Artist Leon Reid IV has a way with images. When he’s not remixing the urban environment, he’s playing with the context of art institutions that commission his work, which he always injects with a political or social message. His latest print series, Recent History, is a little of both. Political and clever, biting and tragic, Reid IV has massaged recent events into the infographic simplicity, are they too simple?

If some of his editions are centered on American events — like painting the White House black to commemorate the 2008 US Presidential election or New Orleans’ characteristic fleur-de-lis half-submerged in water as a commentary on Hurricane Katrina — the others look at events in Sudan, Japan, North Africa and Europe.

The prints themselves are on sale via his site, but I was eager to ask him a few questions about his striking images and his thoughts about the world today.

*    *    *

Leon Reid IV, "Wall Street 2008" (2012) (via leonthe4th.com)

Hrag Vartanian: What did you want to communicate with this series?

Leon Reid IV: With the “Recent History” prints I wanted to present a very graphic way of explaining the most important global events of our time. I am known more for my public sculpture but I think graphically so this design series was the quickest way for me to reflect what is going on in the world right now.

HV: Do you think Americans are more or less aware of the world around them than they were a few years ago?

LR IV: I think so. I can certainly say that I am more aware of the world around me as having witnessed the destruction on 9/11 and just living in Brooklyn for the past 12 years has really opened my eyes. Listening to public radio 16 hours a day while I work is also informative.

HV: What inspires you among the global events in the last year?

LR IV: I think the revolutions in North Africa and then across the Arab world were truly inspiring. I went to Egypt in 1997 and I remember seeing Mubarak’s image plastered everywhere — omnipresent and unavoidable. Not that Egypt is perfect right now, but they are on the path to greater freedoms.

HV: What worries you?

LR IV: I’m worried about all this nuclear trash talk between America and Iran, we just pulled out of one mid-east country and were allowing ourselves to get lulled lulled back into another conflict there. I think America at this point is comparable to the British Empire circa 1945; a world power knocked off balance by two costly wars.

Visual activist Zanele Muholi. (Photo courtesy artist)

In last week’s blog post I introduced the work of activist/artist Zanele Muholi.

Her artwork is integrated with her work within the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) communities, inviting its members to collaborate on her projects. As part of this work she volunteers for Freegender based in Khayelitscha, Cape Town. A major part of this is a blog that invites members of the community, specifically black lesbian women, to write about their experiences and share their stories. This space aims to give to LGBT members a platform for expression and to have their voices heard in the same way her artworks aim to give them visibility.

Born in Umlazi, which is south-west of Durban, South Africa, Muholi completed an Advanced Photography course at the Market Photo Workshop in Johannesburg in 2004, and she has since exhibited extensively both locally and internationally.

I talked with Zanele to get a better understanding of how she views her practice in context to South Africa and the globe, as well as how she deals with exhibiting images of her participants openly in a community where they are potentially susceptible to violent backlash.

*   *   *

Claire Breukel: How do you find your participants?

Zanele Muholi: Most of the people who I photograph are already out [about being gay] and people I know. TK was my student in 2006 and she is also from my hometown and she introduced me to Ntobz. I got to know Amanda through a friend I met at an LGBT conference. They are no strangers to me and we are an extended family. And in the same way, as a group, we make sure we stay safe.

Muholi's publication of featuring the beginning of her ongoing "Faces and Phases" series. (Photo courtesy Zanele Muholi)

CB: What impact does the process of photographing the women in your series Faces and Phases and Beulahs have on them, and the lesbian community?

ZM: So far black lesbian women have had their existence violently and blaringly erased. They [the women photographed] are not only involved as participants, but they are contributors towards a history as South African citizens. Beyond us being photographed as lesbians, we need to produce our history. This goes beyond not just conforming to gender ideals. Where is the identity of gay people or trans people? Where is that history?

Historically, even looking at celebrities, this identity is hidden from the people. There are so many women dying in silence. Women might be forced in to marriages — when they see these images they can identify with someone. So it is important for us to speak up for a larger community. Expression has for years been suppressed by gatekeepers, so we collaborate to document our history.

CB: I know you have done a lot of volunteer work in the communities where lesbian women have been raped and murdered. Have you ever considering showing your artwork in this environments?

ZM: My aim is to give people spaces to see themselves. The South African landscape is a space divided by history. Do you have museums and galleries in the townships? South Africa has gained independence — but we do not have even five galleries in the townships.

That being said, it is my duty to bring the people who have been photographed to come and see themselves and have an understanding of the images in a space [galleries] where black people were not allowed before.

CB: Your new publication Fragments Of A New History (PDF) has recently been published in conjunction with your exhibition in Spain, and you have had a number of other solo shows abroad. Is it your aim to shed light on queer issues internationally?

ZM: To date the image of black lesbians is just a negative image. And hate crime is ordained at disorganizing us as a group. I want there to be a positive image of us that we can capture as evidence of what is taking place currently. I have the option in my work to project blood or to project people as they are. In South Africa, no matter how poor people are they rise above and project themselves positively. And there are so many people who would like to see what black lesbians look like.

With the publication and exhibition there was no exchange of money, which is amazing, and I really appreciate what they did. Books and publications live beyond us and they become reference documents that can be used for education — students reference this kind of work, especially in Women’s Studies.

Muholi photographs members of the Transgender community in her exhibition "Indawo Yami." (Photo courtesy Zanele Muholi and Stevenson Gallery)

CB: Lets talk about your awards. In 2009, you won the Casa Africa award for best female photographer at Les Rencontres de Bamako biennial of African photography, the Fanny Ann Eddy accolade awarded by the International Resource Network in Africa (IRN-Africa) and an LGBTI Art & Culture Award. Have these awards impacted your career and your work?

ZM: The awards are not recognizing Zanele only, they are recognizing the participants in the work. I don’t like to call people subjects I call them participants and contributors to activism projects. We are in it together and they trust me with their all. These are the people who are being awarded.

CB: What made you decide to make your documentary Difficult Love? And how did your participants feel about being a part of a film?

ZM: The documentary was created in 2010 and shown mostly to people who are familiar with what I do. I work a lot with scholars and this information about my process helps them. I call myself a visual activist as I use visuals to describe what I am unable to script. I would like the world out there to get a different history of South Africa — a queer history, and the film helped do this.

It is hard to only work in spaces that look at art specifically. As an individual it is also hard to get funding to deal with LGBT issues — so I have to partner with organizations, which sometimes makes the process more difficult. But I took it upon myself to write this history as I live it and as I feel it. This is what the film is about.

CB: You have also done work photographing the transgender community- can you tell us a bit about this?

ZM: For the longest time we have spoken about the issues of the LGBT community, which just spoke about gays, but there were transgender people in between. They were rarely given a space within the “LG” community.

I have friends who are transitioning and they are coming out as friends, partners and as a neighbors, and they need support. Lesbians need to also better understand the term transgender and learn from such an expression and not to be critical towards our own. It’s not about sexual orientation its about gender expression. If someone says “I am a man, Zanele” I have to respect that and give that person a space. I’m still learning …

Zanele Muholi, "Caitlin and I, Boston, USA" (2009), C-print triptych. (Photo courtesy Zanele Muholi and Stevenson Gallery)

CB: Where do you feel you work is going next?

ZM: I do different things based on my experiences. I did a domestic worker series that talks about my mothers’ story, I did a series on interracial relationships which is about my personal experience. I have different iterations, but I will always do LGBT issues, as I will always be part of that community. It’s about me being expressive as long as I live that life, so I will never stop. I wish there were many other people doing these projects and embedding these images in history. I want these images to be part of history and produce a visual history of LGBT people.

… And then there is Documenta 13, which is a dream come true. (laughs)

As a lesbian, especially coming from Africa … have we ever had a black lesbian showing at Documenta? Let it be us! We are coming with over 50 faces. In fact, Lesbians and Trans-men at Documenta that is the headline! Because without these people there is no Zanele Muholi.

CB: Do you fear reprisal?

ZM: You live with fear obviously. I am exposed and there is nowhere to run to. In my head space I would rather be killed for what I am than to be killed in silence. There are so many people who are putting their life on the line for the benefit of many. Why do we have to hide our identity and avoid expressing our love for other people who are the same gender? If anything happens to me I will know that I have done something positive.

Groups from Occupy movements nationwide are meeting up on conference calls thanks to the site Interoccupy (image via interoccupy.org)

This coming Wednesday, January 11, Arts and Culture groups from Occupy movements around the country will have the chance to meet over the phone. In a national conference call planned for 10pm EST, the groups will introduce themselves, propose projects and join forces on plans for the future of Occupy. With arts groups in nearly every Occupy base, the possibility of what they can accomplish together seems limitless, if they can organize effectively. Possibly the next step could also be to use social media platforms like Google+ Hangouts to connect with groups in other states.

With Interoccupy, a site that connects working groups and General Assemblies across Occupations, several groups have hooked up through conference calls. Using MaestroConference technology, the groups are able to take votes and break out into smaller groups during the call. January 11 will be the first in a series of conference calls that focus specifically on Occupy’s Arts and Culture groups.

I caught up with two of the organizers of the call, Gan Golan and Janelle T, to hear more about what inspired them to begin this project and how they plan to facilitate a conference call with 60+ people!

*   *   *

Liza Eliano: What do you hope to accomplish with this nationwide conference call?

Janelle T: Initially we sent a wide call for Occupy Artists to fill out a survey asking what they would want to achieve through a national call with other artists.  More than 60 artists from 32 different Occupy sites filled out the survey and the arts planning committee took those responses and designed the call to meet the most common objectives put forth, which are: To learn about what other Occupy artists are doing, to collaborate on and coordinate creative actions and art projects nationally and internationally, to share resources, skills, ideas, successful strategies and lessons learned and to maximize the power and impact of the occupy messaging.

We are also working with Gan to connect the call to his wonderful website, ArtIsMyOccupation.org which provides resources to Occupy artists and will house some of the things that come out of the national calls.

Gan Golan: Occupy has given birth to an entirely new arts movement, which includes traditional media like posters, music and performance, but it also has great things like giant puppets, flashmobs and bat signals.

It’s a very innovative space, but art is measured by its ability to inspire and mobilize people to take action, not just sit on a wall looking pretty. The Occupy art movement not only  includes thousands of artists but a number of new Occupy institutions to showcase, distribute and support this work. It’s creating a virtuous between artists working in occupations, taking their work to the streets, then putting things on line so that others can see it, even download it, and go back out into the streets with it.

There is no central place where this is coming from. It’s just organically emerging everywhere, and people are organizing automously to create their own infrastructure to meet the need, and support others.

A graphic from Interoccupy's site (photo via interoccupy.org)

LE: How did the idea for this conference call come about?

JT: InterOccupy has been hosting national calls in a number of different thematic areas. Many of us artists, it turned out, were thinking along similar lines and we came together to form the InterOccupy Arts Call Planning Committee.

I contacted InterOccupy about working with us to create a regular national arts call and they’ve been helping us learn the conference call system and are providing a lot of facilitation and technical support.

GG: Like anything in Occupy, a few folks just started talking, and said “Has anyone done this yet? No? Okay, Let’s do it!”

Previous to this, there have been some really great one-off efforts by arts organizations, but Occupy has now figured out the infrastructure to do it ourselves, and in a regular way. We have the good folks at InterOccupy to thank for that. Janelle and others at Occupy DC got the ball rolling long before I joined on.

Of course, the conversation we were having, about bringing artists within Occupy together, is also happening in many other places within Occupy simultaneously. All we hope to do is help weave some of those threads together, and connect artists to each other. There is so much energy and inspiration that has been unleashed, artists are clamoring to work together. For many this will mean collaborating locally, but we can also collaborate on a massive, nationwide scale, conducting participatory art projects that happen in 100 localities at once. That’s now possible, and people are thinking Big. People are now just as much a part of the art as brushes and paint. And since Occupy is a global movement, we are working on huge canvas.

LE: How many people do you expect to be on the call, and how will the meeting be organized so everyone’s voice is heard?

JT: So far, 61 people have registered for the call. With the conference call system that InterOccupy uses, there are a lot of functions that allow us to be very participatory and to have more in depth discussions.

The first call is dedicated to exploring the Occupy arts landscape, looking at what projects and resources are out there. We will have a large part of the call focused on letting folks present the art projects they are working on, we then will be breaking into small group discussions around specific themes and questions (which we will be gathering by survey ahead of time to see where participants’ interests lay).

It’s fabulous that we have the capability to do that with InterOccupy’s call system! It gives opportunities for different levels of participation and it allows us to have more meaningful collaborative interactions through each call.

GG: I defer to Janelle on that one, but really, you never know how many people until the last minute. Everyone in Occupy is working so hard, it’s always down to the wire.

Once it gets over 50 people or so, you don’t have time for everyone to talk on a single call unless you have a few hours, but a lot can be accomplished in breakout groups within each call. InterOccupy has found a way to replicate the openness of the GA system on a conference call, using the Maestro system. This first call is really just an introduction, so if not everyone speaks this time around there will be more opportunities for more voices to be heard. For right now, we all just want to get to know each other, and understand the landscape we are creating so we can collaborate on a larger level.

Also, the planning process is totally open, so the themes and structure of future calls will be decided by whoever wants to participate.

*   *   *

The nationwide Occupy Arts and Culture conference call will take place on Wednesday January 11, 2012 at 7pm PST/ 10pm EST. To register for the call, click here.

*   *   *

Hrag Vartanian: Why did you decide to stop the case?

Ophelia Chong: When I first saw the packaging, I was a mix of surprise and hurt. Then an emotion that should be kept in check surfaced, pride. It became about Me and my Work. I reacted like a man who answers the door and looks down at a child that sort of looks like him, sort of sounds like him, but he is not really sure if it’s his because the child can’t tell him who the mother is.

I could see bits of myself in the Starbucks artwork, but then I wasn’t sure. And not being sure meant that I let go. Letting go means I am moving forward and going back to doing what I do.

HV: What did the lawyers tell you that made you change your mind?

OC: My attorney gave me good counsel and let me decide what I wanted to do. And I decided to move on.

HV: This doesn’t bode well for the small person trying to battle the big corporation, does it?

OC: Each artist will have to make that decision whether they want to take that fight to a conclusion. I decided not to because I could see that it was not as clear cut as other appropriations.

For instance Nike’s use of Minor Threat’s 1981 logo art for their 2005 skateboarding demo tour poster Major Threat, which was a very clear cut appropriation.

My work could’ve inspired Starbucks, but then again it could’ve been created completely outside of my influence; I will never know.

For the artist who feels their art was appropriated, they will need to decide if they have a case, find an attorney who will take it on contingency or have enough funds to carry on the case to a conclusion that might or might not fall in their favor.

Pick your battles well because the war is a long one. I chose to let go and to go back to creating my art unfettered by stress, anxiety and the toxicity of anger.

Kudzanai Chiurai, "Untitled V" (2011), Ultra chrome ink on Innova photo fiber paper. (Photo courtesy Goodman Gallery)

CAPE TOWN — Summertime in South Africa is not only a time for beach, sun and granadilla lollies (a locally-made fruit popsicle), with the influx of tourists it is also a time for survey exhibitions by galleries who want to showcase their stable of artists and give an overview of their wares.

Gallery director Liza Essers. (image via artthrob.co.za)

I walk in to Goodman Gallery on the third floor of a large warehouse space in the slowly gentrifying area of Woodstock. The exhibition is Summer Show and I grin at this simple and all-encompassing title in what I assume is an attempt at impartial curatorship.

The works on display are however more complex than the title denotes, and range from what is a glimpse in to a South African art textbook to a sexy sprinkling of hot-young-things in between. As a staple on the South African art landscape Goodman gallery in Johannesburg has for years shown established artists and with their new Cape Town gallery has increasingly begun to show younger artists, affording them global exposure and giving the gallery an edgier appeal.

I pop my head into the office of Liza Essers, the dynamo gallery director, who agrees to an interview (“right now, sure thing” is her reply).  I want to find out more about what it’s like to manage a diverse program at one of South Africa’s leading contemporary art galleries.

*   *   *

Claire Breukel: Why a group show now?

Liza Essers: In season it makes sense to have a group show and have our gallery artists represented, so we showcase everyone.

CB: Tell me about the gallery?

LE: We have been known to be the gallery on the African continent that has for the last forty six years brought the art history from the continent to the rest of the world.

In fact, the William Kentridge piece in this show relates to his Documenta 13 project “Refuse the Hour” that will happen in Kassel, Germany next year. We also work with David Goldblatt, who has a big exhibition at SFMOMA and another one at Huise Marseille in Amsterdam coming up.

William Kentridge, sketch for his upcoming 2012 project "Refuse the Hour". Photo courtesy the author.

CB: What’s it like working with a wide range of artists?

LE: For me it’s a privilege to be in William’s [Kentridge] or David’s [Goldblatt] studio with them. The same with the younger artists, but I would say they need more input and direction curatorially.

The more established artists already have their own sense of direction so it’s really more about managing their careers.

CB: Who should we watch?

LE: The other one of our artists in Documenta 13 is Zimbabwean artist Kudzanai Chiurai who has only been with us for two years and is doing really well.

Other artists to watch are Stuart Bird, I love his work in this show, and Mikhael Subotzky who is only in his thirties and just won the Standard Bank Young Artist Award for Visual Art (think South Africa’s Turner Prize).

This year, Moshekwa Langa also just had a museum show in Bern, Switzerland.

CB: What is the driving force behind showing works globally and locally?

The South African art market is limited and South African collectors are just starting to focus on contemporary art. For a long time the focus has been on collecting very traditional-South African-type work like Maggie Laubscher. Now the market is growing and thankfully there seems to be a new market for contemporary art.

CB: Do curators find artists at the source?

Some international curators do come to South Africa to see work, but mostly artists get exposure to big international curators at fairs internationally. The more we show work at fairs and exhibitions oversees, the more curators can follow and recognize the work and become acquainted with the artists.

Stuart Bird, "The Position of the Artist Now, and Sculptors of Today" (2011), wood. (Photo courtesy Goodman Gallery)

CB: What fairs do you attend?

Art Basel, Art Basel Miami, FIAC, Paris Photo, Dubai and Hong Kong … wait there’s one more I’m forgetting … oh yeah, of course The Armory Show in New York (laughs) … and hopefully Frieze Fair in New York this year too.

CB: What’s your mantra for new artists coming to Goodman?

Long-term sustainability. It’s not about being a flash-in-the-pan and becoming known for having one great show, it’s about long term career. The important thing about being a gallerist is not to push and recognize when to give younger artists space for example, the Essop brothers are doing their Masters degrees at the moment so have taken two years to complete that. That’s important.

The front of the Tribeca Issey Miyake boutique with Amorós’s light sculptures clearly visible in the middle foreground. (all images courtesy the artist)

Grimanesa Amorós’s work has always been a little too big — literally and conceptually speaking — to be confined within the barriers of a gallery. Her light sculptures have encroached upon the streets of New York City, encountering passersby, mesmerizing them with paper sculptures and the translucent spheres for which she has become known.

Though Tribeca Issey Miyake is hardly a vast, open space typical of interventionist art, in her new installation at the Japanese designer’s boutique the sculptures certainly confront new viewers and easily mixes fashion and fine art. The buoyant, effulgent bubbles create a wonderful tension with the store’s exoskeletal atmosphere designed by Frank Gehry, as well as the perfectly pleated fashions on display. The installation continues her “Uros” series, inspired by artificial landscapes created by pre-Incan people, which has appeared this year at the Venice Biennale and in a public work at Times Square in conjunction with the Armory Show.

Decked out in three-inch platform sandals and a lapidary skirt fashioned from prismatic organza folds, Amorós took some time between the wine and photo shoots at the opening this past Thursday to answer some questions about her work.

*    *    *

Grimanesa Amorós's sculptures in the boutique.

Alexander Cavaluzzo: Could you explain the process of creating the installation? 

A portrait of the artist, Grimanesa Amorós.

Grimanesa Amorós: I do location visits and study the light at the site. I study how viewers move in the space and the people that will be interacting with the piece on a daily basis. I have always worked with subject matters that relate to my personal experience. I prefer to work with organic shapes and use materials that are practical and best express my ideas.

In my latest work, I have been using Phillips/Color Kinetics LEDs, Lexan (a diffusion material for my domes), silkscreen, aluminum, custom lighting sequencing and electrical hardware.

AC: You frequently weave social commentary into your pieces. What are the anthropological and sociological currents running through the work? 

GA: Uros was inspired by the Uros Islands in Lake Titicaca, located in southeast of Peru. They are floating islets made entirely out of totora reeds, a sub species of the giant bulrush sedge. The pre-Incan Uros, who live on forty-two self-fashioned floating islands in Lake Titicaca, build everything out of this material — everything that ranges from houses to boats to watch towers. I created Uros to reflect the natural elegance of sea foam and totora reeds. It maintains the traditional technique and shape of these islands.

AC: How did the collaboration with Tribeca Issey Miyake start? 

A close-up of some of her Amorós’s sculptures. (click to enlarge)

GA: Ohmi Morimoto, the VP of Tribeca Issey Miyake, approached me about exhibiting my work at the boutique. Tribeca Issey Miyake is very dear to me. I am in love with the clean and modern aesthetic used in Tribeca Issey Miyake, and felt there was some common overlap between both our aesthetics.

I created Uros to reflect and enhance this modern practicality. It is a merger of the old with the new, and together they create something entirely different.

AC: How would you describe art’s relationship to fashion? 

GA: I like to think that fashion is inspired by the arts.

AC: Will the Uros series continue? 

GA: Undoubtedly I will continue my exploration of the Uros through my light sculptures.

*   *   *

Uros by Grimanesa Amorós is on view now at Tribeca Issey Miyake (119 Hudson Street, Tribeca, Manhattan) through January 14, 2012.

One of the photos in Sansour's "Nation State" series. (image via the artist)

We caught up with the Palestinian artist Larissa Sansour, who as we reported on Wednesday is the artist that the French luxury apparel label Lacoste wanted to exclude from the 2011 Lacoste Elysée Prize for being “too pro-Palestinian.” I asked the artist some questions about the controversy and what she thinks this all means.

*   *   *

Hrag Vartanian: Has Lacoste responded to the controversy since you and the museum have gone public with your statements?

Larissa Sansour: Lacoste issued a statement last (Wednesday) night saying they decided to exclude me solely because my work did not comply with the theme of the competition, La Joie de Vivre. This is not true. At no point prior to last night had any of the administrators of the prize raised this concern. Also, each artist was given complete artistic freedom to relate to this theme, and the administrators at the museum directly encouraged to approach the theme with irony.

Also, has non-compliance with the theme been the real reason for dismissing me, there would have been no reason so attempt to silence me, cover up the story, erase my name from the published list of nominees without any public explanation, no reason for the museum to deeply regret the development and no reason for me to get all wound up about this.

HV: Why do you think Lacoste had a problem with your work?

LS: Well, all I know is what the museum director told me. His words were: although your work is not directly anti-Israeli, it is still too pro-Palestinian for Lacoste to support. Another staff member at the museum later pointed out that Lacoste wanted to remain apolitical and therefore could not accept my project.

HV: What is your concern about corporate sponsorship in the arts? Have you seen other instances where corporate sponsorship has lead to censorship of any kind?

LS: This kind of situation is exactly what I fear. Money ranking over artistic freedom. The fact that a museum initially decides to follow their sponsor’s wish to eliminate an artist is a very scary development, and it is crucial to expose this kind of thing. And I am deeply grateful for all the support from activists, journalists, artists, critics and people all over the world who have voiced their support over the past couple of days.

HV: How would you explain the connect of your work and the theme of la joie de vivre?

LS: For me, the very idea of a Palestinian state makes me happy. The approach my work takes is not particularly optimistic, though. Encouraged by the museum to address the theme ironically, I decided to frame the Palestinian pursuit of happiness in a rather dystopic manner. Throughout the process, the museum has voiced no concerns at all that this is how I chose to approach the theme.

HV: Have you been surprised by the reaction to the controversy at all? If so, in what way?

LS: Over the past two days, there has been a new surprise almost every hour. I am overwhelmed by the reactions this case has caused. I did not expect this, but simply could not accept the censorship of my work and quickly decided that I had to go public with this. And in the end, I am very content that I did. The museum’s decision to break off their partnership with Lacoste is a fine little victory for artistic freedom, I think.

*    *    *

The Musée de l’Elysée has already proposed exhibiting Sansour’s Nation Estate series as a sign of solidarity with the artist.

Installation view of the Matt Blackwell exhibition at Edward Thorp Gallery in Chelsea (image by the author for Hyperallergic)

In October I had the opportunity to go to the opening of Tour and Trance, Matt Blackwell’s exhibition at the Edward Thorp Gallery. It’s a strange animated narrative that contains a whole cast of characters experiencing events and simultaneously forming and disintegrating in one moment. That evening we had some conversations on his life and thoughts and the stories that came out felt like some of the missing puzzle pieces. So, we began a conversation. I realized, I didn’t want to ask him the details behind specific pieces or anything detailed in general. I wanted to ask him vague, open questions with a lot of room for rambling so we could meander around in his thought process the way his paintings meander around this weird world.

*   *   *

Sarah Walko: Who are you as a character in your work?

Matt Blackwell: In my paintings I’ve been a donkey, a carburetor, a goat, a bear, a hermit, a potato, a head of cabbage, a stone, The green man, pan, a wolfman. They say everything is a self-portrait. Maybe.

Matt Blackwell, "Crossing Over 2" (2011)

SW: Why do you make your work?

MB: I work because there is so much to tell. And because the more I do the more I can see to do. Yeah, lead me to greener pastures. I work to be surprised at my own process and to put out what fills me up, be it formal stuff, a memory a fantasy. As you push through your fifties you realize your time is measured. I’ve got things I wanna say and ideas come along in strange synapses and sequences making me believe in some sort of spiritual plan that I don’t want to name, but that feels just out of reach. Sometimes it’s just all work and I think if I stop that I’ll sink like a stone. But I find the work exhilarating, kinda like swimming laps at a pool.

My favorite artists never stop. De Kooning, Diebenkorn, Lois Dodd, George Bellows, Guston, Max Beckmann, Matisse, Judy Linhares, David Park, Steve Di Benedetto and Summer Wheat. They’re all aggressive like it’s a game, and work should be that way. Play really.

My audience is particular. They’re invited to view my work, but I hope I’m not pandering too much to taste, or letting my invention be too ruled by art history. I want to be informed not derivative, a lot of failure there. Failure may be necessary to move to something that is your own. One has to be one’s own critic.

Matt Blackwell, "Chuckles at Heckles" (2009-11)

SW: Is there a protagonist in your work?

MB: The protagonists in my paintings are fools, clowns, exiles from Beckmann paintings, Shmidt-Rotluffs, red bohemians, bears, donkeys, goats, friends, goddesses, heroes, girls, ass kickers, rednecks, no necks, freaks n’ geeks, roosters, gone byes and passed overs, leftovers, the dead. Mr. Natural thrice removed, devils, mystics, v-8 engines, Greek gods, Rastas and farmers, vets, cats, girlfriends, dead friends, Jesus, Dick Cheney, saints, sinners, losers and winners (J.R.Robertson, W.S.Walcott Medicine Show, Stage Freight, The Band).

I often use groups of figures to convey my narratives. However, they exist as a reason to push paint around. Sometimes I have a clear agenda on my narratives, other times it comes about through painterly process. I want the work to be born from the realm of paint not illustration

My work has grown out of looking at early expressionist painting and more specifically Californian Bay Area painting, particularly David Parks’s work, a melding of abstract painting and figure in strong light. Max Beckmann, the 20th C. German Expressionist painter is also important to me. I love his twisted narratives, so hard to decipher but so lived! Its Brecht on canvas. James Ensor also is very important to me, the grotesque carnival, painterly invention, weird narratives, smoked herring. Also a friend just gave me a CD compilation of African American gospel music called Fire In My Bones. Unbelievably, raw and varied … sustaining in its riffs and sincere faith.

SW: What’s your definition of failure?

MB: As far as failure goes its just another place to push off from. I don’t give up easily, so some works go on for years in the studio. Some adhere to original ideas, others mutate into what they need to be. I’m not anal about my surfaces. If they get too snotty, I chisel pieces off.

Matt Blackwell, "Last Day of the Year" (2008-11)

SW: What were you thinking about a lot today?

MB: Today I went into my storage and pulled out a couple dud paintings. One was of a car. I turned it on its side and started making some figures out of the car body, which had a few good passages. I went as far as I could and then wrote into a blog from my hometown — Lyons, New York. People write their memories in and they have great photos.

I wrote a story about being hired with my friend Bobo Lauster to dig a grave at the graveyard across from his house managed by his grandfather. To a couple of 18 year olds with a six pack this sounded like fun and the money was good … the backhoe was broken down so our backs were valuable. Down near the bottom at twilight we hit what looked like a piece of milled wood, probably a coffin. This blew our 18 year old immortal minds. I wrote it in the third person, and kind of cast it in a Poe like way and musing on mortality, which this gospel music is all about. It steered me that way. After I did this I went back to my painting, and developed some charterers into a Halloween scene by a convenience store but taking some serious liberties, trying not to be illustrational. Looks like upstate New York to me or New England.

I’m kind of surprised how ideas get born, memories get jarred loose, or fiction makes reality real. Its been a good day to conjure. I think there’s a painting in that grave digging story, but I’ll need to look at the late great painter Jan Müller before I begin.

*   *   *

Tour and Trance is on view at Edward Thorp Gallery (210 Eleventh Avenue, 6th floor, Chelsea, Manhattan) until tomorrow, December 10.

Britta Riley with her protoype Windowfarms (image provided by the artist)

The ingeniousness of the Windowfarms Project is that from the beginning Britta Riley didn’t keep it to herself. It’s easy to imagine a parallel story in another universe: the mad scientist toiling away, alone in a laboratory, striving to build the invention that will change the world.

Instead, our heroine is an environmental artist, living in a landlocked nabe in Brooklyn, who had an idea of how to build a system to grow fresh, green food in any urban environment — all you need is a window. And the power of the internet.

Shortly after fashioning her first windowfarm prototype in late 2008, Riley helped launch R&D-I-Y (Research and Develop It Yourself), a web platform for collaborative, open source innovation that has since grown to more than 18,000 members. Their first collective project: windowfarms.

In the three years since, Riley’s windowfarms have been featured in an installation commissioned for Family Day at the Whitney (2009) and at Eyebeam in New York. Riley has given a TED talk and spoken on numerous panels. The largest windowfarms installation to date is the Louisville Public Windowfarm in Louisville, KY, a commission of Art Without Walls. Riley describes it as “like a library, it’s open to the public, but it supplies free salad.” There’s even a sliding library ladder that’s been modified for harvesting and plant care; greens are harvested for Proof on Main restaurant next door.

Hyperallergic caught up with Riley on the eve of the finale of the Windowfarms Project Kickstarter campaign, which ends tonight at 11:59 pm EST. So far, the campaign has raised $250,000, way past their more modest $50,000 goal.

*   *   *

The design for the products she plans to make with her money (image courtesy the artist)

Erin Lindholm: Technology, R&D, open source, DIY — these concepts are all very fundamental to your work. Which artists and innovators are you inspired by?

Britta Riley: Clay Shirky was my professor [at Tisch School for the Arts at NYU]. I got excited about the concept of mass collaboration because of him. I really want us all to move past crowdsourcing and actually make something together. I’m inspired by Marina Zurkow, Usman Haque and Caroline Woolard.

EL: You mention in your TED talk this past February that you’ve previously studied NASA’s hydroponics in space. In what context?

BR: For my day job, I used to design museum exhibits and interactives, especially around environmental issues, with my collaborator Rebecca Bray. In our spare time, we did environmental art, which now I do full time. We worked with the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History researchers on a project that dealt with agricultural ocean pollution.

That inspired a previous art project called drink.pee.drink.pee.drink.pee about examining boundaries between ecosystems and our bodies, using human urine for food growing. NASA did a lot of research on recapturing astronaut pee and creating closed liquid cycles. That’s when I discovered their work with hydroponics.

EL: How does Windowfarms fit into the trajectory of your growth as an artist and technologist?

BR: I wanted to stick with something for a while instead of churning out an art project every year. When you want to pull something off at a global scale and involve people, it takes time. I love that I have to wrestle with making it a business so it can support itself and that I have had to learn a lot about the law in applying opensource to the physics of pumping. I love that I have to figure out how to collaborate with thousands of people and find technologies to help make that happen. The project and company was just in a great show about incorporated art called “CIncArt The Convention on Incorporated Art” at CentralTrak Gallery in Dallas.

The components of one Windowfarms unit. (via the artist)

EL: Obviously Windowfarms are very functional. I happen to think they’re also very pretty. What part, if any, did design and form play into the development of the Windowfarms kit?

BR: My aesthetic allegiances have changed over the years. Because the whole project is fundamentally a collaboration with communities, I think of it similarly to site specific collaboration, but more community specific collaboration. I love both the new pretty ones and the old janky looking ones.

Originally, the spark of the idea entailed a kind of living sculpture spreading across the windows of the planet made out of all the messy stuff that our world is made out of, part living and part dying, as we were learning how to make them. I loved the idea that in Mexico, windowfarmers would be using some strange juice cups and tubing from a candy store.

As I began really caring about the plants, I tended to lean more and more toward their being a stable habitat and so I leaned more and more toward a clean look and a grid format. As I fell more in love with people’s experience of growing food plants, I have been thinking about the looks more from a cultural standpoint, of what we want to live with and the therapeutic aspects of cultivating food for the urban dweller.

The latest version was highly designed and engineered, taking the best of aspects that we had tested in the community and putting it into a producible form so that that living sculpture could spread across the windows of the world a little faster. The design influences came from the biosphere and handbuilt houses of the 70s. What lies ahead is the hope that we will reimagine the window entirely. It’s such wasted space from an ecological perspective. Let’s let more than just sun come into our lives from outside.

*   *   *

You can support the Windowfarms project on Hyperallergic’s Kickstarter Page, but hurry! A pledge of $99 or more gets you a unit.

A display of Polynesian objects (Photo courtesy Nasser and Co)

I received an email from Nasser and Co. in response to the article “WTF is Primitive vs. Tribal Art” where I had sited that the gallery had used both the terms “primitive” and “tribal” on their façade and website respectively, to describe the artwork they exhibit and sell. Assured that both terms did not form part of contemporary art lexicon, I was curious as to why the gallery had decided to use these terms.

Originally from Paris, Charles Moreau has been the director of Nasser and Co. gallery for the past four years. He invited me to the gallery to offered his perspective on what these terms “primitive” and “tribal” meant to him and his business over a tasty espresso.

Director of Nasser and Co, Charles Moureau, shares his insight (photo by the author)

Nasser and Co gallery was founded almost forty years ago by Ron Nasser, who traveled regularly to find interesting objects, mostly in Europe or in the United States, from collections or at auction. Many other dealers I’m told sought objects from Africa and Oceania, which Moureau explains is no longer possible after the passing of UNESCO legislation forbidding any objects to be removed from its country of origin.

Nasser and Co, Moreau assured me, also specifically selects objects that are considered “pure,” meaning they are not influenced aesthetically or culturally by a colonial presence. Moureau equates the current climate of selling “Primitive art” to the antiquity market, except the word “antiquity” is used to describe a multitude of objects.

Primitive art on the other hand is incredibly niche and complex, as the source areas are all over the world and primitive objects from each place are very specifically categorized. Moureau explains that only African art objects made before the 1930s are considered Primitive art as it is being created in the same conditions as from previous generations. Papua New Guinea has real objects in some cases as late as 1960s, whereas South America’s cut off date is before the 1800s and for North America it is before the end of the 19th century.

These dates are loosely termed most likely due to the complexity of the process of sourcing. He explains that the art terms used to describe work made currently cannot describe artwork of its time, for example the Dutch refer to their painters of the 14th and 16th centuries as “Primitive Dutch” and the same for the Spanish and Italians.

So how does he feel about the contemporary dislike of the use of the word “Primitive”? He explains:

For me I don’t give a damn. I don’t think these words are a problem. There is no proper word to describe what we sell … In our mouth primitive is not a bad word, as dealers we have spent our life working with Primitive art, why would we attribute it a bad name? It would be too ironic to make our lives revolve a around these restrictions.

And what about the word “tribal”? Moureau explains that the word “tribe” refers to a political system:

We used the words Tribal art for Nasser website as I saw people in the USA were using it — there were the different Tribal Art shows of New York and San Franscisco, and many magazine, dealers and bookstores were using it. It is the most politically correct term we have here for this kind of art. However, this is not by rights the correct term as many of the objects we deal with are from places that don’t have tribal systems, for example Cameroon has kingdoms and the Central and South Americans have civilizations. Irrespective of this, I don’t have a problem with the word.

Moureau points out that Sotheby’s use of specific continent or place names such as “Africa” is also not accurate as many objects are specific to areas, such as south of the Sahara, that is not named within these generalized and therefore meaningless geographical terms. He explains:

To call their department, like museums or others are doing: Art of Africa, Oceania and the Americas, doesn’t work either. Africa is never considered as a whole, only Sub-Saharan Africa can be categorized in our field. They forget most of Indonesia (200 million people) that can’t be understood as Oceania and neither can Asian tribal peoples … or the South Nagas in India, Jorai in Vietnam and in the North Siberian Eskimos and Ainu in Japan. So it is just plain wrong again.

Will he keep Primitive art on façade? He replies “its important to go back to basics and scrap the bullshit.”

Historically, London was the center for the Primitive and Tribal art market until the late 1980s and then New York’s Lexington Avenue shop windows and Madison Avenue galleries gave the art form exposure making New York its epicenter from the late 1980s until 9/11. Now Paris, a city which has always maintained a strong presence in the field, is the center of the trade. Nasser and Co is the only gallery of its kind on the street and since 9/11 Moureau explains:

Like with everyone the real estate prices increased and it became increasingly expensive to run a gallery. Now most of the important collectors don’t visit galleries on Saturday anymore, they come to auctions twice a year and dealers go to them.

A womens Xhosa smoking pipe from South Africa. (photo courtesy Nasser and Co)

He asks me where I’m from and when I say South Africa he pulls out a long pipe from the table cabinet I’m leaning on and tells me its a Xhosa women’s pipe and its designed longer than the mans as to not blow smoke in to their babies’ face.

Even though I’m childless I love this idea and the object is mesmerizingly beautiful.

NASSER&Co is on 34 East 67th Street, New York, NY, 10065

Charles Moureau gives regular tours of the gallery in conjunction with the Lexington Avenue business improvement district initiative, offering insight in to Primitive as well as Tribal art forms.