Latest news with #60thVeniceBiennale
Yahoo
10-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
This Artist's Take On America's Histories Is A Vibrant Act Of Resistance
When artist Jeffrey Gibson's work lit up the 60th Venice Biennale last spring, it became a vivid reflection of his place in America's colorful history and the forces that shaped it. Gibson made history as the first Native American artist to represent the United States with a solo show at the global art spectacle in Venice, which is often dubbed 'the Olympics of the art world.' He is a member of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians and is also of Cherokee descent. 'I think I really felt, 'This is the moment that the art world wants this,' Gibson told HuffPost at a preview of the art exhibit. 'This is the moment that America wants this.' His exhibition, 'the space in which to place me,' will now make its U.S. debut at Los Angeles' Broad Museum on Saturday. The exhibit, which includes paintings, sculptures, flags, murals and video, situates Gibson's personal experience within a broader historical narrative, blending prismatic color and traditional Native craftsmanship with bold geometric texts that reference queer, Native American and U.S. histories. Words from the Declaration of Independence and the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924 are in conversation with rapturous lyrics from Nina Simone and Roberta Flack, excerpts from Martin Luther King Jr.'s speeches and letters between founding fathers George Washington and James Madison. Meanwhile, garments with intricate beading and fringe offer an ode to Native Americans' diverse powwow culture. Through his work, Gibson reveals his radical form of patriotism; it confronts the nation's challenges with joy and optimism. But as his celebration of history and color makes its way to the United States, American values are being redefined in increasingly narrow terms. In an effort to reshape America to his own vision, President Donald Trump and his administration have begun targeting the country's top cultural institutions. After the Trump administration proposed eliminating the National Endowment for the Arts outright, the agency changed its application to bar recipients from using funds to promote 'diversity, equity and inclusion' or 'gender ideology.' The NEA then canceled or withdrew millions of dollars of grants for artists and arts organizations earlier this month, citing a shift in priorities. Those cuts included a $50,000 award to the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA) approved last year to support Gibson's installation, 'POWER FULL BECAUSE WE'RE DIFFERENT.' The exhibit is expected to remain on view as scheduled through August 2026. In an executive order titled 'Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History' in late March, Trump also accused the Smithsonian Institute of coming 'under the influence of a divisive, race-centered ideology' and 'replacing objective facts with a distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth.' Gibson, who has worked with several of the Smithsonian's 20-plus institutions, reflected on the shifting cultural landscape in an interview with the Los Angeles Times earlier this month. 'To me, it's almost whiplash going from Venice to what's going on at the Smithsonian now,' he said. The president's bid to take control of the nation's museums and theaters is unnerving many Americans as well. Last month, a Reuters/Ipsos poll revealed 66% of people surveyed across party lines disagree with his interventions. But as the U.S. Pavilion for the 2026 Venice Biennale prepares to open, the Trump administration seems eager to impose its new priorities. When the application portal opened this month, it introduced new guidelines requiring applying artists to represent 'American values' and 'American exceptionalism.' Gibson, whose work engages in both a critique and celebration of American culture, has long defined American values in his own terms. 'American values for me are representative of a vibrant community within the context of what I could critique about American culture,' he told HuffPost. 'I grew up believing that that's what America was about. America was about this diversity. America was about celebrating and allowing for people to have their own free choice, their own free voice, and that you were putting it into a dialogue that was, in unspoken terms, being managed as a civil conversation. So that's the American value that I've clung to my entire life.' The effort to cage in creative expression and enforce a one-dimensional image of America is something Gibson resists in his work and in his ethos. At The Broad, visitors are greeted with an exquisitely beaded bird sculpture titled 'if there is no struggle there is no progress,' named after a line in a 1857 speech by abolitionist Frederick Douglass. It's a powerful reminder that growth has always come with tension. Looking beyond the present moment, Gibson's work envisions a new chapter of history filled with creativity, rebellion and abundance. 'There's all kinds of resistance,' he said, reflecting on his role in shaping a different future. 'I have had to come to terms with truly believing that my artwork is my contribution to enabling a different form of existing.' He added, 'What happens next is about maintaining a sense of self in the most stable environment we can find. But we're not being offered the most stable environment to be humane and civil to each other. That's not what's happening right now. So we have to find a way to craft that environment for each other and for ourselves.' As a professor, Gibson said that he's seen generations of students eager to collapse boundaries and embrace a future of progress and engagement. 'I think the thing you really want to know is that you always want people to know they have choices,' he told reporters at the press preview at The Broad. 'Even in the most dire situations. Once people believe they don't have a choice anymore, that's really the beginning of the end.' Jeffrey Gibson's 'the space in which to place me' runs through Sept. 28 at The Broad Museum in Los Angeles. For more information, visit here. Heavy Metal Is An Unexpected Tool To Resist Trump's Ignorance — And This Artist Is Bringing The Heat This Filmmaker Is Finally Giving Us The Full Range Of Indigenous Identity We Deserve On-Screen This Artist Is Weaving Her Indigenous Ancestry Into Meaningful Wearable Artwork
Vogue Singapore
07-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Vogue Singapore
The Luminary Artist Charmaine Poh
Working at the intersection of performance, moving image and installation, Charmaine Poh's evocative artistic practice unravels questions related to memory, care and embodiment. Her works have been presented at the Singapore Art Museum, Seoul Museum of Art, REDCAT in Los Angeles, and the 60th Venice Biennale. Based in Berlin and Singapore, she is the co-founder of independent online publication Jom and is also a member of the Asian Feminist Studio for Art and Research. Named Deutsche Bank's Artist of the Year for 2025, she continues to gain international recognition for her nuanced, interdisciplinary practice and powerfully feminist diasporic lens. What drives you as a creative? With every work I make and every encounter I have, I hope something shifts. What, exactly, is less discernible, but broadly a sense of closeness and intimacy with oneself. What is the one achievement to date you are proudest of and why? Someone once messaged me about my photographs. Their brother, who was gay, had a tragic death and a troubled life. They said my photographs made them see their brother's face a little clearer. I remember reading the message when I woke up, and then immediately bursting into tears. I have received more responses like this since, but this was one of the first and it has stayed with me. How have you overcome the most significant challenges you have encountered in your journey? One of the most important things one can do is to let go of one's ego. Sometimes, there is no need to justify, beg, compensate, defend or be validated. Knowing when and when not to respond has given me a lot of peace. Why is pushing the boundaries of film, photography and performance important when it comes to cultural storytelling? In the same way that our worlds were constructed, they can also fall apart. We know this about any world order. Having different ways in which things can come together and disperse can help us think of more prevalent affinities. Sitting in ambiguity gives us more empathy. Looking forward, what is one change you want to see in the art industry and what can we do to get there? A practice that I've come across in Europe has been to have a fee calculator for freelance artists and arts workers, which can be applied across forms of labour, from exhibitions to grant applications. Some examples are Kreativ Kultur Berlin's resource centre, and Kunstenaars Honorarium's artist fee guideline. I would like to see this in Singapore.
TimesLIVE
29-04-2025
- Entertainment
- TimesLIVE
A Gerard Sekoto moment at Strauss & Co
The art world is having a long-overdue Gerard Sekoto moment. Sekoto should have been one of South Africa's most revered and cherished cultural touchstones in his lifetime. Instead, choosing self-imposed exile in 1947 to escape race discrimination and the onset of high apartheid the after year, he spent his life on the fringes of urban life and alcoholism in his city of exile, Paris. He remained on the fringes of artistic recognition for his work, until he was embraced first by Senegalese poet and president Leopold Senghor and the nascent Négritude movement in the 1960s, then later by his home country, with honorary doctorates and museum exhibitions happening in the early 1990s — the last years of his life — and the last years of apartheid itself. In 2024, curator Adriano Pedrosa included Gerard Sekoto's earliest known self-portrait in his exhibition Stranieri Ovunque — Foreigners Everywhere — at the 60th Venice Biennale. The work was painted in October 1947, shortly after Sekoto's arrival in London en route to Paris. In 2008, it was bought by the Kilbourn Collection, the significant private collection of Strauss chair Frank Kilbourn and his family. At present the self-portrait is the cover star of the publicity for the exhibition Paris Noir: Artistic Circulations and Anti-Colonial Resistance, 1950—2000 (March 19-June 30) at the Centre Pompidou, Paris. The exhibition retraces the presence and influence of 150 artists from Africa, the Americas, and the Caribbean who were active in France from the 1950s to 2000 — among them Sekoto, who ironically spent much of his time in Paris playing jazz piano in a bar to survive. Cleverly making the most of his current prominence in global art circles, Strauss & Co are staging a non-commercial exhibition featuring some of Sekoto's numerous paintings of working people. Curated by Wilhelm van Rensburg, senior art specialist and head curator at Strauss & Co, Working Life in South Africa: Gerard Sekoto & Lena Hugo explores not only Sekoto's depictions of nannies, washerwomen, brickmakers, coal merchants, miners, barbers, shopkeepers, street photographers and water drawers, but also contemporary artist Lena Hugo's large-scale pastel drawings of South African heavy-machinery operators, many of them set against treated and sealed backgrounds of local newsprint headlines. While Hugo's work appropriately foregrounds and heroises local working people, the chief interest of the show the works by Sekoto, which span a crucial part of his working life as an artist, from the 1940s to the 1970s. Sekoto is responsible for one of the most canonical single paintings in South African art history, The Song of the Pick, also from 1947, now in the corporate collection of South32 and on long-term loan at the Javett UP Art Centre in Pretoria. This magnificent work depicts, in Sekoto's dynamic but social realist early style, a black road gang in synchronised motion in the swing of their pickaxes, observed by their insouciant white 'baas' smoking his pipe. Strauss & Co's exhibition presents a number of later variations on the theme, even versions of the same work painted and drawn much later by the artist. The show also presents a 1940s depiction of a domestic worker sitting in the sun outside the stoep of a house, done in a style reminiscent of Sekoto's near-contemporary George Pemba. Much later works depicting similar working-class figures in their daily lives reflect the more abstracted and more fluid style Sekoto developed after his year in the 1960s spent in Senegal under the patronage of Senghor. Strauss & Co's commendable commitment to art education through their curatorial and exhibition projects such as this one is one of the last bastions of exposure to important local fine art that we have, in the vacuum left by the collapse of the public museum and gallery sector. This rare insight into one of our greatest artists is not to be missed.
Korea Herald
12-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Korea Herald
Upcoming Expo Chicago joined by 20 Korean galleries
After Expo Chicago was acquired by Frieze, Kiaf Seoul, Expo Chicago collaborate for the first time Some 20 home-grown galleries in South Korea will participate in Expo Chicago 2025 next month as part of the partnership between the two fairs, Kiaf Seoul and Expo Chicago. The art fair's partnership with Kiaf Seoul, run by the Galleries Association of Korea, was established after Expo Chicago was acquired in 2023 by Frieze. The global platform for modern and contemporary art has operated Frieze Seoul since 2022 and collaborates with Kiaf Seoul every year to run the art fairs in September. The 12th edition of Expo Chicago will be held from April 24 to 27 at Navy Pier's Festival Hall, joined by more than 170 galleries from 36 countries and 93 cities, according to the organizer. Korea's 20 galleries will bring together 300 artworks by 90 artists, 80 percent of which are Korean artists. The funding to participate in the fair is partly supported by the Korea Arts Management Service, according to the Galleries Association of Korea. On April 26, the 'Dialogue Stage' talk program will be led by Patrick Lee, director of Frieze Seoul. The panels include Lee Seol-hui, co-curator of the Korean Pavilion at the 60th Venice Biennale, and Jiseon Lee Isbara, president at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Participating Korean galleries include Gana Art, Gallery Joeun, Gallery Baton, One And J. Gallery, Keumsan Gallery and Bhak. Meanwhile, the members of the Galleries Association of Korea newly elected Lee Sung-hoon, director of Sun Gallery, as the president of the association in February succeeding Hwang Dal-sung who served the position for four years. The president's term is two years with two consecutive terms allowed.
Korea Herald
12-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Korea Herald
Upcoming Expo Chicago joined by 20 Korean galleries
After Expo Chicago was acquired by Frieze, Kiaf Seoul, Expo Chicago collaborate for the first time Some 20 home-grown galleries in South Korea will participate in Expo Chicago 2025 next month as part of the partnership between the two fairs, Kiaf Seoul and Expo Chicago. The art fair's partnership with Kiaf Seoul, run by the Galleries Association of Korea, was established after Expo Chicago was acquired in 2023 by Frieze. The global platform for modern and contemporary art has operated Frieze Seoul since 2022 and collaborates with Kiaf Seoul every year to run the art fairs in September. The 12th edition of Expo Chicago will be held from April 24 to 27 at Navy Pier's Festival Hall, joined by more than 170 galleries from 36 countries and 93 cities, according to the organizer. Korea's 20 galleries will bring together 300 artworks by 90 artists, 80 percent of which are Korean artists. The funding to participate in the fair is partly supported by the Korea Arts Management Service, according to the Galleries Association of Korea. On April 26, the 'Dialogue Stage' talk program will be led by Patrick Lee, director of Frieze Seoul. The panels include Lee Seol-hui, co-curator of the Korean Pavilion at the 60th Venice Biennale, and Jiseon Lee Isbara, president at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Participating Korean galleries include Gana Art, Gallery Joeun, Gallery Baton, One And J. Gallery, Keumsan Gallery and Bhak. Meanwhile, the members of the Galleries Association of Korea newly elected Lee Sung-hoon, director of Sun Gallery, as the president of the association in February succeeding Hwang Dal-sung who served the position for four years. The president's term is two years with two consecutive terms allowed. yunapark@
