Creative Mind Map: Where Do We Begin
WEEK 1: PLACE AS CONTEXT
During Week 1: "Place as context", I engaged with the work of Rebecca Belmore, and Tanya Aguiñiga, through some creative note-taking.
I also reflected using both prompts, "Sound Walk and Reflection", and "Where Are You?".
Using the website provided, I recorded information about the land in which I currently reside. Port Credit, Mississauga, Ontario.
For the sound walk, I unfortunately had to adapt a bit, due to a pain flare, creating a "sound-sit" exercise. I reflected on this using drawing and writing.
Photographs from Memorial Park/Credit River.
My Sound"walk":
WEEK 2: DECONSTRUCTING FOUNDATIONS
This week, I primarily reflected on Heba Y. Amin's work, as well as similarities and differences between all 3 artists work.
What I noted about the artists practice's is that they all connect by sharing their personal lived experience, linked with challenging colonalism/colonialist narratives. They successfully do this with differing mediums. They all want to bring these stories that are not heard of or paid attention to enough in the spotlight, so audiences can reflect and be aware of the unjust (acknowledging that these things did happen, and must not be "swept under the rug"), and work toward decolonisation.
WEEK 3: IMAGINING OTHERWISE, ART AND SOCIAL CHANGE
Syrus Marcus Ware's "Activist Love Letters"
In researching Syrus Marcus Ware's, I came across the project "Activist Love Letters". In this ongoing performance, engagement workshop, art-piece, Ware asks participants to write in response to the question "If you could reach out to one person who moves you by what they do, who would it be? What would you say?" (https://www.syrusmarcusware.com/art/activist-love-letters). In response, I wrote a short note to an artist, educator and social justice advocate whom inspires me, Corita Kent. I've included a couple examples of her work gathered from the Corita Art Center website https://collection.corita.org/ .
Sewn fruit specimen for Strange Fruit, documented by the artist. (Courtesy the artist and Gisela Capitain, Cologne, and Hauser & Wirth, New York; photograph Zoe Leonard).
Activist Love Letters. Image From: https://www.artland.com/exhibitions/activist-love-letters
e eye love. 1968.
for emergency use soft shoulder. 1966.
Zoe Leonard’s ‘Strange Fruit’
In researching artist Zoe Leonard, I became particularly interested in her work "Strange Fruit". Strange fruit was a project in which Zoe Lenoard sewed peels of fruit, as opposed to discarding them. She stated that this was not an activist work, nor art-making, but a practice as a means of healing and mourning the loss of friends to AIDS.
"By sewing up wasted peels instead of discarding them, the artist created objects that resemble little bodies FIG. 2. At a time in which her dying friends were treated as disposable by most of the public, the government and the medical community, the task may have offered a defiant respite."
There was a particular quote in the above article, as well, which made me
think about the link to this weeks module theme "Imagining Otherwise" ,
particularly a connection to the article from week 2 about museum norm's and the
changes that are taking place, as well as the Tate video from this week, "The Art of Social Change". Although Leonard's work is not a means of
changing building names, putting statues of problematic persons into cases as
history, rather than on a pedestal, it is still challenging the type of art that museums present.
"It was made to decompose and that the organic process of decay should be allowed to unfold in public view..Yet a work of art meant to change and ultimately disappear challenges the traditional paradigm of museums,
which is centred around safeguarding physical objects that are
largely perceived as static."
Zoe's Artist Statement before the work entered the International Art Circuit. Stating the importance of it's transitory nature:
