Adrian Piper "Catalysis III", 1970-71, New York
The Essentials #3 - Contemporary Political Art and Activism
Online Exhibition at our Atkinson Gallery YouTube Channel September 4th - October 16, 2020.
Guerrilla Girls: ‘You Have to Question What You See’, 2018. Artist Interview by TateShots, UK, Video (color, sound, CC) 6.58 min.
Adrian Piper: Deconstructing Race in the Indexical Present, 2009 Film on the work of Adrian Piper Created for ART178: Black Aesthetics and the Politics of Representation at Pomona College. Video (color, sound, cc) 10:59 min
This Will Have Been: Art, Love & Politics in the 1980s, 2012. Synopsis of an exhibition organized by MCA Chicago.Video (color, sound, cc) 15.35 min.
Whitney Stories: Gran Fury's Tom Kalin on Hock E Aye VI Edgar Heap of Birds, 2018. Video (color, sound, cc), 6.09 min.
Performance and Protest: Can Art Change Society? | How Art Became Active | Ep. 5 of 5 | TateShots, 2018 Video (color, sound, cc) 4:40 min
This is the third in a series of curated playlist exhibitions featured on the Atkinson Gallery YouTube Channel highlighting important and historical art video, films, and movements. In light of the recent nationwide demonstrations protesting institutionalized racism and promoting equity and social justice this playlist exhibition was curated to offer some background on political art and activism in Contemporary Art over the last half-century. The exhibition provides a small snapshot of how artists have responded in the past to societal inequities and reveals how that art often has a direct relationship to political and social movements and activism.
The Essentials #3 - Contemporary Political Art and Activism focuses specifically on the work of two artists Adrian Piper and Hock E Aye VI Edgar Heap of Birds and two artist collectives Gran Fury and The Guerrilla Girls. There is also an emphasis on the activism and political art that came out of the AIDS crisis in the 1980's as documented in the traveling exhibition This Will Have Been: Art, Love & Politics in the 1980's. The relationship between activism and performance art since the 1960's is briefly examined in episode 5 of Tateshots How Art Became Active.
The Guerrilla Girls founded in 1985 in New York City are an anonymous group of feminist, and female artists devoted to fighting sexism and racism within the art world. Their mission is to bring gender and racial inequality into focus within the greater arts community. The group uses art and activism in the form of posters, books, billboards, and public appearances to expose discrimination, inequality and corruption. To remain anonymous, members wear gorilla masks in public and use pseudonyms that refer to deceased female artists. Guerrilla Girls: ‘You Have to Question What You See’, 2018 includes interviews with group members and examples of their work and process.
Adrian Piper (b. 1946, NY, New York)is a first-generation Conceptual artist and analytic philosopher. Piper is racially mixed. She is 1/32 Malagasy (Madagascar), 1/32 African of unknown origin, 1/16 Igbo (Nigeria), and 1/8 East Indian (Chittagong, India [now Bangladesh]), in addition to having predominantly British and German family ancestry. Piper produces artwork in a variety of traditional and nontraditional media, including photo-text collage, drawing on pre-printed paper, video installation, site-specific sculptural installation, digital imagery, performance and sound works. Adrian Piper: Deconstructing Race in the Indexical Present, was originally created for a course on Black Aesthetics and the Politics of Representation at Pomona College in 2009 and provides an overview of Piper’s work and its engagement with issues surrounding identity.
This Will Have Been: Art, Love & Politics in the 1980s provides an overview of an exhibition documenting the artistic production of a tumultuous period of cultural and political transformation. Presenting important works produced between 1979 and 1992, the exhibition touches on major developments of the period, including the rise of the commercial art market, the politicization of the AIDS crisis, the increased visibility of women and gay artists and artists of color, and the ascension of televised media. Organized by MCA Chicago, This Will Have Been: Art, Love & Politics in the 1980s was guest curated by Helen Molesworth, Barbara Lee Chief Curator, Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston and traveled to the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago,Walker Art Center, Minneapolis and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston.
In Whitney Stories Tom Kalin of the AIDS activist collective Gran Fury who are prominently featured in This Will Have Been: Art, Love & Politics in the 1980’s talks about “American Policy,” a series of pastel drawings by Cheyenne/Arapaho artist Hock E Aye VI Edgar Heap of Birds and discusses language-based artwork. Spawning from ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) in 1988, Gran Fury was an AIDS activist artist collective from New York City consisting of 11 members. Describing themselves as a “...band of individuals united in anger and dedicated to exploiting the power of art to end the AIDS crisis” the group mutually disbanded in 1995. Edgar Heap of Birds (Cheyenne name: Hock E Aye VI) is a multi-disciplinary artist. His art contributions include public art messages, large scale drawings, acrylic paintings, prints, and monumental sculpture. He is Southern Cheyenne and enrolled in the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes.
Tate is a family of four art galleries in London, Liverpool and Cornwall known as Tate Modern, Tate Britain, Tate Liverpool and Tate St Ives that house the United Kingdom's national collection of British art, and international modern and contemporary art. Tateshots is a series of short documentary films exploring art and artists. In the series How Art Became Active Tate asks art historian Jacky Klein to take a close look at five different ways in which performance is found inside, and sometimes outside, the museum. Episode five, Performance and Protest: Can Art Change Society?, explores the evolution of performance art since the 1960’s and its relationship to political activism.
Online Exhibition at our Atkinson Gallery YouTube Channel September 4th - October 16, 2020.
Guerrilla Girls: ‘You Have to Question What You See’, 2018. Artist Interview by TateShots, UK, Video (color, sound, CC) 6.58 min.
Adrian Piper: Deconstructing Race in the Indexical Present, 2009 Film on the work of Adrian Piper Created for ART178: Black Aesthetics and the Politics of Representation at Pomona College. Video (color, sound, cc) 10:59 min
This Will Have Been: Art, Love & Politics in the 1980s, 2012. Synopsis of an exhibition organized by MCA Chicago.Video (color, sound, cc) 15.35 min.
Whitney Stories: Gran Fury's Tom Kalin on Hock E Aye VI Edgar Heap of Birds, 2018. Video (color, sound, cc), 6.09 min.
Performance and Protest: Can Art Change Society? | How Art Became Active | Ep. 5 of 5 | TateShots, 2018 Video (color, sound, cc) 4:40 min
This is the third in a series of curated playlist exhibitions featured on the Atkinson Gallery YouTube Channel highlighting important and historical art video, films, and movements. In light of the recent nationwide demonstrations protesting institutionalized racism and promoting equity and social justice this playlist exhibition was curated to offer some background on political art and activism in Contemporary Art over the last half-century. The exhibition provides a small snapshot of how artists have responded in the past to societal inequities and reveals how that art often has a direct relationship to political and social movements and activism.
The Essentials #3 - Contemporary Political Art and Activism focuses specifically on the work of two artists Adrian Piper and Hock E Aye VI Edgar Heap of Birds and two artist collectives Gran Fury and The Guerrilla Girls. There is also an emphasis on the activism and political art that came out of the AIDS crisis in the 1980's as documented in the traveling exhibition This Will Have Been: Art, Love & Politics in the 1980's. The relationship between activism and performance art since the 1960's is briefly examined in episode 5 of Tateshots How Art Became Active.
The Guerrilla Girls founded in 1985 in New York City are an anonymous group of feminist, and female artists devoted to fighting sexism and racism within the art world. Their mission is to bring gender and racial inequality into focus within the greater arts community. The group uses art and activism in the form of posters, books, billboards, and public appearances to expose discrimination, inequality and corruption. To remain anonymous, members wear gorilla masks in public and use pseudonyms that refer to deceased female artists. Guerrilla Girls: ‘You Have to Question What You See’, 2018 includes interviews with group members and examples of their work and process.
Adrian Piper (b. 1946, NY, New York)is a first-generation Conceptual artist and analytic philosopher. Piper is racially mixed. She is 1/32 Malagasy (Madagascar), 1/32 African of unknown origin, 1/16 Igbo (Nigeria), and 1/8 East Indian (Chittagong, India [now Bangladesh]), in addition to having predominantly British and German family ancestry. Piper produces artwork in a variety of traditional and nontraditional media, including photo-text collage, drawing on pre-printed paper, video installation, site-specific sculptural installation, digital imagery, performance and sound works. Adrian Piper: Deconstructing Race in the Indexical Present, was originally created for a course on Black Aesthetics and the Politics of Representation at Pomona College in 2009 and provides an overview of Piper’s work and its engagement with issues surrounding identity.
This Will Have Been: Art, Love & Politics in the 1980s provides an overview of an exhibition documenting the artistic production of a tumultuous period of cultural and political transformation. Presenting important works produced between 1979 and 1992, the exhibition touches on major developments of the period, including the rise of the commercial art market, the politicization of the AIDS crisis, the increased visibility of women and gay artists and artists of color, and the ascension of televised media. Organized by MCA Chicago, This Will Have Been: Art, Love & Politics in the 1980s was guest curated by Helen Molesworth, Barbara Lee Chief Curator, Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston and traveled to the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago,Walker Art Center, Minneapolis and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston.
In Whitney Stories Tom Kalin of the AIDS activist collective Gran Fury who are prominently featured in This Will Have Been: Art, Love & Politics in the 1980’s talks about “American Policy,” a series of pastel drawings by Cheyenne/Arapaho artist Hock E Aye VI Edgar Heap of Birds and discusses language-based artwork. Spawning from ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) in 1988, Gran Fury was an AIDS activist artist collective from New York City consisting of 11 members. Describing themselves as a “...band of individuals united in anger and dedicated to exploiting the power of art to end the AIDS crisis” the group mutually disbanded in 1995. Edgar Heap of Birds (Cheyenne name: Hock E Aye VI) is a multi-disciplinary artist. His art contributions include public art messages, large scale drawings, acrylic paintings, prints, and monumental sculpture. He is Southern Cheyenne and enrolled in the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes.
Tate is a family of four art galleries in London, Liverpool and Cornwall known as Tate Modern, Tate Britain, Tate Liverpool and Tate St Ives that house the United Kingdom's national collection of British art, and international modern and contemporary art. Tateshots is a series of short documentary films exploring art and artists. In the series How Art Became Active Tate asks art historian Jacky Klein to take a close look at five different ways in which performance is found inside, and sometimes outside, the museum. Episode five, Performance and Protest: Can Art Change Society?, explores the evolution of performance art since the 1960’s and its relationship to political activism.