Latest news with #BeforetheAmericas
The Guardian
14-03-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Creating art under Trump will become harder but it will remain vital
One of the most pernicious effects of a bully's intimidation is making victims afraid of being true to themselves, because it's the essential and authentic parts of them that incite the bully's contempt. During his first week in office Donald Trump issued a blitzkrieg of executive orders. Among them, Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity and Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing.' According to the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, among the things these orders direct the administration's agencies and staff to do are: Terminate diversity, equity, and inclusion offices, positions, and programs in the federal government; terminate equity-related grants and contracts; and repeal prior executive orders designed to ensure equal opportunity in the workplace, including a decades-old executive order from the Johnson Administration ... ' In the art scene these moratoriums had almost immediate consequence. Cheryl Edwards, a visual artist and curator based in Washington DC, had been working on an exhibition titled Before the Americas which was to be mounted at the Art Museum of the Americas, a cultural venue managed by the Organization of American States (OAS), an organization established in 1948 that includes all 35 independent nations of the western hemisphere. In 2021 Edwards was approached by the current museum director, Adriana Ospina, and the previous director, Pablo Zúñiga, to, in her words, curate an exhibition to include African American artists in the DC area. They agreed on a framework engaging the question 'Because we are people in a society that existed before slavery, how does that manifest itself in the work of artists in this area and the work of artists in their collection?' She was given a budget of $20,000 (with a $5,000 curator's fee), the money being allocated by the previous US ambassador to the OAS under Joe Biden, Francisco O Mora. Edwards's show was scheduled to open on 21 March, but she was informed by Ospina on 6 February that her show was 'terminated'. Edwards attests this happened 'because it is DEI'. Similarly, Andil Gosine, a Canadian artist and curator, who is also a professor of environmental arts and justice at York University in Toronto, invested several years into an exhibition at the same museum. His show, titled Nature's Wild with Andil Gosine, was essentially a collaborative project with 50 artists, writers and technicians exploring the themes he had examined in his book of the same title. It was to include artwork by a dozen artists from across the Americas, many of them LGBTQ+ people of color. He received a phone call from Ospina on 5 February informing him that the show had been canceled, despite none of the funding for it coming from OAS (that came from Canada Council). For him that that was 'heartbreaking news'. He says: 'This is the most time, money and heart I've put into anything. This was going to be the pinnacle of my last 15 years of work in the arts.' With his background in international relations (working at the World Bank after graduate school) Gosine understood that the museum's response had to do with fear of losing their budget by showcasing queer artists in the wake of yet another executive order, this one promising a process of 'Reviewing United States Support to all International Organizations'. He explains: 'This is a content question, a gamble on how to deal with a shifting political tide: to conform enough, sacrifice some people, sacrifice your values to survive, and then maybe not get the budget.' According to the Congressional Research Service, in 2023 OAS had a budget of $145.2m, with the US contributing 57% of that. Having the United States rescind their support would clearly lacerate the organization's operations. Nevertheless, Gosine thinks that their anticipatory acquiescence may be for nought. He asks how an organization that is fundamentally concerned with human rights and social justice can reinvent itself enough to mollify this vengeful and disdainful regime. The cancelation of art exhibitions negatively impacts the lives of curators, but these executive orders have an even more corrosive effect on the lives of artists – particularly those whose immigration status is in flux. Erika Hirugami, a formerly undocumented Mexican-Japanese immigrant, doctoral candidate at UCLA, and Los Angeles-based curator who has been working in the arts for 10 years, told me that the pressures placed on immigrants impel them to erase themselves, anticipating law enforcement officials incarcerating and deporting them. She attests that she knows more than 80 artists who 'are terrified because having an exhibition at a museum that says that this artist is undocumented signals a reality that generates a kind of violence'. To better understand this, it helps to think of the work of the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, who extensively studied European art museum visitors in the 1960s, concerned with why most art museum visitor profiles seemed to be correlated with a certain socio-economic class. What he found was that given the proliferation of middle-class aesthetics throughout the museum, the majority of working-class people self-selected to not attend, feeling that the museum was not the place for them. He called this de facto rejection of the poor and working class 'symbolic violence', meaning a non-physical violence expressed through the imposition of social norms by a group with greater social power. Worse still, these norms are internalized by all social groups who come to believe that social hierarchy and inequality are natural and inevitable. Hirugami explains that for artists who are undocumented, this administration has sought to normalize living in fear. Practically this means that some artists now forgo being paid for their work for fear of having their means of remuneration traced. Thus, their labor goes unrecognized and unpaid. To protect themselves some artists, according to Hirugami, go 'zero social', making themselves digitally invisible by taking down their websites and social media pages. Arleene Correa Valencia, a formerly undocumented artist living in Napa, California, understands this dread. 'There's no handbook to how to lose that fear,' she says. Valencia was an enrollee in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (Daca) program, and a college student during the previous Trump administration, when she was under almost constant threat of losing her scholarship and means of staying in the country legally. Even now, having achieved permanent resident status, she still worries. 'I still feel like I'm very much a target, especially having come to my residency as a Dreamer. There is this feeling that I did it the wrong way.' Less than two months after taking charge of the federal government, Trump and his agents have devised ways to not only erase certain artists and certain types of art; but also to compel these artists to erase themselves, in the name of self-protection. This is exactly the opposite of their most essential work: to engage the public to experience their work and to move them toward transformation. What is a possible solution? Valencia turns toward her art. She says: My practice has changed in that now I'm more grounded in knowing that my people have this beautiful language of painting. And with that I also, tattooed my head to recognize, my Indigenous background and my connection to Mexico. This is the time where we have to make our markings known, not just on our bodies, but in our work, marks that are true to ourselves.' Indeed, it's crucial to refuse the option of doing violence to oneself by denying those very aspects of the self targeted in the culture war being waged by this administration. To maintain who you are can be its own kind of victory.
The Guardian
01-03-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
‘I was in shock': DC gallery pulls exhibits of Black and LGBTQ+ artists amid Trump DEI crackdown
A Washington DC art gallery has abruptly cancelled two exhibitions featuring Black and LGBTQ+ artists, prompting accusations that it has caved in to Donald Trump's crackdown on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programmes. The Art Museum of the Americas, run by the Organization of American States (OAS), was due to present the shows Nature's Wild with Andil Gosine and Before the Americas in March. The decision to pull the exhibits coincided with an executive order issued by the Trump administration directing a review of relationships with international organisations that receive US funding. To Gosine, it is an alarming example of pre-emptive capitulation – obeying in advance. 'There's a long history of the arts being attacked by conservative forces,' the 51-year-old Canadian artist and curator told the Guardian. 'What I'm disappointed about with the OAS is that this is not Trump's action; this is anticipating. This for me is even scarier because it feels like we have this closeup view to how fascism unfolds.' The cancellation was a crushing blow for Gosine, a professor of environmental arts and justice at York University in Toronto, who put years of work into the exhibition. It was inspired by his 2021 book Nature's Wild: Love, Sex and Law in the Caribbean, which explored ideas about ecology, sexuality and human rights. His preference for working with public institutional spaces led him to the OAS and its Art Museum of the Americas in Washington. 'For three years they have been consistently enthusiastic,' he said. 'Every time I proposed something they were quick to write letters of support for it. They seemed very happy up to the day before cancellation; I have all these enthusiastic emails. I don't think we had one bad word in that time.' Gosine added: 'I have not put more resources or time into any project. This was to be the feather in my cap because it was a very personal project. I grew up in Trinidad; the exhibition was around unpacking a life. The signature image for the exhibition was an image of me at three years [old].' The show was to include works by a dozen artists from across the Americas, many of them LGBTQ+ people of colour. It was to feature sculpture, photography, video, acrylic paintings, oil paintings and collage including a video installation by the Black artist Lorraine O'Grady, who died in December aged 90. Gosine used funds awarded to him to keep the budget as low as possible, for example creating work in the US so it would not have to be shipped from Canada. World Pride had selected it as one of their marquee arts events and organised dedicated programming. The opening date was brought forward to 21 March so that a Canadian mission could visit. But at 9am on 5 February Gosine received a phone call from the museum's director, Adriana Ospina. 'She said: 'I've been ordered to cancel the exhibition.' She didn't give a direct reason. I mean, I was in shock. Never in a million years. 'There are lots of challenges to this space; I was prepared to make up for all of them. But there would be no discussion. She alluded to budget restraints at their museum but that was perplexing because in fact they were contributing almost nothing to the show.' Ospina sent a follow-up letter but it still gave no reason for the termination, Gosine said. But to Gosine there is little mystery. On 4 February Trump issued an executive order directing his secretary of state, Marco Rubio, to review relationships with international organisations receiving US funding. The US is the biggest contributor to the OAS secretariat's budget, giving $55m last year. 'It's not accidental that on February 4 they get a letter saying, 'Hey, we might pull out your budget' and on February 5, they're like, 'OK!'' he said. 'The quickness of the response suggests to me that this is what I think will be a losing attempt to appease the administration.' Gosine believes the OAS has surrendered its principles for nothing. 'How is an organisation like this one, that's been so associated with their human rights work more than anything else, going to fit in to a new political order? How smart is it to throw their allies, their communities under the bus for something that will not be successful? I can't imagine them keeping their budgets, given what kinds of cuts the US administration is making.' Having planned every inch of the space for three years, Gosine says the show cannot survive as he conceived it, although elements of it will live on in exhibitions and events in Montreal, Toronto and New York. A substantial catalogue was due to go to press last week but will not see the light of day. Sign up to This Week in Trumpland A deep dive into the policies, controversies and oddities surrounding the Trump administration after newsletter promotion Trump's dismantling of DEI initiatives across the federal government included the closure of diversity offices at the National Gallery of Art and Smithsonian Institution as well as the cancellation of a US Marine Band collaboration with young musicians of colour. He has also taken control of the John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and installed an acolyte as interim president. There are fears that his ability to threaten funding will help create a new political climate that discourages cultural institutions from engaging with topics related to race, identity and social justice. Gosine added: 'The hardest part of that for me to understand is how people all the way along the line bend to the political tide. I reached out to a few people to get advice on this and I was surprised: there are powerful people who are big critics of Trump but who are unwilling to be uncomfortable. 'Well, how do I make sure my consultancy contract isn't at stake?' 'I feel people who have the most to risk are risking it. When I told the artists, they were ready to go to the streets. But it astonishes me how people in power are looking after what they mistakenly believe is a self-interest that will protect just them. It doesn't work like that. When human rights recede, everything comes tumbling down.' Another shuttered exhibition, Before the Americas, featured works by African American, Afro-Latino and Caribbean artists, tracing the influence of the transatlantic slave trade and African diaspora. Curator Cheryl Edwards also received a call from Ospina informing her that exhibition would no longer go ahead. Edwards said the only reason given for the cancellation was 'because it is DEI', telling the Washington Post: 'You can't tell me that the artists I've chosen for this exhibit are not top quality. The whole museum is DEI under that definition.' The Art Museum of the Americas says in its mission statement that it 'exhibits, collects, studies and conserves modern and contemporary art of the Americas, in order to promote cultural exchange to advance the OAS four pillars of democracy, human rights, multidimensional security and integral development'. A spokesperson for the museum did not respond to requests for comment.
