Every time I go to the museum, I'm like, Man! Asian art is depressing! This evening, I saw a piece by an artist who was affected by the suspension of funding for performance art. She constructed something erotic out of rocking cables and bare lightbulbs that rubbed against oval mirrors; this sexually provocative installation is constructed to suggest a setting for a performance, and within this set-up she asks: But where is the performer? And we're like, Oh, I understand now — although she constructs, she also creates a very pronounced absence to foreground her critique. So clever! But it really doesn't give us anything to celebrate... if anything, the entire work compels us to rue over the state of free speech etc. etc. And everyone moves on to the next piece, which happens to depict farmers hanging themselves over their harvest, red paint trickling everywhere. The title of the piece is self-explanatory, says the curator giving the tour. We learn that it's entitled How To Commit Suicide or something in that same spirit of misery. We move on to a utopian piece that still features violence and poverty, a Venus of Bangkok made out of rusty farming equipment, multiple phallic drawings foregrounding forced censure and systematic state-driven oppression, self-portraits that speak of knowledge and entrapment... I ran out and started my feedback form collection duty early.
No comments:
Post a Comment