The Art of Showing Up
Voting stickers adorn memorials to ICE victims, Jeremy Shaw talks grief and ecstasy, and a portable archive of East LA.
It was raining like crazy when I cast my vote yesterday in Iowa, a blood-red state so battered, beleaguered, and embittered by an affordability crisis and farm debt and crumbling infrastructure that it just might — just might — swing. It’d been a steady stream all day, a poll worker told me, and she didn’t mean the rain.
The vox populi doesn’t just speak from the ballot box. In Houston, for instance, a memorial’s been talking: Dozens of “I Voted” stickers now adorn a roadside tribute to Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a man ICE murdered in July, in an impromptu participatory artwork that is now being echoed in shrines to others around the country. “I voted for you,” someone wrote.
It makes me think of the ways we make ourselves heard, the ways we honor one another. The day after a deadly attack on Berlin’s Pride Festival this summer, about 200 people gathered at Jeremy Shaw’s video installation of dancers moving toward ecstatic revelation, he told writer Eileen G’Sell in a profile today, turning the gallery into a space of collective mourning, defiance, and solidarity. And a new project by Guadalupe Rosales, writes Carolina A. Miranda, is a tribute to her Eastside Los Angeles upbringing, and to the friends and relationships that offered a respite from rising violence and anti-immigrant sentiment. It’s what we do — create meaning, build a community, find a way forward.
—Lisa Yin Zhang, associate editor
As Politicians Break Promises, This Public Artwork Keeps Them
Last month, Paul Ramírez Jonas invited the people of Toronto to sit down with a stranger in a public space, make a promise, swear on it, see it spelled out on a large-scale marquee, and then memorialize it in a one-of-a-kind contract they kept. One of hundreds of such vows was: “I promise to disagree better.” | Anna Gallagher-Ross and Kate Gilbert
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Exhibition as Living Archive: the 1950s Baghdad Modern Art Group in the UAE Today
All Manner of Experiments: Legacies of the Baghdad Modern Art Group, Curated by Nada Shabout, on view at the NYU Abu Dhabi Art Gallery through January 3, 2027
News
- In the days leading up to Election Day, hundreds of voters have placed their “I Voted” stickers on memorials dedicated to people murdered by ICE officers.
- Fernando Calvillo, an esteemed artist and leader in Oklahoma City’s arts community, dies in a high-speed train collision.
- The Weisman Art Museum at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities appoints established curator, arts writer, and Hyperallergic contributor Elliot Josephine Leila Reichert as its new senior curator.
From Our Critics
Guadalupe Rosales’s Portable Archive of East LA
In two new books, the artist weaves her archive of photos, ephemera, and flyers into the story of ’90s Chicanx youth culture, tracing both a personal and collective coming-of-age. | Carolina A. Miranda
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MassArt Graduate Assistantships Provide Hands-On Experience to Launch Your Career
MassArt’s Graduate Assistantships support students’ interests and professional development beyond graduation.
Features
Jeremy Shaw Dances With the Divine
“I used to blanket my practice as being about ‘altered states,’” the artist told Hyperallergic, “but these days I speak more about faith and belief.” | Eileen G’Sell
Read MoreThe Indian Pavilion in Venice Asks: What Is Home?
“Geographies of Distance” offers a polysemous reading of home during a period of accelerated urbanization in India. | Avedis Hadjian
Read MoreHyper Links
- An insider’s perspective on the fall of Artforum. [Tablet]
- Compromise on strategy, Democratic congressional nominee Darializa Avila Chevalier argues, not principle. [Everything Is Political]
- Honoring the man who made electronic music what it is today. [Guardian]
- Medellín has been named the world’s next book capital! [UNESCO]
From the Archive
The Secret Life of LA’s Small Museums
With a fair dose of whimsy, Also on View draws attention to museums off the beaten track, centering the region’s rich diasporic fabric and cultural niches. | Matt Stromberg
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