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Archive for the ‘Art and Culture’ Category

In the mid to late 18th century, missionary schools were opened on Native American reservations in the U.S. The goal was to convert young people to Christianity and immerse them in Western culture. Native languages and culture were discouraged. Over decades, many grew up knowing little about their culture or languages. One Tsimshian tribesman has dedicated his life to keeping his native culture alive.

David Boxley is a Native American artist from the Tsimshian tribe in Alaska. He’s a dancer, songwriter, and wood carver. More importantly, he’s an ambassador for Tsimshian culture and heritage.

“We call it art now, but it was a way for people to say, ‘This is who I am. This belongs to me.’ Or ‘This is my clan, this is my crest, this is my family history, carved and painted in wood.’”
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Boxley was raised by his grandparents. He said Christian missionary influence was strong while he was growing up. So he learned little about his native culture.

While working as a teacher after college, he began researching Tsimshian wood carving in ethnographic materials and museum collections.  In 1986, he left teaching to devote his time to wood carving and reviving Tsimshian art and culture.

“I guess I came along at the right time. Our people really needed a shot in the arm. Our culture wasn’t very prominent after all that missionary influence, and years and years of not having anybody be in that kind of position to guide,” said Boxley.

Almost 30 years later, he’s putting the finishing touches on his 70th totem pole, which will stand in the permanent collection at the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C.

“We don’t use sandpaper. We use the knives and the chisels to get it as smooth as possible. Get the lines clean,” said Boxley.

Totem poles tell a story. This one is carved from a seven-meter-long piece of red cedar. Boxley began carving it several months ago at his home near Seattle in Washington state. It was shipped across country by truck.

“The title is Eagle and the Young Chief,” said Boxley.

The pole tells the story of a young chief who rescued an eagle snared in a fishing net. Years later, when the Chief’s village was starving, the eagle repaid the chief for his kindness.

“A live salmon fell out of the sky, and he looked up and he saw the eagle flying away. And every day for days and days, the eagle brought salmon to feed the village,” said Boxley.

Boxley said the pole he carved in honor of his grandfather is closest to his heart. This one is a close second.

“This one is going to be seen by millions over the next hundred years. And it is not just me and my son; it is all of my people that are proud … my tribe,” said Boxley.

On the day the pole was unveiled, Boxley’s dance troupe of family and friends performed for a large audience.

Then, the unveiling.

Boxley has other wood carvings in the permanent collection of the museum. This one ensures Tsimshian culture will have pride of place in native American history.

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Middle Eastern calligraphy on display at a New York City art gallery is being touted as a vehicle for dialogue between the Middle East and the West. The exhibit comprises works that roughly coincide with the Arab uprisings in the Middle East.

An ornate painting on linen entitled Astrolabe by Tunisian artist Nja Mahdaoui greets visitors Sundaram Tagore Gallery. Saturated with what appears to be stylized Arabic writing known as calligraphy, the piece is actually pure design that bears no specific conventional alphabetic meaning. Tunisian diplomat Tarek Amri says meaning is determined by the viewer alone.

“We have the earth with the center, and from the center we are spreading through countries, through population, through different cultures,” says Amri. “But all of them — and this is of course my own meaning — they join in the center.”

Although Arabic calligraphy is traditionally associated with Quranic texts, most of the calligraphy on display conveys no literary or religious symbolism. One untitled canvas by Qatari artist Ali Hassan is a study in black featuring a single Arabic letter, while Apocalypse III, by Chaouki Chamoun of Lebanon, uses abstract calligraphy to separate figures from chaos hovering above.

Calligraphy is also woven into an untitled piece by another Qatari artist Youssef Ahmad.

“The word, the calligraphic quality is completely left behind,” says Gallery owner Sundaram Tagore. “It becomes this graffiti-like form, and the surface pattern that he creates is evocative of the desert of the Middle East.”

Historically, Islamic societies generally prohibited depictions of humans and animals, so Middle Eastern artists perfected representations of words. But Tagore says they are now drawn to modernism, not unlike Western artists who derive abstract art from depictions of people and nature.

“Middle Eastern art went from the word to the image; word to image and abstraction,” he says. “The image is these forms. These are the visual forms, so they are trying to abstract further and further.”

Works by Golnaz Fathi, the show’s only Iranian artist, arrived at the exhibit just hours before its scheduled opening on November 10. According to Tagore, the pieces were held for three weeks in U.S. customs.

All of the works, both Arabic and Persian, were created just before or during recent uprisings in the Middle East. Yousef Zada, Egypt’s Consul General in New York, says the work of his countryman, Ahmed Moustafa, reflects the Arab drive for democracy and individual rights.

“This signifies somebody who is shouting, saying, ‘I’m here, and this is my heritage; this is my Islamic heritage,’ to be more clear of this,” says Zada.

The exhibit, “Written Images: Contemporary Calligraphy from the Middle East,” remains on display through early December and then travels to Los Angeles and then Hong Kong.

The September 11 terror attacks may have changed our view, even of objects created before 9/11/2001. A new exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art’s branch in New York’s Long Island City explores this idea. The exhibit features pieces made years before the attacks, which  seen in a new context, find different meanings and responses.

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Those who remember New York on the days following the 9/11 terrorist attacks are familiar with scenes like this – impromptu memorials to loved ones. The shrine on this street corner, however, is an art installation from 1997 by Swiss born artist Thomas Hirschhorn, called “Mondrian Altar.”

“Mondrian Altar” is part of an exhibit called “September 11″ at the Museum of Modern Art’s Queens outpost, PS1. But while the exhibit opened on the 10th anniversary of the attacks, most of the pieces in it were created before the attacks took place.

Altered perception

On the morning of September 11, 2001, in this very space at PS1, Canadian artist Janet Cardiff had mounted her experimental installation “The Forty Part Motet” using 40 speakers – each representing a member of a choir, singing a mournful piece of medieval English church music.

Now, 10 years later, PS1 has re-installed the piece as part of its effort to show the effect of the attack on our perceptions – even of things that came before it.  

For example, in this landscape painted 15 years before 2001, we can’t avoid seeing the shadow of the Twin Towers.

Changing everything

This documentary by artist Jem Cohen is about a victory parade that celebrated the return of American troops after the 1991 Gulf War. But the film of that victory parade 10 years before 9/11 reminds the viewer of the September 11 attacks.

“What we saw in 1991 was a reaction of extreme nationalism, pride and patriotism,” said Cohen. “In 2001, those events reshaped the piece. It indicated that sometimes we made historical documents that we don’t control.”

The only piece directly pointing to 9/11 is a collage by American artist Ellsworth Kelly. The show’s creator, PS1 curator Peter Eleey, said the approach in this simple collage is what he wanted to extend to the entire show.

“I was interested how particularly Kelly’s approach allows us to look differently at this location, which for us was so sort of marred by the violence that occurred there,” said Eleey. “And I began to think about how an exhibition could offer something similar by looking differently, that we could in a sense create our own meaning, if I could expand the context within which we consider 9/11.”

With this approach, the PS1 exhibit revives, renews and enlivens art pieces of the recent past – art that had become either too familiar and commonplace – or had been forgotten, like this crushed car from 1982 by sculptor John Chamberlain, which now stands for the violence of that day.

Looming shadows

Another piece from 1980, by American artist Sarah Charlesworth, stands for the heart-wrenching scenes that were repeated 20 years after it was made.

“There were seven blowups like this, and they were all taken from newspaper photos of people jumping, obviously the association that people are going to have about that day. I had to consider whether it altered the meaning of the work too much,” said Charlesworth.

Newspaper photos also are the subject of another installation that covers the walls of a large hall.  

“This is the work by a Dutch artist named Willem De Rooji. It’s an archive of images he cut out of newspapers beginning early in 2000,  continuing through mid-2002,” said Eleey.

Moving exhibit

This otherwise pleasant shot of a sunny day on a plane takes on an ominous meaning and identity, when we consider the crash of planes full of fuel and people into the tall buildings.

Presiding over the central hall of the exhibition is a piece by New York sculptor George Segal, who died a year before 9/11. Segal’s woman looks down at a grey powder which covers the entire floor.

“It’s in fact pulverized passenger jet engine by the British artist Roger Hiorns, which he sent to an industrial company that ground it into a very fine powder – mostly aluminum and steel,” said Eleey.

The exhibit continues at PS1 through January 9 of next year.