Machine Gun Beauty, 2008, Hand-Stiched Collage of Original Vintage posters and Photos on Paper
Garage Sale, 2008, Hand-Stitched Flag, Collage. 
Support Our Troops for Operation Freedom, 2008, Hand-Stitched Flag, Collage.
Kill Them All & Let God, 2008, Hand-Stitched Flag, Collage.
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by Petra Mason 9/29/2019 Walking in Miami's winter heat towards a slither of land between the beach and wealthy Indian Creek billionaire bunker 'La Gorce' is somewhat surreal. In the part of town known as mid-beach where you never know who lives in which condo canyon, and most big buildings have high security and are harder to get into than some small countries. At any moment Lil' Wayne could be speeding past en route to his sprawling bachelor pad (complete with a skate board park) or Iggy Pop could be cruising by in his big black Rolls Royce or YBA Tracey Emin could be escaping the London freeze by checking into her Miami apartment. Quizzically seeking out Eurydice at her low lying greenhouse resembling abode, the petit artist appeared like a water sprite, guarded by two yapping, bouncing teacup poodles who, once indoors, proceeded to wrap themselves around her bare feet, slipper style. Swopping notes on our mutual past lives in New York and getting hopped up on Greek coffee, Eury (as her friends call her) showed me around her sun lit, studio like living space (her actual studio is in Little River, the newest affordable artist zone). One wall brims with works the artist describes as 'too tough' to sell: pleasingly abstracted, distorted female forms in mixed mediums. Close by in the corridor, large scale soft art pieces whisper secret tales, hand-stitched onto unprimed canvas and vintage silk sourced in India some years before. Eurydice is a woman with a past, a present and a future whose story began (rather poetically) having been born on the isle of Lesbos. Miami has, ever since her clove cigarette smoking arrival in the 90's provided sanctuary. Particularly since the birth of her daughter (who now goes to Bard College). Miami has provided sanctuary well, since New York turned into 'a serpent eating its own tail'. Preferring not to pre-Google my subjects too much, knowing how scrappy online representations of interesting people can be I had no idea Eurydice was also the Eurydice, a writer with a cult following, whose written work I remember as part of New York's turn-of-the-century millennium underground. Her book, the highly original ground-breaking book F/32 considered by Brooklyn based culture guide Free Williamsburg as 'the most dangerous novel ever written by a woman' was followed by 1999's tour of America's contemporary sexual landscape Satyricon USA. Feeling more than just a pang of nostalgia for the halcyon days of the late 90's New York Girls era, when alt.culture underworld's revealed new frontiers and things were moving forward so fast, no one would have believed, by 2017, how backward things would become. While women, media myths and sexuality loom large as subject matter, Eurydice mulls on the constant integration and objectification of women, and on the female pleasure principle. There is a bait and switch aspect to her work: you get turned on and you get turned off. Large scale wall hangings of hand-stitched female forms, a nod to all the great images of bathers in art history are both seductive and confronting. Fellini cast members cut 'n pasted into punk-ed up collages of women viewed through heart throb Marcello's eyes, violently hacked at with scissors while the thread of feminine embroidery stitches it all together, providing the pulse to 'sexist pig' Fellini's broken narrative. Artwork by Eurydice can be viewed as part of the current and ongoing through February 2020 exhibition on at the Betsy Hotel in Miami Beach. Deborah Plutzik Briggs, Vice President for Marketing and Philanthropy curated the exhibition has “given over pretty much all of our spaces to artists” - answering a call to put Miami artists front and center on the beach during Art Basel and beyond. Ends. |
All that Glitters: Artist Frances Goodman
Titles of works:
Killing Time 2018 Hand-stitched Sequins on Canvas Ruby Stars 2018 Acrylic Nails, Silicone, Canvas, Frame Hooded Lady 2016 Acrylic Nails, Foam, Resin, Silicone Glue 65 x 90 x 66 cm |
by Petra Mason 10/10/2020 Artist Frances Goodman is based in eGoli, Johannesburg, Africa's City of Gold where she's been mining the rich landscape of 'femininity, costuming, and role playing' using acrylic nails, sequins and other unconventional materials. The Goldsmiths London educated artist was born in South Africa in 1974 and finds it the perfect place to work as an artist and to 'bounce in and out of'. Cultural Historian Petra Mason first met Goodman in Miami, Florida when she was in town for an artists residency at Kathryn Mikesell's The Fountainhead Residency. Downtown in New York’s once gritty (but still grubby) Lower East Side, champagne royalty Richard Taittinger opened a five-thousand-square-foot gallery space in a former music hall. While some of the miniature neighbouring gallery spaces resemble neat broom closets, Taittinger’s spot boasts twenty-foot ceilings and can accommodate monumental artworks. Where once-upon-a-time bawdy vaudeville acts with can-can girls kicked, Johannesburg-based Frances Goodman – then the only female artist on the gallery’s line-up – installed her first major U.S. show, ‘Rapaciously Yours,’ just days before The Armory Show opened far further uptown, on the West Side in 2016. Ever since she’s been attracting attention at home in South Africa and spreading her carefully manicured tentacles broadly internationally with exhibitions in Italy, Denmark and Texas. By reworking materials that typically signify a glossy version of her gender, for this exhibition Goodman works mostly with acrylic (false) nails as her medium and raids the beauty parlor for materials. The pair of giant ‘stiletto’ nail-shaped warrior shields remind me of Ndebele paintwork patterns and would fit perfectly in Nicki Minaj’s crib. The boys don’t escape her one-two punch either as she works over stereotypical masculine materials: car hoods and back seats embellished with gag-worthy misogynistic comments we’ve all heard too often and in too many languages. Her wedding installation The Dream (an edition of two) unfolds. The frothy, soft sculptural piece – comprising worn wedding dresses, beadwork, hand embroidery and sound installation – hangs from floor to ceiling: a pile of ruined expectations, haunted by the ghosts of modern-day Miss Havishams. The wedding gowns mushroom into a cloud of organza, eggshell whites and pale pinks, heavy with longing and broken dreams. Goodman explains: “During the course of our lives we are fed a lot of notions about love and marriage. Phrases like ‘dream man,’ ‘dream wedding,’ ‘dream dress’ and ‘dream day’ are channeled towards women in particular. So marriage and weddings are ‘The Dream’ we are taught to aspire to. I also wanted the installation itself to have a dreamlike quality: a haziness, a softness, a space of suspended belief and reality.” The sound installation for The Dream features recognisably South African accents – all women’s voices – speaking openly, echoing global sentiments and universal commentary on the state of the modern bride. The voices speak about how today’s cookie-cutter mythology of marriage eerily echoes what might have been said in the 1950s, at the height of the American Dream and before ‘Sex and the Single Girl,’ which is where the rest of the artist’s narrative takes off. While it’s hardly news that most media is viewed through the male perspective and largely written by men, nailing the ‘female gaze’ is a lot more complex. We battle visual debris and mixed messages daily via social media. A quick scan of my Instagram feed: South African artist Lady $kollie has Instagrammed her green ‘pro nails’ grabbing Jalapeño hot sauce (referencing Beyoncé’s Formation lyrics) and is, amusingly, also ‘honouring’ ex-stripper Blac Chyna for her engagement to a Kardashian. Elsewhere I read that Beyoncé is a feminist – because she kicks ass in short shorts – but I thought she told “Single Ladies (to) (Put A Ring On It)”? You get the picture. For Goodman, this confusion is her playground. She even gets to stick her tongue out at Miley Cyrus, who trotted past the New York gallery and snapped, then Instagrammed, a gigantic tongue made from false nails titled Lick It., Cyrus’ post racked up more than two hundred and fifty thousand ‘likes.’ As Goodman told me over bagels for breakfast in New York recently, “What I like about the story is that when I was thinking about the tongue piece (and getting inspiration for it) I referred to [Cyrus’] music videos and her iconic tongue pictures, so I guess she was looking at me looking at her.” Adding to the cartoonish appeal, Goodman even looks like Archie’s Veronica (from the Archie Comics book series), but in her case women are her best friends and she’s certainly not competing for Archie’s attention. She’s too busy in her studio and too busy being strategic – how else does one get a New York exhibition? “After doing a number of residencies in the New York area I built up a network of people who are supportive and appreciative of my work. While upstate at Art Omi I met a curator who really loved The Dream and thought it should be exhibited in New York. She introduced me to the Richard Taittinger Gallery.” As for its future, so far The Dream is fulfilling its promise of ‘happily ever after.’ The second edition was purchased by the 21st Century Museum in Louisville, Kentucky, and the first will soon travel to Angola. Represented by SMAC Gallery in South Africa, Goodman navigated the global uncertainty of 2020 by cooking up new work and working remotely with her salon style team (including a hairstylist and sequins stitchers) to produce her latest solo exhibition ‘Uneventful Days’ that opens at SMAC on 31 October to 5 December 2020. |
List of works in order:
1. Freedom to be - 2018, acrylic & pearl flake mica on canvas, 70x60” 2. Some are whispering that we are dangerous - 2020, graphite, acrylic & pearl flake mica on canvas, 28x24” 3. They ordered armed unaccountable men on her - 2020, graphite and oil on board, 6x6” 4. Black children are cute until a certain age, (I) - 2018, oil on wood, 8x6” 5. Calling the police is not your only option - 2020, acrylic & pearl flake mica on canvas, 16x12“ 6. The reality is that there is nothing black people can do to disarm the violence of white people- 2018 Acrylic & pearl flake mica on canvas, 36x72” (Photo in Header) |
by Petra Mason 12/10/2020 Jacqueline Gopie Freedom to Play Copper Door Gallery 439 NW 4th Ave, Miami, Florida. These ‘digital days’, like everywhere else in the world, Miami’s Art Week went online. As viewing rooms replace white cube galleries, in the Northwest of Miami downtown in Overtown, artist Jacqueline Gopie opened a real-time exhibition. Surfing the traffic on the expressways that once displaced many original Overtown residents while metaphorically riding the current ‘Corona Coaster’ Freedom to Play Gopie quietly makes her-story. Adding contemporary cultural volume to the area nicknamed ‘Southern Harlem’ where legends such as Billie Holiday once performed, and Derrick Adams recently exhibited, Gopie presents a selection of recent works on canvas. ‘My overall intention is to interrupt unconscious racial bias. I’m focused on diminishing the existing mountain of negative images of black and brown people by littering it with my images of children. The paintings are based on my own photographs and are children of color engaged in simple, universal forms of play. They are titled with quotes from a variety of sources: historical figures, historians, authors, filmmakers, politicians and victims of police violence. These quotes are intended to provoke the viewer to further consider the content of the paintings. The lively and colorful backgrounds coupled with gestural figures and unfinished areas invite the viewer to question further the work. To wonder whether or not it is finished and then perhaps to actively participate with the painting by filling in the missing parts in their minds. This deeper involvement with the work hopefully leads to a questioning of biased cultural concepts of beauty and inclusion.’ "I consider my style a fusion of realistic figuration and abstract expressionism, characterized by an exuberant use of color and motion with gestural brushwork. I stole that description from somewhere but I think it fits." Gopie’s paintings are refreshingly energetic, unpretentious, and wonderfully well-painted, ranging from over six feet to just under six inches. The artist thinks her work looks best when there are several pieces that present a cohesive narrative. Even so, those "under six inches" pack a punch, resonating with colorful, joyful energy. With several solo exhibitions under her belt, Gopie wasted no time joining artist ranks. Upon retiring from a 21-year military stint in the United States Army, the Coral Gables Miami-based, Kingston, Jamaica-born artist attended the University of Miami where, with military precision, she received her BFA in 2005 and her MFA in painting in 2012, and was a recipient of the Joan Mitchell Foundation 2016 Emerging Artist Grant as well as attended, among others, the Joan Mitchell Center in New Orleans, Louisiana in 2018. Going beyond the obvious youthful joys of summer, with Freedom to Play Gopie makes a profound political statement with multilayered references to the racial injustices heaped on people of color and especially children in historic and contemporary American culture. Here are but a few:
‘Freedom to Play’ is also a play on words making reference to the 6 January, 1941 speech made by Franklin Delano Roosevelt called “The Four Freedoms.” Which were: Freedom of Speech Freedom of Worship Freedom from Want Freedom From Fear To which I think should be added – Freedom to Play. "By implanting images of black and brown children having a chill time onto your visual cortex I am intentionally contrasting the negative images we are constantly bombarded with by every form of media. The visual cortex learns from experience and self-organizes its structure to process visual input. We need to SEE that we are all the same. We ALL want to play in the sun.’ These days, we're more likely to wake up with a frown than a smile, so pleasing summertime images like Gopie's take on added heft. Her subjects are strangers, tweens, singularly focused children, dark-skinned Dads. The figures cavort in water, seen from the back, from the side, as they jump, play, dressed in canary yellow shorts and flip flops, wearing inner tubes, colorful swimsuits, with hands on hips, observing. As spectators, we're part of the action, taking part in the athletic splashing in fountains and constant movement that defines Freedom to Play. Jacqueline Gopie is highly eloquent and an engaging conversationalist. She speaks with honesty and insight, sings the praises of working at home in pajamas, and lovingly cites her mentor Professor, the late Walter Darby Bannard, the Color Field painter "whose elegant, severe abstract paintings of the late 1950s and '60s" were the springboard for a "lifetime's exploration of color, form and the physicality of paint" (as his New York Times obituary read in October 2016). What do you love about paint? The possibilities. When I'm in an art store I always wonder about all the amazing paintings that are waiting patiently inside the jars and tubes of paint on the shelves. Was Color Field painting an influence at all? Not specifically, but I think Darby's palette influenced me quite a bit. I took risks with colors I never would have arrived at on my own. Any wise words from Walter Darby Bannard on image-making you'd like to share? In my first year in graduate school, I was painting very small, dark oil landscapes and really struggling with just about every aspect of them. During a critique with my committee, of which Darby was the chair, I had some charcoal sketches from my figure drawing class in a corner of my studio. Darby went right over to them instead of the paintings and said, "You should paint figures and paint like you draw." That insight really freed me from this naive notion I had at the time -- which was that paintings shouldn't show line-work and had to be tight with every inch completed. But to be absolutely honest everything I needed to know about painting Darby taught in his undergraduate 102 class -- I just had not painted enough at the time to understand how to use the material. I still use his notes from that class when I'm stuck or I'm having a block about what to do. But his best advice has always been -- just paint. Besides the joyfulness of your work, there is a sense of longing. Can you elaborate? I'm so glad you were able to perceive that. I really want to talk more about this in my work, but I'm not quite sure how to explain it just yet. I had a very tough childhood in Jamaica and I think it is probably related to the feeling of never really belonging I had as a child. I am a mix of East Indian, African, and European descent, and in Jamaica that put me in the minority of not black/not white. So I never really fit in. That [feeling], coupled with being reunited with my family that I hadn't lived with since I was about two years old, and thrust into a rough junior high school in Brooklyn, New York in the 1972 really intensified the feeling of being an outsider--it made me wish for something I guess I never really had: that sense of belonging. You served in the military; where were you stationed? I was stationed in several places in the continental US (Missouri, Texas, Colorado, Georgia, and Washington DC) and my overseas assignments were Alaska and Hawaii. How has being in the military influenced your work and outlook, if at all? The discipline and work ethic I developed in the military definitely have an influence on my work. I excelled physically in the Army, and I think that drive to succeed certainly pushes me to work hard and not quit or accept failure. I try to learn from every experience and I want to be self-sustaining. I also think I developed a sense of confidence in taking risks and learning new skills--I got through a lot of difficult Army training by saying to myself, "if that guy can do it, I know I can too." What do you enjoy most about being a senior student? I absolutely hated being an older person attending undergraduate classes. Going from being a Master Sergeant at the Pentagon to listening to someone saying "when you get out in the real world" drove me insane! Graduate school was much less condescending, and having Darby was a lifesaver. Where is your Miami studio? I now have a studio at home. I am so happy! There is no commute, no extra cost, and I can work in my pajamas. How are you still connected to Jamaica? I have countless relatives there still--several that I have recently met for the first time. When I immigrated here in 1972, I was 12 years old, and I did not return to Jamaica until around 1995 when I was in my thirties. However, since moving to Miami in 2002, I have returned frequently. One of my secret desires is to spend several months there traveling about the island and painting the people and landscape. This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity. |
Her Mind's Eye: Artist Judith Mason
List of works in order:
Thunderbird I, 1996 Oil on Board Thunderbird II, 1996 Oil on Board Tombs of the Pharaohs of Johannesburg (Triptych) , 1987 Mixed media Our Lady of the Transit Camp, 2007 Oil on board Self-Portrait Age 90, 1988 Oil on canvas Woman in fur coat, 2005 Pencil on paper |
by her daughter, Petra Mason 2/5/2021 It wasn't easy being Judith Mason's daughters: she would unknowingly cast a spell on everyone she met, enchanting our friends and boyfriends with her arrow sharp insights, self-deprecatory wit, masterful command of the English language and homemade, buttery breakfast scones. Once they were completely smitten she'd wonder why they wouldn't 'Just bloody leave me alone to work!'. Work, after all, was her first love. Animals a close second. My sister and I are her 'heart's daughters'. She was one of the few people who could see things clearly amongst all the deranged noise. A self-described news junkie, she took to the internet with glee, describing it as a 'hole in the wall'. When she left us, we discovered not only was she downloading digital books by the dozen, but that there were countless indie blogs and liberal news organizations she dutifully supported on her meager earnings. I relied heavily on her ability to navigate the news cycle, and we constantly shared our outrage, amusement and increasingly, our dismay. Judith considered herself a 'sucker for authoritative comments' and she was certainly skillful at making them. Hayden Proud, curator of historical collections at the Iziko South African National Gallery described her eloquently as 'never uncritically accepting new thinking on artistic issues or pandering to trends' 'with a near-heretical viewpoint'. A non-conformist she was, but certainly not a non-believer. There were numerous deities and god options around our little cottage growing up, an undeniably determining aspect in my life. We grew up on the margins of society in apartheid South Africa, loosely connected to the art and academic worlds but isolated from the mainstream, living on a farm: my mother, my sister, Tamar, and I in a little cottage. Us three, and a menagerie of animals: squirrel monkeys, bats, cats and mongrel dogs. The house was always neat and tidy, a bit like Darwin’s study… We lived in a cabinet of curiosities: skulls, vintage bottles, porcupine quills, dried birds, rusty nails, feathers and taxidermy animals were the things we treasured. Judith never did baby talk, we were always equals. She believed that we, artists and art lovers alike were living in the fall-out of catastrophe. She once wrote – always thoughtfully – when opening an exhibition (something which she was often asked to do) that 'the world is physically fragile, tearing at its own fabric with earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and drought – and the usual suspects run across the world waging war and terror while justifying their malevolence by mouthing platitudes about democracy, religion and nationalism, race and economics.' Buddhist discourse (of which I admittedly know very little about, having Googled 'mindfulness' recently) talks about how there can be no companionship with a fool. This self preserving, pragmatic advice resonated with Judith who could never find a companion better or equal (even though she married twice) so she resolutely decided to go it alone preferring the company of nag apies, wild cats, bats and hyenas (if only she could). There were plenty of fools she took pity on, and pity occasionally got muddled with compassion. Buddhist wisdom also translates, 'It is painful to live with fools, like always being with an enemy'. As a kid I identified these 'flying purple people eaters' (her description) and regrettably took on the role of a part time, unpaid bouncer. As a teenager I'd craftily deflect calls from a miserable mining magnate who longed to be an artist, endlessly demanding of her time but never really valuing it or offering to compensate for it. When I quizzed her on her generosity of spirit, time and resources she'd say: 'But Pet, we are luckier than him'. While a more enlightened version of me may agree, it was time that would have been better spent with me and my sister. Buddhism 'rears its ugly head' again (another very Judith phrase) the year she fell chronically ill with pulmonary complications in 2004. In a yellow cab, on my way to work at a photographic studio on New York's West Side I whizzed past the Rubin Museum, a space largely dedicated to the preservation of the art and cultures of her beloved muse, the Himalayas. A banner outside (in translated text) shouted (at me!) 'Your Most Important Work is Right in Front of You' – I considered it a call to arms to start the Judith Mason archive. Of my arrival she wrote: 'Petra swooped down like an avenging angel'. Getting her out of the clutches of incompetent Nelspruit doctors, her health improved. I set to work scanning hundreds of Kodak shots of extraordinary works of art she had snapped – sometimes not – mostly recording them as reference for another piece of work, or as an afterthought. Even though she represented South Africa at the Venice Biennale in 1966 and at Art Basel in Switzerland in the 80s, she experienced a career crushing departure from one of the very few galleries in South Africa, the owner of which proceeded to tell collectors she had stopped producing. Judith was an 'outsider' artist at a time when intellect and technical virtuosity fell out of fashion. Her masterful ability to command a pencil stroke, lead on paper, a glob of oil paint transformed into alchemy on canvas. A pile of scrap metal, bones and wooden bits into Tombs of the Pharaohs of Johannesburg. I was only in my 30s, and by working on the archive that I realized how alarmingly prolific she had been. Her paintings would sometimes take years, and many I remember living with, but she had found time to paint them in the thousands. I went in hot pursuit of Mason collectors all over the globe tracking down images that were sent in varying versions of early digital files that now reside in a scrapbook style digital stream. We kept a dedicated website going while she was alive and that was helpful to many Mason scholars. Judith was the fastest learner you could ever meet. Propelled by her health issues and my desire to meaningfully archive her work in some shape or form she became an internet guru to add to all her other guru skills. She hastily typed captions and dates for her images online that formed the basis of her retrospective at the Standard Bank Gallery Judith Mason: A Prospect of Icons, curated by Wilhelm van Rensburg and Barbara Freemantle. She quibbled with the use of the word 'retrospective' – she took words very seriously pointing out that it was not a retrospective as she was still busy in her studio, ''I'm not dead yet!' she wryly pointed out. She was always earth shatteringly, wickedly funny. Judith Mason was, without a doubt, one of the greatest minds of our time. It is an utterly daunting task trying to explain such a remarkable human being to the world. She would often read my writing and always insist that I make it matter. Always a fierce feminist, she was equally cautions not to tow a party line or to echo sentiment, she had an enormous, ravenous capacity for knowledge, tirelessly reading everything that came her way, forever furthering her understanding of 'the planet'. She would even read the small ads in the weekly New Yorker. Judith tirelessly went 'beyond the obvious' a tremendously liberating lesson to live by that cuts out all sorts of crap. Judith Mason lives on in a multitude of ways. In her daughters, me and Tamar, her fiercest protectors. In her grand daughter Maru's skillful command of the English language (Maru described something large to me as 'humungous' at age 9, clearly delighting in rolling the word out on her tongue, enjoying every crevice of pronunciation. In her technically astute grandson Simon - a very fine artist at just age 24 - Simon having been fortunate enough to score art lessons from his Oma (spelt that way by her, she despised the word 'Granny' and preferred the word Ouma, but felt it was misleading to use the Afrikaans spelling as she was English speaking). She lives on in the studios of the proudly 'weirdo' artists whose lives were transformed when they first engaged with her work, who went into their studios and never came out. I jokingly called her 'The Patron Saint of Goth Chicks' -- we always had such a laugh. Unlike so many of the self-professed artists of today Judith was never ever motivated by money, celebrity or legacy. Her legacy lives beyond her physical works of art, many of which will certainly out live us all. A month before she died I emailed her to let her know that the Smithsonian Museum of African Art had purchased an Artists' Proof of her rare and collectable artists book, A Dante Bestiary. Knowing that her spinal operation was looming and hoping to lift her spirits a bit I wrote to her 'the Smithsonian are cataloging as we speak, 'A Dante Bestiary' is with them in an acid free, mold free library. Amazing it survived' (referring to the fact that I rescued the copy from an un-amused Hasidim in New York who had been given it as a gift by someone who mistook it for the Haggadah, an added twist to the bizarre Dante story that we found devastatingly funny, literally howling with laughter). Her quick reply to me, typed on her phone: 'An acid free mold free library is where I should be. I am so pleased about these developments and grateful that you made it all happen. Love you, moldymom. Italian poet Dante Alighieri was my mother's muse. She drew him, painted him, wrote about his significance in South Africa's political landscape, worshipped his beasts, acknowledged his wisdom in our contemporary context. As Italy begins a year-long celebration of the 700th anniversary of the poet's death with events that include a virtual Uffizi exhibition and seldom-seen Divine Comedy drawings, as we live in our masked, Covid bubbles with increasingly digital days I've frequently been reminded of Dante's circles in hell and wondered what would mother make of this? |
Upon healing: Collaboration with Qinza Najm
Qinza Nam sitting under heavy mesh embroidered with bullet shells in the performance No Honor in Killing. 1100 bullets, collected around NY and Pakistan shooting ranges, 11 yards of fish net. Title: No Honor in Killing, Performance at Museum of Moving Images NY. 2017
Photo in header courtesy the artist, Qinza Nam |
by Yi Chin Hsieh 6/10/2021 edited by Beláxis Buil & Global English Editing I first met Qinza in early 2021, when everything was under better control and people were more knowledgeable about the Coronavirus. As a Pakistani-American artist who holds a Ph.D. in psychology, Qinza's practice mainly focuses on gendered violence, cultural identity, and social trauma. As a Taiwanese woman coming from an East Asian background, I resonate closely with female struggles and these cultural focuses Qinza brought up in her work. Her notions and observations, especially on forbidden female sexuality in a male-dominated society, reminded me of my own experiences and culture shock when I first moved here to the United States. Considering the collective and globalized events and trauma we are experiencing, I decided to collaborate with a few different artists, including Qinza, for my most recent project, The Gift Shop. The Gift Shop is a curatorial project providing a platform for audiences, artists, and curators to rethink how exhibitions can be broadened. I work with artists on art objects collaboratively, finding a balance of presentation, demonstrating the artist's practice, and sometimes, the conceptual expansion of the artist's statements. Golden Bullets is one of the collaborative projects for The Gift Shop. Golden Bullets is an extension of Qinza’s prior project, No Honor In Killing. The objects used in the recent project are the same bullet casings that she collected from shooting ranges in NY and Pakistan for her performance in 2017 for the Museum of Moving Images. She assembled around 1100 bullets representing the lives taken by gun shootings in schools and honor killings in Pakistan. She later wove them over a heavy net and sat underneath it. Participants were invited to lift the heavy mesh together, carrying the weight of the bullets above their heads. By doing so, the audiences symbolically shared the pain and the consequences of these social issues. Criticism was implied but buried in the layers; healing was in process with the encouragement of audience participation. Metaphorically, No Honor in Killing pointed out some of the most brutal facets of humanity and society in an original manner of storytelling. While discussing her performances and projects with her, I asked Qinza to reconsider what bullets and guns truly represent. Is it power? Social status? Or insecurity? Or protection and defense? Guns are tools, after all, and depending on the people who use them, they can easily take lives or protect someone from possible danger. To further these concepts and perhaps create a reminder, Golden Bullets contains seven bullet casings provided by the artist and placed in handmade boxes I made. In each casing, are idioms/proverbs written onto small pieces of paper then rolled up. There are seven words of wisdom in each box, with three of English origin, two of Urdu, and two of Chinese Mandarin. The Urdu and English sayings are handwritten by the artist and the Mandarin ones are by me. Idioms are collective cultural wisdom. We wish to deliver the best advice of the artist and the curator and share our cultural identity and life lessons with the audience/collector. The project is currently on view at the Patricia and Phillip Frost Art Museum and will also continue as a pop-up exhibition at Laundromat Art Space in Miami, Florida. Perhaps some support from the past encourages us to keep moving forward and be confident in a better tomorrow. As one of the messages says, "the darkest hour of the night comes just before dawn." The Golden Bullets were made during a deep global social trauma. Despite that, the project wishes to bring hope, guidance, and a moment of reflection to the audience. As Qinza and I finished our conversation on that Friday night after hours of sharing thoughts and fears, I somehow felt more hopeful and even healed, knowing whatever is happening now in our lives shall pass one day. And it will perhaps inspire more idioms to be created and shared. I walked, and even skipped a bit with bullets clinking in my bag on the way home. |
Meryl Meisler: New York PARADISE LOST Bushwick Era Disco
Titles of Photographs in order of appearance:
Family Picnic, Palmetto Street, Bushwick, Brooklyn, NY 1982 (Header) Grace Jones in Hallway with JudiJupiter and Others on Opening Night, La Farfalle, NY, NY 1978 Five Fashionable Rejects (With JudiJupiter), Studio 54, NY, NY 1978 Women Embrace on Floor Near JudiJupiter’s Legs, Les Mouches, NY, NY 1978 Toddlerhood, Palmetto St., Bushwick, Brooklyn, NY, Halloween 1984 |
by Petra Mason 8/10/2021 New York PARADISE LOST Bushwick Era Disco Photographs by Meryl Meisler The Center for Photography at Woodstock Ends September 15, 2021 For over 50 years, photographer Meryl Meisler has ravenously captured fast-paced cultural transitions through her viewfinder. Images of infinitely idealized and romanticized eras -- the 70s and 80s in particular – times she refers to as ‘the best of times, the worst of times.’ Then and now, Meisler is rarely seen without her camera. Her solo exhibition at The Center for Photography at Woodstock titled ‘New York PARADISE LOST Bushwick Era Disco taps into her sweet spot between time frames and her downtown and Upstate lifestyles. On a sweltering New York summers day five years back, I took the bus from Grand Central to Meryl Meisler’s archive in a densely wooded area Upstate where the photographer, her designer dog Via (a Poodle Bichon mix) and Patricia O’Brien, her partner for the past 40 years, divide their time between stints in densely populated Manhattan. Nearby neighbors include writer Luc Sante (of Low-Life fame), film-director Jim Jarmusch and not far off, Slaves of New York writer Tama Janowitz. The photographer’s enormous, and enormously neat, archive reveals sheets of color slides with names casually scrawled ‘Bianca, Mick, Halston’ black and white shots of a baby Grace Jones at ‘Studio’ (as Studio 54 was known to regulars), pre-AIDS wild times in Fire Island's notorious Cherry Grove, mad Mardi Gras nights in New Orleans and more New York City street and nightlife than most would experience in several lifetimes. In the harsh light of today, a stark contrast to our current over-sanitized lifestyle. Meisler once was, between 1981 and 1994, a schoolteacher in Bushwick, Brooklyn. Her images of the area are rare and reveal what then looked like a war zone, a far cry from gentrified contemporary coffee shops and condos. In the 2021 miniseries Halston there are more then a few scenes both inside and outside the legendary celebrity den Studio 54 inspired by Meisler’s time capsules, ‘Five Fashionable Rejects’ or ‘Rejected from Studio 54’ comes to mind. Historic pride marches (she documented Pride since her own coming out in 1975). Funky guys cruising the streets in 1970s California and medium format color slides from San Francisco during the Harvey Milk era. Halcyon days in The Hamptons, Cape Cod, Province Town, Go-Go girls and boys from New York and the 5-Boroughs. It was in 1977 on the cheap, seat-less Grey Rabbit -- not to be confused with the much fancier Grey Hound bus from New York to New Orleans that Meisler met her forever friend and longtime muse JudiJupiter. Jupiter features in many of Meisler’s images as resident bad girl. The Double trouble team nicknamed themselves ‘Neurotic / Erotic’ and disco danced the town, fueled by black coffee. Together they got accepted (and occasionally rejected) from themed club nights, strip bars and punk clubs. Meisler chronicled Jupiter’s forays. Caught on camera, the exhibitionist petit beauty got turned down by Playboy, worked topless bars, did drugs, regularly danced with two guys at a time and even got arrested. Jupiter, dressed in her flimsy signature underwear as outerwear and never without a tan line, accessorized with safety pins and strategic body paint (once wearing not much more than painted hands on butt cheeks!) Jupiter recalls exuberantly: ‘we never paid for anything; we had no money! We never ate. We walked everywhere, we couldn’t afford to drink, we got in everywhere for free.’ |