prose, Writing | Tags: 80s, 90s, banana flower, Canadian literature, dystopian fiction, feminism, fertility, fiction, flowers, Gabriel Orozco, Georgia O'Keeffe, Gilead, Latin American Art, literature, Margaret Atwood, melon, ripeness, speculative fiction, The Handmaid's Tale Leave a commentAn extract from The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
Then we had the irises, rising beautiful and cool on their tall stalks, like blown glass, like pastel water momentarily frozen in a splash, light blue, light mauve, and the darker ones, velvet and purple, black cat’s ears in the sun, indigo shadow, and the bleeding hearts, so female in shape it was a surprise they’d not long since been rooted out. There is something subversive about this garden of Serena’s, a sense of buried things bursting upwards, wordlessly, into the light, as if to point, to say: Whatever is silenced will clamour to be heard, though silently. A Tennyson garden, heavy with scent, languid; the return of the word swoon. Light pours down upon it from the sun, true, but also heat rises, from the flowers themselves, you can feel it: Like holding your hand an inch above an arm, a shoulder. It breathes, in the warmth, breathing itself in. To walk through it in these days, of peonies, of pinks and carnations, makes my head swim.
The willow is in full plumage and is no help, with its insinuating whispers. Rendezvous, it says, terraces; the sibilants run up my spine, a shiver as if in fever. The summer dress rustles against the flesh of my thighs, the grass grows underfoot, at the edges of my eyes there are movements, in the branches; feathers, flittings, grace notes, tree into bird, metamorphosis run wild. Goddesses are possible now and the air suffuses with desire. Even the bricks of the house are softening, becoming tactile; if I leaned against them they’d be warm and yielding. It’s amazing what denial can do. Did the sight of my ankle make him lightheaded, faint, at the checkpoint yesterday, when I dropped my pass and let him pick it up for me? No handkerchief, no fan, I use what’s handy.
Winter is not so dangerous. I need hardness, cold, rigidity; not this heaviness, as if I’m a melon on a stem, this liquid ripeness.
Banana Flower, Georgia O’Keeffe, 1934
Melon, Gabriel Orozco, 1993
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Objeto Ativo
Posted: September 15, 2016 Filed under: Art, Painting/Drawing, Sculpture | Tags: Active Object, Coleccion Patricia Phelps de Cisneros, Concrete Invention, geometric abstraction, Latin American Art, modern art, Museo Reina Sofia, Objeto Ativo, Steve Roden, Willys de Castro Leave a comment“I see Castro’s entire body of work as a series of breadcrumbs scattered across a forest floor. For some, hundreds of tiny pieces of old stale bread is hardly worth noticing, while others are able to discover within a trail of detritus a path towards something not yet known. It this within this tension between the known and unknown that de Castro’s works generously offer the alchemical potential to their viewers. Of course, with alchemy everything is already there for the making, but one must have the right point of view…”
From Steve Roden’s essay, The Intimate Boundlessness, in the exhibition catalogue Concrete Invention: Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros
Objeto Ativo, Willys de Castro, 1961
Objeto Ativo (Cubo Vermelho/Branco), Willys de Castro, 1962
Modulated Composition, Willys de Castro, 1954
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Poem for the Breasts
Posted: May 1, 2016 Filed under: Art, Photography, Poetry, Writing | Tags: American poets, breasts, Flor Garduno, Latin American Art, Latin American photography, lemons, limones, Mexico, Sharon Olds Leave a commentBy Sharon Olds
Like other identical twins, they can be
better told apart in adulthood.
One is fast to wrinkle her brow,
her brain, her quick intelligence. The other
dreams inside a constellation,
freckles of Orion. They were born when I was thirteen,
they rose up, half out of my chest,
now they’re forty, wise, generous.
I am inside them — in a way, under them,
or I carry them, I’d been alive so many years without them.
I can’t say I am them, though their feelings are almost
my feelings, as with someone one loves. They seem,
to me, like a gift that I have to give.
That boys were said to worship their category of
being, almost starve for it,
did not escape me, and some young men
loved them the way one would want, oneself, to be loved.
All year they have been calling to my departed husband,
singing to him, like a pair of soaking
sirens on a scaled rock.
They can’t believe he’s left them, it’s not in their
vocabulary, they being made
of promise — they’re like literally kept vows.
Sometimes, now, I hold them a moment,
one in each hand, twin widows,
heavy with grief. They were a gift to me,
and then they were ours, like thirsty nurslings
of excitement and plenty. And now it’s the same
season again, the very week
he moved out. Didn’t he whisper to them,
Wait here for me one year? no.
He said, God be with you, God
be with you, God-bye, for the rest
of this life and for the long nothing. And they do not
know language, they are waiting for him, my
Christ they are dumb, they do not even
know they are mortal — sweet, I guess,
refreshing to live with, beings without
the knowledge of death, creatures of ignorant suffering.
Flor Garduño, Los Limones, Mexico, 1998
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The Salty Tears of a Roach
Posted: October 23, 2015 Filed under: Art, Photography, Prose, Writing | Tags: 60's, Brazil, brazilian, clarice lispector, cockroach, eating a banana, Graciela Iturbide, iguanas, Latin America, Latin American Art, latin american literature, mexican, rio de janeiro, roach, salt, Sarah Lucas, The passion according to G.H Leave a commentThe Passion According to G.H. (1964) is a disturbing and shocking novel by Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector. Set in Rio de Janeiro, it tells the story of a wealthy woman, G.H, who encounters a cockroach in the service quarters of her apartment. The occurrence leads to a nervous breakdown and an existential crisis and ends in our heroine eating a part of the roach…
“The roach is an ugly and sparkling being. The roach is the other way around. No, no, it doesn’t have a way around: it is that. Whatever is exposed in it is what I hide in me: from my outside being exposed I made my unheeded inside. It was looking at me. And it wasn’t a face. It was a mask. A diver’s mask. That precious gem of rusted iron. Its two eyes were alive like two ovaries. It was looking at me with the blind fertility of its gaze. It was fertilizing my dead fertility. Would its eyes be salty? If I touched them — since I was gradually getting more and more unclean — if I touched them with my mouth, would they taste salty?
I’d already tasted in my mouth a man’s eyes and, from the salt in my mouth, realized he was crying.
But, thinking about the salt in the roach’s black eyes, suddenly I recoiled again, and my dry lips pulled back to my teeth: the reptiles that move across the earth! In the halted reverberation of the light of the room, the roach was a small slow crocodile. The dry and vibrating room. The roach and I posed in that dryness as on the dry crust of an extinct volcano. That desert I had entered, and also inside it I was discovering life and its salt.”
Our Lady of the Iguanas. Juchitán, México. Graciela Iturbide. 1979.
Eating a Banana. Sarah Lucas. 1990.
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The Red Room
Posted: April 15, 2015 Filed under: Art, Painting/Drawing, Performance/Installation, Prose, Writing | Tags: charlote Brontë, cildo meireles, Harmony in Red, henri matisse, jane eyre, Latin American Art, literature, Matisse, red, red room, red shift, The Dessert 2 Comments
The Dessert (Harmony in Red) by Henri Matisse. 1908
Red Shift: Impregnation. Cildo Meireles. 1967-84.
The red-room was a square chamber, very seldom slept in, I might say never, indeed, unless when a chance influx of visitors at Gateshead Hall rendered it necessary to turn to account all the accommodation it contained: yet it was one of the largest and stateliest chambers in the mansion. A bed supported on massive pillars of mahogany, hung with curtains of deep red damask, stood out like a tabernacle in the centre; the two large windows, with their blinds always drawn down, were half shrouded in festoons and falls of similar drapery; the carpet was red; the table at the foot of the bed was covered with a crimson cloth; the walls were a soft fawn colour with a blush of pink in it; the wardrobe, the toilet-table, the chairs were of darkly polished old mahogany. Out of these deep surrounding shades rose high, and glared white, the piled-up mattresses and pillows of the bed, spread with a snowy Marseilles counterpane. Scarcely less prominent was an ample cushioned easy-chair near the head of the bed, also white, with a footstool before it; and looking, as I thought, like a pale throne.
This room was chill, because it seldom had a fire; it was silent, because remote from the nursery and kitchen; solemn, because it was known to be so seldom entered. The house-maid alone came here on Saturdays, to wipe from the mirrors and the furniture a week’s quiet dust: and Mrs. Reed herself, at far intervals, visited it to review the contents of a certain secret drawer in the wardrobe, where were stored divers parchments, her jewel-casket, and a miniature of her deceased husband; and in those last words lies the secret of the red-room–the spell which kept it so lonely in spite of its grandeur.
Mr. Reed had been dead nine years: it was in this chamber he breathed his last; here he lay in state; hence his coffin was borne by the undertaker’s men; and, since that day, a sense of dreary consecration had guarded it from frequent intrusion.
From Jane Eyre by Charlote Brontë
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Vanishing Point
Posted: February 26, 2015 Filed under: Art, Performance/Installation, Zoowithoutanimals writes about Art | Tags: Baroque, Brazil, contemporary art, Latin American Art, perfume, scent, senses, Valeska Soares, vanishing point Leave a commentValeska Soares was born in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, in 1957 and, like most of Brazil’s contemporary artists, has been influenced by the historical Baroque and by Neo-Concretism. Her installation, Vanishing Point, is based on the conflict of visual and olfactory perception. In this installation Soares explores the capacity of scent to magnify one’s senses and heighten the connection between sense and reason, body and intellect. It comprises of fifteen steel receptacles filled with amber-coloured perfume. The containers vary in shape and are arranged to form the pattern of a Baroque garden, also alluding to the shape of labyrinths in several architectural traditions. The perfume impregnates the room with a sweet smell which soon becomes overbearing and creates an oppressive atmosphere. The simple and minimalist symmetry created by the steel containers contrasts sharply with the frenzied scent to create a contradictory experience.
In Vanishing Point (1998) Soares explores the fine line between being intoxicated by something and being sickened by it, a concept she frequently involves in her work. When describing the role of perfume in her work, Suarez said “perfume has become a metaphor for possibilities of intoxication. It’s a substance that crosses that border between being pleasurable and being overintoxicating”. In Vanishing Point, the pleasant perfume is something that seduces the viewer, however, once they are immersed in it, it becomes heavy and oppressive. This idea was beautifully represented on the opening night of the installation when bees were lured by the scent of the perfume and fell into the tanks to meet their death.
Vanishing Point fuses elements of the Baroque tradition with contemporary concepts and mediums. The frantic effect of the perfume mimics the excess which is typical of the Baroque period. The installation also has a definite vanitas quality –a common Baroque theme– as the aroma draws attention to the ephemeral character of the garden and the mortality of all living things.
The idea for this piece grows out of Soares’ keen interest in spaces, gardens and various ideas of paradise. Her fascination with scents stems from her interest in ephemeral things, in her work she does not attempt to create a logical narrative but rather give people triggers that activate memories so that they can create their own narratives. Each piece is subjective and can be interpreted in many different ways depending on the context of the person viewing it.
Vanishing Point softens rigid geometric forms with the sensuality of perfumes. However, little by little the perfume evaporates, leaving the message that even though steel structures may outlive sensual transient ones it is the abstract and spiritual that leaves a profound mark on our memory. Soares also wished to underscore the temporality of grandeur and beauty in the “feminine” essence against the enduring geometric maze’s “masculine” presence with its overtones of order and logic.
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Gringo
Posted: February 19, 2015 Filed under: Art, Film, Zoowithoutanimals writes about Art | Tags: 2003, Belgian, contemporary art, dogs, foreigner, Francis Alys, Gringo, Latin American Art, Mexico, Mexico City, outsider, video art 1 CommentFrancis Alys is a Belgian architect turned artist. He went to Mexico City in 1987 to help with a rebuilding program after an earthquake and has been living in Mexico City ever since. He abandoned his career as an architect and started working in a number of media including photography, video, installation, and painting. Alys is an avid wanderer and much of his work draws inspiration from the streets around his studio in Mexico City.
Being Belgian, Alys occupies an interesting position as a foreigner and an immigrant. From his stance as an outsider he presents his version of reality by taking the mundane and shifting it slightly into the absurd or the poetic.
Humor is very important in Alys’ work. He says, “Laughter is a symptom of incomprehension… a simple manifestation of the defeat of intelligence.” But While Alys may make us laugh, he also makes us think, at the core of his work we often find the more brutal implications of city life.
In his video El Gringo, Alys explores the discomfort of being an outsider. Gringo, the Latin American name for Americans is usually used to generalize all white foreigners, this video is a comment on the social tendencies to group people together based on their appearance. In the video the viewer follows the camera down a rural path, a few pot hounds approach and start circling the camera and barking wildly. They get increasingly riled up and begin snarling and baring their teeth. The camera suddenly drops and we are left to assume that the man behind the camera has been bitten.
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It Has Been One Hell of a Year
Posted: December 31, 2014 Filed under: Art, Photography, Poetry, Writing | Tags: dance, Graciela Iturbide, happy new year, Latin American Art, Michelle K, new year, surviving Leave a commentBy Michelle K.
And it has been
one hell
of a year.
I have worn
the seasons
under my sleeves,
on my thighs,
running down my cheeks.
This is what
surviving
looks like, my dear.
Dancing. Graciela Iturbide.
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In the Jungle
Posted: December 19, 2014 Filed under: Art, Painting/Drawing, Photography, Sculpture | Tags: Amazon, animals, cans, cat in the jungle, David LaChapelle, forest, Gabriel Orozco, gas station, Hans Arp, illustration, Jean Arp, jungle, lago, Latin American Art, LIam Stevens, Monica Ramos, palm trees, print, Tarsilo do Amaral, trees, wild Leave a comment
Cat in the Jungle. Gabriel Orozco. 1992
Gas Station. David LaChapelle. 2012
Lago. Tarsila do Amaral
Forest. Jean (Hans) Arp
Amazon. Liam Stevens.
Monica Ramos
Kat in the Jungle. Kathleen Tompsett. 2014
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Value
Posted: November 11, 2014 Filed under: Art, Performance/Installation, Sculpture | Tags: Brazil, cash, cildo meireles, cruzeiro, gold, Guy Brett, Latin American Art, Macba, money, money tree, occasion, value, Vicente Todoli, zero cruzeiro Leave a commentCildo Meireles
‘I like dealing with paradigmatic things’, Cildo Meireles has said, ‘material things that are recognized by the public in their everyday lives, things that are at the same time matter and symbol. Money, for example.’ From the blatant exhibition, on a pedestal, of a wad of banknotes secured with rubber bands, Money Tree 1969, to the gold thread and gold nails inserted, respectively, into a great mass of straw in Fio (Thread) 1990–5 and plain wooden crates in Ouro e Paus (Gold and Wood) 1982–95, the conundrums of value have continued to fascinate Meireles. Money Tree ‘points towards the problem of the value of the art object and the discrepancy between use-value and exchange-value’. It consists of 100 one-Cruzeiro notes and was offered for sale for twenty times that amount. One wonders what it would fetch today; in inflationary Brazil at the time it was made, Meireles joked, money was the cheapest material. Much later, for Occasion 2004, the artist contrived a scenario in which the public would be faced by money in the most direct way. This ensured that our attention would be drawn away from speculative thoughts about the art object, and back to ourselves. We encountered a small, elegant, open receptacle containing new banknotes in the centre of a brightly lit room lined with three big mirrors on three of the walls,producing endless recession images. One of the mirrors was two-way. Viewers reacted in various different ways to the presence of the naked cash, and then, leaving the room and looking back through the two-way mirror, saw other people where they themselves had been a moment before, becoming voyeurs. As a last clandestine fling, Meireles became an ironic counterfeiter, printing a large number of bills – Zero Cruzeiro 1974 and Zero Dollar 1978– the latter with the help of the designer/engraver João Bosco Renaud. Reducing official value to zero, the subversive Cruzeiro notes are embellished with the portraits, not of some illustrious figure of the Brazilian pantheon, but of two individuals effectively excluded fromBrazilian society, whose civil rights are minimal: a Kraô Indian on one face and the inmate of a mental asylum on the other (Meireles knew both these men).
Cildo Meireles: On the nature of things by Guy Brett and Vicente Todolí. Click to read more
Money Tree
Zero Cruzeiro
Occasion
More on Cildo Meireles: Volatile
