USFCAM – Bay Art Files

Road Trip to the 21c Museum Hotel Nashville

by Katherine Gibson

Prelude

Before venturing to Nashville, there was a road trip to Durham, North Carolina, for my first 21c experience. Currently, there are nine 21c Museum Hotels, with plans for more, sprinkled across a few select states in mostly mid-sized cities. Each location exhibits museum-quality 21st-century art (21c) in a restored historic building, converted to a boutique hotel that always includes an inventive lively restaurant and bar. Durham was the closest 21c within driving distance of St. Petersburg and was offering a 2-for-1-night stay, so last August – mid-pandemic – I hit the road.

Upon arrival at the 21c Museum Hotel Durham, I was crushed to learn the restaurant space Counting House was still closed, although not surprised given the pandemic restrictions at that time. I could see through the expansive windows that, like the hotel, the restaurant was teeming with compelling artwork. The skeleton crew eventually allowed me to wander the large multi-room restaurant to view and photograph the art. In the center of the bar area, I was delighted to see Duke Riley’s work, as I had met him during a University of South Florida Contemporary Art Museum (USF/CAM) artist talk related to a series of woodcut editions he had completed at USF‘s Graphicstudio.

The main exhibit, The Future is Female, was installed throughout the museum portion of the hotel. It was excellent. I loved seeing works by many favorite artists (Carry Mae Weems, Deborah Roberts, Marilyn Minter, Mickalene Thomas) – and again, was delighted to be alone with the work since only hotel guests were granted museum access at the time.

What was an initial grave disappointment – regarding access – turned out to be a private ocean of time and space. During most of my wanderings, I was the only person around which felt illicit and delicious. I couldn’t believe my strange fortune.

21c Museum Hotel Durham’s *Counting House* bar and restaurant, August 2020.
(Center triptych by Brooklyn-based Duke Riley)

Details of Duke Riley’s It Will Warm You Twice, 2015, Cigarettes on wood panels.

21c Museum Hotel Nashville Lobby

The wood carved figure of a woman was in mid-air with no obvious support. She was floating just beyond the reception desk, an ethereal greeter.

“She is suspended. Do you know how?” asked Brian, from behind the front desk. He was only too eager to tell me yet I wanted to see for myself.

Her only anchor was a hand-held leash that led to the head of a puma, bearing sharp teeth, whose beautiful fur skin was splayed out on the floor like a rug. As gorgeous as the fur of this animal was, my first instinct was to look away.

I am an easily overwhelmed visual sponge, not able to immediately compartmentalize, so the impact of this piece was, initially, too much to take in. Not until the third day did I examine what the artist Marc Fromm had created. I assumed it to be a complicated piece to produce, yet conveyed complete success in presentation. Seamlessly accomplished. Now I could look at the piece with sincere disbelief, rather than discomfort, although the discomfort remained beneath the surface. (I won’t spoil the technical magic – see image and resource links.)

The placement of Young lady with pet, as impressive and impactful as it was, would seem better served in a spacious, isolated corner rather than in the midst of a busy hotel lobby. Perhaps its arresting presence is precisely why it was chosen for the entry area.

Note to readers: Please don’t expect a review or a critique of artwork mentioned in this article. My musings are written more like diary entries, recording impressions of selected pieces and trip experiences. I’ve provided a resource section at the end with links to additional information. Also, 21cMuseumHotels/Nashville.co m provides an excellent 3d visual tour of featured artwork complete with recorded content per exhibit area.

Marc Fromm, *Young lady with pet*, 2010, basswood, puma, oil resin color, steel.
This is a screen shot from 21cNashville.com virtual tour.

Young lady with pet set the stage for many other impactful figures I would soon encounter as I processed the powerful Fragile Figures exhibition.

Per the exhibit brochure: “Fragile Figures: Beings and Time…illuminates the range and complexity of human emotions, revealing intersections between vulnerability and power – social, cultural, and political – in contemporary portraiture. Individual and group identity, and the forces that shape how we see self and others, are approached through direct references to noted works from art history, connecting past events to current issues.”

Fragile Figures is beautifully curated by the 21c Museum Director and Chief Curator Alice Gray Stites, and is visually, emotionally and intellectually compelling – and certainly relevant. It is also a heavy and loaded exhibit sharing stunning, controversial, chilling, and sometimes heart-breaking work by artists from the vast contemporary art collection of the 21c founders, Laura Lee Brown and Steve Wilson, of Louisville, Kentucky, where the original 21c Museum Hotel opened in 2006.

Fragile Figures in Nashville spanned three floors and meandered into several hallways and smaller rooms. It felt huge and daunting so I had to tackle it in smaller doses. Just when I thought I had seen the most impactful piece, there would be another mind-blower around the corner. Many of the pieces and installations resonated strongly with me and I found I needed to pace myself so I decided to focus on a few favorites rather than write about the whole exhibit.

After a full afternoon of digesting the work on a first walk-through, I was spent, and more than ready for a cocktail at Gray & Dudley, the in-house bar and restaurant. To my delight, all the specialty drink titles were Moira Rose (of Schitt’s Creek fame) inspired. I was torn between “The crows have eyes” or “David! Stop acting like a disgruntled pelican!” but instead ordered, “Where is Bebe’s chamber?” – nary a bad choice. To top that off, I ordered seared catfish, with creamy southern grits, to happily devour in my room where Ted Lasso was awaiting (a beloved Jason Sudeikis comedy).

Foreboding Figures

The series of dark and striking figures by Mohau Modisakeng were my favorite pieces in the exhibit. Their stark, large-scale shadowy beauty drew me into the end of a long hallway. Soon I was surrounded by these larger than life foreboding figures holding weapons. The hallway was not wide so I started to feel a bit claustrophobic. Usually, I would want to see pieces of this scale out in the open, with space around each of them, but in the crowded hallway their menacing impact was condensed and eerily palpable.

Below are a few of the images I took. Because of the glass and the lighting proximity, reflections of other warriors loomed in the background. Their multiplying presence was haunting enough – add to that, this strange faint music from down the hall and I decided to call it a day.

Mohau Modisakeng, Large-scale photography, from the Dikubo series.

Intrigued by this artist and his influences, I found an informative write-up by Joe Nolan, in White Hot Magazine (December 2020), who shared the following:

Mohau Modisakeng’s massive self-portraits are formally beautiful works of black-and-white photography. The deep blacks of the South African artist’s skin, garments and accessories are printed on glowing white watercolor paper, creating a dramatic contrast between the images of the artist and their backgrounds.

Modisakeng’s childhood in Soweto was marked by the oppressive violence of the last days of South Africa’s Apartheid-era – a life and death contrast between black and white. The artist’s photos examine violence, the instruments of violence, and the effects they leave on the bodies and psychologies of those affected by them. In a suite of images Modisakeng is armed with machete-like blades and cattle prods, and draped in a long black robe – the garment recalls traditional robes of African tribes as well as the garb of the Western legal and religious classes. Most striking is his donning of fedora hats over the kind of leather blinders you’d normally strap to a horse’s head. The blinders nod to the willful ignorance required to sustain a violent racist regime. The hat speaks to the gullibility and complicity of the educated, professional class which is most vulnerable to propaganda, and who benefit from maintaining an oppressive status quo.

Jane’s Hideaway

My sister Jane joined me for one night and we stumbled on a charming low-key little place a block from 21c – ironically called Jane’s Hideaway. We wandered in for a drink and headed toward a long bar in the back. As it turned out, the bartender (James) did indeed make a good Old Fashioned so we got comfortable and enjoyed the rotation of performers, especially Sierra Ferrell, who was completely outstanding (look her up).

We ordered another round, along with braised pork belly (I mean, please) and THE best Brussel spouts I’ve ever had, fried, with some sort of slightly sweet glaze. For a non-vegetable fan, this is high praise. It was great fun hanging with my awesome sister and happening upon this gem of a place.

Looking south on Broadway, which is a major entertainment district renowned for dive bars and live country music. Nashville-based singer and songwriter Sierra Ferrell (as shared on the site WallpaperFlare.com).

Head Hunter

Two photographs stayed with me as I meandered through the exhibit. I kept thinking about connections to the work of Tampa Bay photographer Selina Roman, who often photographs figures without showing faces. Sometimes her subjects are in masks or costumes, or maybe they are turned away from the camera or wrapped in fabric or material.

The first connection occurred when I came upon a Nan Goldin image of a figure, back to camera, wrapped in sheer material, standing in front of a drape-drawn window. Simon Silhouetted in the Window, Suite 22, NYC was installed in an upper floor hallway, among a few other stand-alone photographs. The wall text excerpt reads: “Nan Goldin began taking snapshot-like photographs of her lovers and friends in New York City in the mid-1970’s, which evolved into a groundbreaking project called “The Ballad of Sexual Dependency…”

The second connection was a day later, when I discovered a relatively hidden image, Head Hunter, by Denise Grunstein, installed high up on the other side of the reception area. It was a head and shoulders profile of a red-haired figure with hair wrapping around so the face wasn’t visible. The background was a solid vivid blue and the only other feature in the photo was an antiquated-looking metal contraption, making light contact, appearing like it could clamp or hold a head.

The above snapshots were taken in the exhibit space but because of their particular location and glare, they were difficult to capture clearly. Denise Grunstein, left; Nan Goldin, right.

I was glad that Head Hunter was in the vicinity of Marc Fromm’s Young lady with pet, given their shared metal elements – a steel leash leading to the toothy head of a puma and the metal head holder – each attached to an isolated figure. What could be a vulnerable, or even dangerous situation for either figure, given the strong-looking hardware that could cause pain or could lead to pain (puma) – doesn’t read that way. Neither the wood figure, nor the hair-covered head conveys fear – at least not to me.

The Head Hunter wall text read: “…Set against an expansive azure sky, the profile, whose features are obscured by gleaming red tresses, suggests a fetishistic fascination with hair, which has long been associated with feminine beauty and fecundity. The saturated sky surrounding the bodiless head, held stable by a centuries-old hairdressing tool, emphasizes the cinematic and the surreal in this at once seductive and unsettling vision.”

A screen shot from the *Fragile Figures* virtual museum tour; circles mark the online audio options. In the foreground, Marc Fromm’s *Young lady with pet* on the left; on the right, Denise Gundstein’s *Head Hunter.*

Matador Lady Killer

A show-stopping piece by Anastasia Schipani, Matador Lady Killer – is a rich, multi-layered, hand-sewn tapestry, twenty-six feet wide, created over a seven-year period as Schipani was processing the murder of her beloved.

On her website, Schipani shares: “While living in Bangkok, my Thai lover was killed by a hit man. This personal tragedy created a before and after in my life and work. While recovering, back in the States, I worked in a Spanish nightclub whose walls were decorated with vintage bullfight posters. My consciousness forged a link between the brutal public spectacle of the bullfight and the cruel loss of my lover’s life…”

The piece is full of beautiful little story scenarios and connections. Many details when examined closely share some kind of tension or contradiction – lovely little fish surrounded by pointy sharks; plump birds too near a coiled snake; a smiling pin-up-style beauty under a jewel-laden tree, in proximity to a headless strong male body. The entire presentation is overwhelming in its vivid, technicolor hues toggling a tightrope between danger and bliss, good and evil, gleeful happiness and horrific tragedy.

It seemed inappropriate that the view of this expansive and stunning tapestry was visually interrupted by one of the life-sized 21c signature penguins (deep turquoise is Nashville’s assigned color). Sometimes blocked sightlines are unavoidable due to space constraints but this was not the case here, the tapestry was in the largest gallery, and the penguin could have easily served its branding role in a number of other places.

There are huddles of same-colored penguins for each 21c location and they are known to be on the move, sharing hospitality, showing up in unexpected places throughout the properties.

Site Specific

I’ve only been to two of the nine 21c Museum Hotels but in both of these locations, there was use of existing building traits in unique ways. In Durham, the building is a former bank with a large walk-in vault in the basement that was cleverly incorporated into an installation.

In Nashville, there was a one-off lower street-level window near the corner that had an interior shelf-like sill with an odd collection of random things (i.e. yellow cone, small plastic unicorn toy, orange ball). Since I passed it coming and going often, it fascinated me every time. I found it hard to photograph between the dirty outside window and the dusty inside surface, as though Boo Radley emptied his pockets and left his collected treasures undisturbed.

21c Museum Hotel Nashville’s window of curiosity.

The basement vault at the 21c Museum Hotel Durham.

I was continuously curious about this quirky little find and enjoyed making up stories about who would put together a collection like that. Wait. I know who – Tampa Bay area artist Ry McCullough! Coincidentally, McCullough has a current exhibit of objects showing in Gallery114 on the Ybor City campus of Hillsborough Community College. [Read the recent BAF article by Tony Palms]

Top: 21c Nashville’s window of curiosity; Bottom, detail from Tampa-based Ry McCullough’s *Themes for the American Kestrel* currently on display at Hillsborough Community College’s Gallery114 in Tampa.

Elevate

The hotel’s website reveals: “Elevate at 21c” presents temporary exhibitions of works by artists living and working in the communities surrounding each 21c Museum Hotel property. Those I observed were installed in the immediate elevator area per floor, and my favorite was by Nashville-based Duncan McDaniel seen below.

Duncan McDaniel, *Across the Clouds*, 2018, Various metals, acrylic and LED lighting.
Screen shot from 21cNashville.com website.

As I was watching the color tones slowly move into different shades, I thought of the recent Lights On Tampa public art installation by Erwin Redl, Circles Unity, a series of synchronized LED color-changing circles lining the darkened underpass of the Tampa Convention Center along Channelside Drive.

Erwin Redl, *Circles Unity,* 2021.
Light installation with 31 ring-shaped programable RGBW LED-fixtures and circular white reflective disks.
Commissioned for Lights on Tampa by the City of Tampa.
Partial installation view courtesy of the LightsOnTampa.org website.

I greatly appreciate the 21c Museum Hotel’s long-standing commitment to supporting artists at all levels of their careers. Through purchasing and collecting works, to exhibiting and promoting works, these effective philanthropists provide artists multiple ways to gain experience and exposure – not to mention being included in an important collection of contemporary art.

The 21c Museum Hotel concept integrates three important elements that will always get my attention – historic building preservation, high-quality contemporary art, and delicious hospitality. What an intoxicating trifecta!

About the author

Katherine Gibson, creator of ArtHouse3, is an independent curator and regional art consultant living in St. Petersburg, Florida. Gibson received a 2018 Individual Artist Award from the St. Petersburg Arts Alliance for her Drive-by Window Project and was selected for an ArtsUp Grant by Creative Pinellas as creator and curator of the 2019 summer exhibition Tongue & Groove.

Resources

Prelude

21c Museum Hotels

21c Durham “The Future is Female” is on view through December 2021.

Duke Riley at USF’s Graphicstudio

Nashville Lobby

21c Nashville | “Fragile Figures: Beings and Time” is on view through January 2022. Link to the virtual tour Fragile Figures.

Marc Fromm

Foreboding Figures

Head Hunter

Matador Lady Killer

Anastasia Schapana

Site Specific

Ry McCullough

Ry McCullough’s Themes for the American Kestrel is on view at Hillsborough Community College’s Gallery114 in Tampa, Florida, through June 24, 2021. By appointment. Tampa-based artist and writer Tony Wong Palms provides observations about his visit to the gallery for Bay Art Files

Elevate

Duncan McDaniel

Lights On Tampa

One more thing

– Give yourself over to floating, even a little bit.

“Still, what I want in my life is to be willing to be dazzled— to cast aside the weight of facts and maybe even to float a little above this difficult world. I want to believe I am looking into the white fire of a great mystery…”

– Mary Oliver, House of Light

@tampabaebae art files

@tampabaebae art files

by James Cartwright

*jenal*, 2019. Acrylic, oil, coffee grounds, enamel, on board, foamular frame, 50 x 50 inches. Image courtesy of the artist.

Jenal Dolson is a nervous flyer even under normal circumstances. Add scrambling to get out of the country during a global pandemic before international borders close and anyone’s stress levels will ascend to new heights. It is Tuesday, March 31^st, and she is leaving the United States and returning home to Canada to shelter with her family as the severity of COVID-19 slowly dawns on U.S. citizens. She sits alone in Tampa International Airport, waiting to board a flight that she never expected to be on and saying goodbye to a place she is not ready to leave behind.

To call the last few weeks of Dolson’s time in Tampa a whirlwind would be an understatement. At this point in March, she is a MFA candidate at the University of South Florida, in the thick of her final semester when the coronavirus hits America. Between transitioning her in-person classes to an online platform (no easy feat for studio art courses), finishing her thesis work, writing about said work, preparing for install, and making travel arrangements, change is the constant. Her graduating class’s MFA exhibition Battin’ A Hundred is canceled, their reception is canceled, their panel discussion moderated by artist Kalup Linzy is canceled. It feels like everything is canceled. However, the artists are undeterred, and they still exhibit their work in the USF Contemporary Art Museum. There is almost a defiant pride in displaying their art knowing that it will not be seen in person.

Dolson spends her precious final hours in Tampa packing for her flight and installing her work in the CAM, with the invaluable assistance of museum staff Vincent Kral, Eric Jonas, and Tony Wong Palms. She recalls visiting the museum for the first time on a 2014 trip to Tampa and sensing then that she would one day show work in this space, a premonition fulfilled these six years later.

*Bump Dream*, 2020. Acrylic, latex, oil on canvas, 72 x 72 inches.
From the MFA thesis exhibition. Image taken by Jezabeth Roca Gonzalez.

*Soother*, 2020. Acrylic, oil, fabric, foamular, on MDF, 50 x 50 inches.
From the MFA thesis exhibition. Image taken by Jezabeth Roca Gonzalez.

*Whale*, 2020. Acrylic, oil, foamular, on panel, 50 x 50 inches.
From the MFA thesis exhibition. Image taken by Jezabeth Roca Gonzalez.

Her arrival in Toronto is not met with a warm embrace from Dolson’s parents, who are relieved to see their daughter home safe but still respecting the social distancing rules that now measure our lives. Everyone dons their face masks and Dolson sits in her parents’ backseat on the car ride from the Toronto airport to their family home outside of Cambridge, Ontario, taking these moments to let a wave of quiet calm wash over her and finally exhale. She is deeply grateful to her parents for hosting her, knowing that in doing so they have committed to the country’s mandatory 14 day returning traveler quarantine alongside her.

Dolson uses the next few days to reacclimate to these surroundings, the familiarity of place comforting her during an unfamiliar time. She self-isolates in a section of her family’s basement, with her beloved chihuahua Bam Bam to keep her company and a mini-fridge stocked with snacks to keep her fed, courtesy of mom. That Friday she joins a Zoom reception hosted by CAM for the MFA exhibition, which has a great turnout as many people are eager to see the artists’ work and congratulate them. Dolson later passes the two-week quarantine mark on the same day that she passes her thesis defense, and her reward for this tremendous accomplishment is finally being able to hug her parents.

*Into the Belly*, 2020. Coloured pencil, watercolour pencil, gesso, on board, 8.75 x 8.75 x 0.6 inches. Image courtesy of the artist.

A welcome focus for Dolson’s energy comes in the form of creating a solo exhibition entitled Into the Belly for Tempus Projects, highlighted on the non-profit gallery’s Instagram account. The show, which ran from May 30^th-June 12^th, neatly aligns with the Tampa-based gallery’s approach to the pandemic’s unique challenges. Tempus is utilizing social media to showcase a series of mini-virtual exhibits that feature works on a small, intimate scale. As Tempus Founder and Programming Director Tracy Midulla explains, “We have taken the approach of offering small, short virtual exhibitions. This allows us to keep the quality of the work featured at a high standard, but the format and delivery of the works to a manageable level for everyone as we are distanced from one another.”

Installation view of *Into the Belly* in a section of Dolson’s converted basement space. Image courtesy of the artist.

Into the Belly consists of eight coloured pencil drawings on gessoed board, with each work’s dimensions around 5×6 or 7×8 inches. Dolson’s process is reliant on found materials, so she seamlessly adapts to her new circumstances by repurposing leftovers in her old studio in her parents’ house. Her use of coloured pencils on board allows for textures to come out of the surface itself, some areas pulling through the grain of the wood or underlaying brushwork; paired with a uniform attention to colour blocking and gradient fades. These underlaying patterns resemble countless tiny fissures, which further emphasize the material’s surface while adding layers of complexity to already rich compositions.

*The Days Eye (Edelweiss)*, 2020. Coloured pencil, watercolour pencil, gesso, on board, 8.75 x 4.8 x 0.6 inches. Image courtesy of the artist.

The small scale of each work is in keeping with the gallery’s current theme of miniature exhibitions. Dolson also expresses her interest in scaling down the works to a size that is accessible, where they can be held in your hand and you can take them with you very easily. Although these new images are much smaller than her thesis paintings, she draws several parallels between the two bodies of work. Dolson clarifies that the viewer is still looking at a series of shapes, forms, lines, directions, and pathways, which you can follow around the work finding little areas where something new can be seen.

*Bathhouse*, 2020. Coloured pencil, watercolour pencil, gesso, on board, 5.8 x 4.8 x 0.75 inches. Image courtesy of the artist.

There is plenty to see in Dolson’s drawings, so much that you might get lost in looking. The artist presents the viewer with a plethora of shapes and motifs to latch onto and alluring pathways through each labyrinth. One might glance at a piece like Bathhouse and seize upon the chain in the lower right of the composition as a good entry point. If you follow this chain directly upwards, it becomes veiled by a light blue rectangular shape that hints of cloth or drapery. If you choose a different approach and start from top to bottom, does the chain then become unveiled? Other areas may suggest something recognizable while leaving you grasping to articulate this familiarity.

Into the Belly is an apt title, as Dolson equates our current COVID-19 reality with entering the belly of the whale or belly of the beast. As levels of infection fluctuate worldwide and we find ourselves months into isolation with no clear end in sight, she muses “it is hard to say if we are on the other side yet, are we still inside of it completely, or can we see the light? There is a lot of emotion in this time that is kind of unpredictable and everyone’s pace of life has changed dramatically. It is not only a metaphor, but it is allegorical of how everyone has been forced into this journey.”

The title also attaches us to the body, to be within a living thing, which she connects to the physical referents that a lot of the shapes and forms take on in her work. The tempest of emotions and anxieties we feel manifest physically in our bodies, and the pandemic makes us hypersensitive to these sensations. We continually self-monitor for the first signs of fever, the slightest cough, and to make sure we have not lost our sense of smell or taste. As Dolson succinctly puts it, “our emotions in our bodies are really in our guts.”

*Insulation (viewfinder)*, 2020. Coloured pencil, watercolour pencil, gesso, on board, 5.8 x 4.8 x 0.6 inches. Image courtesy of the artist.

Dolson is appreciative of Tempus for giving her a platform to explore new ideas post thesis, amidst the pandemic. She explains that the timing was especially beneficial, as it “really gave me a lot of purpose during the first month and a half that I was back. I was able to come home and put in work drawing 8-10 hours a day and that was absolutely amazing. I think Tempus has a strong sense of what it means to be an art space in that they truly value their artists and look to foster a sense of creativity and programming that makes sense for who they are affiliated with.”

Proceeds from Dolson’s show will go towards helping Tempus fundraise for a paid full-time director position for the gallery. Dolson is also donating a portion of the proceeds from future sales to Black Lives Matter Tampa.

What is next for Jenal Dolson? “Making more work” is her immediate, unflinching answer. Dolson is making a new series of paintings on canvas and she looks forward to waking up each morning and having her studio time. She relishes the daily grind of making work, embodying that true artist-as-hustler mentality, where the balancing act of juggling multiple jobs and projects only energizes her to seek more.

In terms of future exhibitions, Dolson is thrilled to have a solo show this fall at an artist-run space in Benson, Nebraska called The Pet Shop, and she beams when discussing the opportunity. Her close friend Kim Darling, currently a MFA candidate at USF, ran a space at the gallery and helped Dolson make connections in Benson. Dolson also remains in good virtual company through regular studio visits with friends and a gallery in Chicago with which she is enamored. Finally, it has been only days since Dolson moved into an apartment in the port city of Hamilton, Ontario. The industrious city’s “steel town” identity matches her own tenacious work ethic. She is drawn to the city’s strong local arts scene, where she can make her marks on the community. There is also a lovely blend of nature and rich architectural history that she is wasting no time in exploring. Dolson is eager to create her place in this new environment, and everywhere she looks she absorbs new lines, new shapes, new textures, new patterns, and new objects, searching for another source of inspiration around every corner.

Dolson in her Tampa studio with Bam Bam. Image taken by Kim Darling.

Into the Belly ran from May 30-June 12 and it can still be viewed on the Tempus Projects Instagram account. For more information about Jenal Dolson, you can visit her website and Instagram account. You can also learn more about the 2020 MFA exhibition on the USF Contemporary Art Museum website.

James Cartwright earned his M.A. in Art History from USF in 2017. He focuses on cross-cultural exchanges in art production, while occasionally wandering into the realm of contemporary art criticism. He is an adjunct Art History instructor at USF and the University of Tampa, where he uses his liberal arts background to corrupt the impressionable youth of America.

FloodZone – Much is amiss in this paradoxical paradise

By Selina Román

I have a couple versions of a recurring dream. In one, a car I am driving careens off the road into some unknown body of water – sometimes clear, sometimes murky. Sitting in the driver’s seat I become a spectator as water seeps into the car and it slowly sinks away from the world above. In the other version, I’m driving down an old Florida backroad surrounded by swamp. As I turn a corner, the road disappears beneath water that has breached its banks. I recall in this dream that I felt scared but mostly hopeless. In all of my drowning/sinking dreams, I wake up never knowing if I made it or not.

That sinking feeling rushed back as I took in the large-scale photographs in the exhibition FloodZone, by Miami-based artist Anastasia Samoylova on view in the University of South Florida’s Contemporary Art Museum. The lush images, full of color and water, are akin to walking through a waking dream where the surroundings are familiar but something always feels amiss. Her photographs, just like the intrusive water she depicts, seep into the psyche and linger.

As Samoylova pointed out in a recent artist talk, nowhere in the images will the viewer see the catastrophic. Those fraught scenes are relegated to the news. In her photographs, it’s flooded streets after a typical rainstorm, swollen waterways, construction sites, and mysterious figures navigating a landscape in limbo. However, the most telling images are the ones of details – ones that most people overlook. In these, nature fights back and it just may be winning.

*Courtesy USF Contemporary Art Museum; photo by Don Fuller.*

I lived in Miami for nearly six years in the late 2000s. Cranes punctuated the skyline for projects with names like Quantum, Paramount, Epic and Infinity – names that embodied the human need to go higher, achieve more, get more. I see this quest again in Samoylova’s images of architectural renderings – computer-generated images showing happy couples sharing a romantic moment poolside or the luxe interior of a living room. But look a little longer, past the promise to the reality and see the abandoned construction site, detritus spilling over the sign like weeds. In what seems to be a nod to the developers’ slick signage, these stand-alone images occupy the gallery floor confronting viewers in their own space. It’s here in the intersection of reality and façade, of man versus nature, that Samoylova’s photographs become a poignant harbinger.

Just like the signs for the construction projects, Miami puts on a good face for tourists, especially those that don’t have to leave the beach save for going to and from the airport. I learned this when I was living in Little Haiti in 2005. I had just moved to Miami and was welcomed that year by hurricanes Dennis, Katrina and Wilma. That year, the Atlantic was the hottest on record and spawned more than a dozen named storms. While Dennis and Katrina caused damage and power outages in South Florida, Wilma delivered a staggering blow to an already storm-fatigued area. My roommate and I rode out the storm as winds howled. From my apartment window, I watched an electrical transformer explode, in awe of the green flashes of light.

Little Haiti was without power for four weeks, while just across the railroad tracks that line Dixie Highway, lights flickered back on and air conditioners were humming in a matter of days. A coworker bemoaned that she was without power for about 45 minutes – she lived in an area of the beach, near hotels, where the power lines were buried. That year of storms awakened me to the social implications of climate change.

*Installation view; photo by Selina Roman.*

As a Miami Beach resident, Samoylova sees beyond that touristy façade. Some of her most successful images are those of the details that only someone living there would notice. On the side of a concrete overpass pylon, a green plant fights its way out of a crevice while brilliant violet mold flourishes beneath it. Severe lines and geometry dominate the visual plane but the plant and mold triumphantly stand out from the stark environment. It’s repulsive and beautiful in the same breath. In one of her few black and white photographs, a small, proud plant grows near the roof of a building, its roots clinging to the surface like veins and capillaries. Air plants are common in Miami, but there’s something different about this one: the plant’s roots have been painted the same white as the building. In these moments, I find myself hopeful and terrified as nature asserts herself.

Samoylova does not shake her finger at you. She’s not passing judgment. If anything, she collectively takes our heads and turns them, telling us to look closely at these pieces of a puzzle she’s assembled. As singles, they are strong images but together, they become this dull pang in the pit of my stomach – the knowledge of what’s at stake.

In one particular photograph, fourteen eggs occupy a nest tucked between concrete and steel adjacent to an unidentifiable body of water. The carefully composed image of the nest and water is a perfect inverse of each. But this ying-yang, however perfectly arranged in the frame, belies the precarious balance of the natural world against the man-made. The eggs appear protected, but from above they are not. Will they hatch? Or maybe the larger question is will they survive once they hatch? Will we make it? It’s this false sense of security that plagues South Florida.

When looking at her work, I am struck and reminded of Robert Frank’s The Americans. In the 1950s the Swiss-born Frank traversed the country making documentary photos of post-war America. With a keen outsider’s perspective, Frank’s images revealed not a prosperous super power, but a country marred by racism, poverty and injustice. Samoylova, born and raised in Russia and living in Miami since 2016, also has that eye for detail and incongruity. Just like Frank’s, her images show us that there is more to learn if we just look a little longer and a little harder.

In an homage to Miami’s color, Samoylova designed the eye-catching presentation of the exhibition that underscores the thin line we Floridians tread. Angled swathes of bright colors on the wall – sky blue, canary yellow, magenta – serve as a backdrop for the works. The colors are painted on a diagonal and border a deep gray. Standing in the gallery, the sloped lines create a sense of uneasiness and symbolically represent the downhill direction in which we find ourselves. Yet look again and those same lines could be the uptick of hope.

From the Everglades to South Beach, humans have invaded this place, not only altering the landscape but upsetting its delicate ecological balance. Her compositions show the constant battle between man and nature. The brilliance of so many of the images is they’re composed in a way in which it’s difficult to determine who is dominating who. In an image of Miami’s famed Vizcaya mansion, water covers the intricate inlaid marble floor of its elaborate latticed gazebo with Biscayne Bay ominously visible through its arches. The horizon all but disappears under the overcast day, and the bay and the floor are one in the same. The breach is not catastrophic in the moment the photograph was made, but the potential for disaster is made clear.

Several years ago, I sat in Miami’s Legion Park which overlooks Biscayne Bay. The breeze rustled the palms, which stood majestically and stoically against the sparkling blue water. It was nothing special in particular – just Miami on a good day. I snapped a photo, but it’s what I wrote under the image later that still haunts me: “I belong here.” But now I’m not so sure any of us do.

Just the other night that recurring water dream came rushing back. This time I was visiting friends in their beachside condo. As I walked to the balcony, I could see the waves of the rising ocean swirling outside. When I looked down, however, I realized there was no beach below and that the ocean was lapping at the building not far from where I stood. That hopeless feeling also resurfaced. I woke up and my thoughts volleyed to Samoylova who offers us a slice of hope wrapped up in a wake-up call – a black and white photograph of her son, standing in ankle-deep water, surveying flooding in a parking garage. Will we let him and his generation inherit this flooded world?

This quiet, yet powerful and important show reminds us that Florida’s future is at stake as climate change and continued unchecked development wreck havoc. I am also reminded of what sadly could become Miami’s unofficial theme song, “Dear Miami” by Irish singer Róisín Murphy: “With a little style fool ‘em for a while, but you can’t turn back time,” she sings. “Dear Miami, You’re the first to go, disappearing under melting snow…”

Selina Román is a Tampa-based artist and photography professor. She received her Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of South Florida.

FloodZone is on view at the USF Contemporary Art Museum on the campus of the University of South Florida in Tampa through March 7th. The exhibit was curated by Sarah Howard, organized by USFCAM, and supported in part by an Oolite Arts grant, a grant from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and Dr. Allen Root.

Sponge Exchange, in the adjacent Lee and Victor Leavengood Gallery presents artist Hope Ginsburg’s new collaboratively-produced video and sculpture installations reflecting on historic sponge diving and contemporary coral restoration and inspired by explorations of climate crisis impact on coastal ecosystems. The exhibition, also on view through March 7th, was curated by Sarah Howard, organized by USFCAM, and supported by a National Endowment for the Arts Art Works grant, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Dr. Allen Root, and the USFCAM ACE Fund.

Related event:

Gallery Talk with Anastasia Samoylova and Ksenia Nouril, Ph.D. Thursday, February 13, 6 pm, USF Contemporary Art Museum (CAM)

Art Thursday’s gallery talk and reception with artist Anastasia Samoylova and Ksenia Nouril, Ph.D., Jensen Bryan Curator, The Print Center, will contextualize Samoylova’s work within the historical and contemporary role of photography in society. Light refreshments will be served. Free and open to the public.

An Interview with Christian Viveros-Fauné

Image courtesy of Christian Viveros-Fauné

“My engagement with art has something to do with [its] mystery, a continuous exploration of how it is put together.” Christian Viveros-Fauné

Christian Viveros-Fauné is an internationally respected independent art critic and curator. His appointment as Curator-at-Large to the University of South Florida’s Contemporary Art Museum (USFCAM) in August of 2018 launched a series of politically and socially engaged exhibitions that have further linked Tampa Bay to current trends in the global art world.

Interview conducted and transcribed by Amanda Poss in May of 2019.

Amanda Poss: I was reading your new book Social Forms: A Short History of Political Art, and in the introduction you cite a trip to the Phillips Collection in Washington D.C. when you were twelve where you saw four Rothko paintings. You said this experience was something that “energized” you, and that the paintings “lodged themselves deep into [your] memory.” With this as your catalyst into art appreciation as a child, would you also describe your initial steps into the art world as a professional?

Christian Viveros-Fauné: Those were my initial steps as recounted in the introduction, which reads in part as a portrait of the critic as a young man. At some point I figured out that there was this thing that was mysterious to me–and that actually remains mysterious to me, simply because I can’t make [art], I can’t do it. You know there are people who can’t dance and you say “they have two left feet,” well, I can’t draw, I can’t paint, I can’t do either because I have two left hands so to speak, so I write. My engagement with art has something to do with [its] mystery; it’s a continuous exploration of how art is materially put together, how pigment is pushed around cloth, for instance, to make a picture. That has always seemed to be, to me, kind of miraculous.

I had another experience in my early twenties, when I went to live in Europe. I was always a writer, or a writer wannabe…(laughs)…this was definitely during the writer wannabe period… and I figured out that hanging out with artists was a lot more interesting than hanging out with writers. Writers tend to be shut-ins, they spend a lot of time alone. Being a professional writer is a lonely experience, whereas artists have to get out into the world and show their work at least once or twice a year, so art making has always been far more public. Writers, on the other hand, could spend two years, five years, ten years, basically working on the same project…. So, like I said, I found that artists were a lot more interesting to hang out with. Eventually I entered an artist studio, an actual professional artist, someone who got paid for making paintings and exhibiting them, and I remember being floored by the idea that people could push pigment around to make meaning in ways parallel to how I wanted to make meaning with words. That was a real revelation, it has stayed with me, and is a gift that keeps on giving. I find myself continually inspired, surprised, and amazed by individuals who have made a life from making this kind of meaning consistently.

Bosco Sodi, Muro, 2017-2019. USF Contemporary Art Museum. Photo: Will Lytch. — Bosco Sodi, *Muro*, 2017-2019. USF Contemporary Art Museum. Photo: Will Lytch.

AP: That brings me nicely to my next point: you have a tremendous CV, with a wide array of experiences and accolades. As someone who has done quite a lot of independent writing and curating, what sort of opportunities/possibilities excite you most about working within USFCAM, which is an institutional but also academic setting?

CVF: That’s a really good question. I’ve long had a career as a writer who moonlights as a curator… meaning, I arrive at an institution and put together a show, but I rarely get to do a second exhibition at the same institution. And that independence comes with significant freedoms, but it also has some drawbacks, right? Not only is working independently unsteady work, but being at an institution longer than single exhibition can mean that you make a bigger impact than just one good show…

AP: One moment, as opposed to a successive series of them.

CVF: Exactly! And that’s really the sort of thing that attracted me to the idea of working at USFCAM. Margaret Miller is largely at fault-slash-deserves the credit for bringing me here. The way she proposed the position was very liberating. For me, ultimately, it was largely about being able to do something at an institution that offered significant freedoms conceptually and curatorially, but that also allows for the opportunity to be able to do a series of exhibitions, with the added bonus that the university is the enveloping organization That is, USFCAM operates in an environment geared towards education, rather than making museum trustees happy.

AP: Which is really different.

CVF: Yes, very different! So, yeah, I think it’s turned out to be a really good fit. There’s also the value of doing things on this campus and in Tampa as opposed to in New York. New York is arguably the center of the art world, it has long been the center of money in the art world. A lot of important art is seen in cities like London and New York, and that is obviously significant on its face… [but] there a lot of cultural phenomena that fail to register in New York because there’s not enough money attached to them, and that’s very unfortunate. Ideas that run contrary to the art market tend to do better elsewhere, they tend to take root in places other than New York. In my book I talk about groundbreaking artists like Rick Lowe. He has given plenty of talks in New York but he has never had a show there, he has never participated in the Whitney Biennial, which is insane, seeing as he’s one of the most influential artists living today. Same thing with Theaster Gates. Social practice in general, which is more than a decade old, has gotten very little play in New York and I think that tells you a lot.

Jorge Tacla, *Señal de abandono 34 (Homs)*, 2018.
USF Contemporary Art Museum. Photo: Will Lytch.

AP: That brings me to my next point. In an interview you did back in 2016 with Brett Wallace for Conversation Project NYC, you were asked: “What should a great show seek to accomplish?” In your response, you mentioned that art should “illustrate [critically] where art/culture is today,” and that you see this happening more in secondary and tertiary cities around the world, as opposed to New York. Do you still feel that way (it sounds like you do), and do you feel that Tampa could be one of these cities?

CVF: I hope so! Let me answer the second part of your question first: I sincerely hope so, and I know my colleagues at USFCAM hope so. We have made inroads and will continue to make inroads in that direction. I’m not sure Tampa has become a secondary or tertiary cultural hub yet, but I do see green shoots suggesting, given a number of crucial synergies, that such a thing could happen. What I like about Tampa currently is that it presents an environment in which ideas can be profiled anew and redefined, which I personally find to be very appealing.

Miki Kratsman, Displaced (2010) and Bedouin Archive (2015-2016).
USF Contemporary Art Museum. Photo by Will Lytch.

AP: Now let’s talk about something a bit broader. What does it mean to you to be a curator?

CVF: I don’t really subscribe to the idea of a curator as an author. That is, I don’t like the situation where the curator supplants the artist as an author. I like to think of the role of the curator as a chief collaborator, someone who helps articulate, who helps put discrete works together, like in a group exhibition. Or, if we’re talking about mounting a solo exhibition, [the curator] helps create the context for the work. Curatorial work is, in part, a function of getting art out of the studio. Many artists work long hours with the doors closed to the outside world. Then the work comes out for exhibitions. In a gallery situation, the dealer, the gallerist, hopefully helps the artist articulate his or her vision. In a museum, it’s the curator who helps in making the symbolic meaning circulate. In those circumstances, the curator functions like an an interlocutor–a chief believer in the work–whom the artist can also talk to and figure out the best cultural angle in which to position his or her art.

(Laughs) That was kind of a wordy and non-specific definition….

AP: That’s perfectly fine! I was curious what it meant to you (specifically), because anyone could cite sort of a textbook definition or current theories but everyone has their own approach.

CVF: Possibly because I am very much a generalist as a writer and curator, I really do think there’s an important aspect of editing and interpreting in curating. At their best, curators act like editors for artists. That’s not to say that the curator is necessarily cutting anything from an artist’s production, but, to continue with the editing metaphor, if you’re putting together a collection of ‘essays’–that is, a collection of artworks–then it’s on the editor/curator to make sure that those artworks play as well together as they possibly can. Whether the ‘editor’ is working with a single artist or a group of artists, it’s his or her obligation to establish a relationship of trust and collaboration wherein the best work comes forward and is represented in the best light possible.

Miki Kratsman, People I Met, 2010–2018 (installation view), USF Contemporary Art Museum. Photo: Will Lytch. — Miki Kratsman, *People I Met*, 2010–2018 (installation view).
USF Contemporary Art Museum. Photo: Will Lytch.

AP: Now I want to go back to something more specific: since you’ve come to Tampa, you started with curating Miki Craftsman: People I met (August – December 2018) and then The Visible Turn: Contemporary Artists Confront Political Invisibility (January – March 2019). What sort of overall trajectory or goal are you setting for yourself as Curator-at-Large at USFCAM?

CVF: Let’s see. Both of those exhibitions you just mentioned can be described, in broad strokes, as highly political, to nod definitively towards issues of social engagement. But what we have on tap for the future, well, some exhibitions are more political than others. Work with a social or political bent has always been my interest, but I don’t want to present those kind of shows exclusively. I think that would make for far too uniform an exhibition program, both for the museum and myself as a curator, so there are other things on tap, [which] I’d rather not discuss right this minute… (Laughs)

AP: No hints? (Laughs)

CVF: I don’t necessarily want to give away the the shows that are coming in 2020 or 2021, but what I can tell you is that it will involve an eclectic group of exhibitions. There are going to be several that are a lot more about eye candy [as opposed to] the two shows I’ve done to-date, and even the exhibitions that are heavy on the eye candy will have a significant social component to them. I can say [something] about the next exhibition, which is called The Return of the Real. It’s a two-person show that riffs, or cheekily appropriates, the title from Hal Foster’s The Return of the Real. We’re definitely not using the title in a way that he’d like. (Laughs)

[The exhibition includes] the work of Robert Lazzarini, he makes amazing sculptures that are distorted anamorphically, and another artist who is a generation younger, Rodrigo Valenzuela. Rodrigo is a faculty member at UCLA, [and] a photographer… he’s had about five shows in West Coast museums in the last three years, so he’s well-known out there but not so much on the East Coast. We’re interested in bringing in him [to Tampa] and in being the first institution on the East Coast to showcase his work. Both of these artists are differently committed to amazing acts of re-representation. In both cases, their artworks involve visually stunning, conceptually complex work.

Tavares Strachan, *130,000 Years*, 2018. USF Contemporary Art Museum. Photo: Will Lytch.

AP: Let’s talk more about your book, Social Forms: A Short History of Political Art. What were you looking for when selecting 50 exemplar works of political art from last 200 years?

CVF: To be honest with you, and I say this every time I present the book, the selection is pseudo-authoritative and very subjective. I write in the introduction to the book that the volume contains 50 essays on what I consider to be the 50 greatest works of political art. Those 50 artworks will invariably be different from another critic’s 50 great works. We might overlap on 10 or 20 artworks, or at least I would hope so.

What these artworks have in common is that they’re all important in the sense that they have all transformed the notion of what people think about when they think about political art. They’ve all put down a marker, they’ve all expanded the definition of both art and politics. Some of these artworks have done so closer to their date of creation, others have not. I start with [Francisco] Goya’s Disasters of War, which was published posthumously, 35 years after his death. He was way too smart to publish those prints in his lifetime because he would have been nailed to the wall by the Spanish monarchy, and if not by the monarchy, then by the Inquisition. But he still made them… and it took more than a decade to put the plates together. So, you have to ask yourself: why would an artist of his stature, late in life, labor so long to put together those 82 plates? [Goya] is basically taking it all in, he’s considering the war, the state of things, the application of reason to human events, weighing how humans respond to social and economic pressure, and ultimately, what happens to society when things fall apart. And what he witnessed is in those prints. I mean, he wasn’t sitting there taking photographs of the war… but somehow or other, through his own observations and other people’s accounts, Goya arrived at the first modern visual record of war and its human cost: what the poet Robert Burns referred to as ”man’s inhumanity to man.”

AP: Some would say even that all art is political, and you address that question in your introduction, but of course you also had to narrow it down to 50 artworks for the book. What do you wish you could have added in?

CVF: I wish I could have added in another fifty artworks. The initial idea was that the book would include a hundred works of political art. I was told by my publisher that they loved the idea of the book, but that we had to slim it down because reproduction rights are just too expensive… (Laughs) Even the reproduction rights on this little book are crazy, so a hundred wasn’t happening, but, yeah, I wish there were specific works that I could have gotten in there, some of them by contemporary artists whom I admire very much…

For example, I wanted to include a major work by the Bruce High Quality Foundation. The group ran a free University, BHQFU, for a whole decade. The collective hasn’t disappeared but it has sort of gone underground. That university was very important. It’s only been a year since it was closed, but it was amazing as a social experiment. The Bruces helped shape an entire generation of artists in what is otherwise a very jaded city. There are many others artworks–contemporary, modern, precursors to the modern–that I would have loved to include and simply could not. Richard Mosse, for example: I would have loved to have included images from his Heat Maps series, which are recent photographs that document the refugee crisis in Europe and the Middle East using a military-grade infrared camera that is so sophisticated, it is actually considered a weapon of war.

AP: So what excites or intrigues you most about art right now?

CVF: Its possibilities. The fact that [art], today and in every age, actually gets to reimagine what’s possible. I think that’s really what always amazes me [most] about art. It’s got nothing to do with the actual politics of it, whether I might agree with them or not. It has everything to do with the power of the artist to make something amazing from somebody else’s idea of garbage, to turn the seemingly useless into something that has a renewed purpose…. I mean, that basic gesture is just revolutionary, it’s super radical. I find that kind of surprise, that kind of retooling, to be something that only art can do. There’s something special about art’s lack of use value, its seeming uselessness. At its best and most ambitious that uselessness harbors the potential to create laboratory-like insight… the fact that artists can reimagine worlds is immensely powerful.

Karolina Sobecka, *A memory, an ideal, a proposition*, 2017.
USF Contemporary Art Museum. Photo: Will Lytch.

AP: One last question. Can art change the world?

CVF: I think that it can, in small and big ways… it’s not [literally] liberty leading the people, and likely never will be, but art does provide, like [the painting] Liberty Leading the People [by Eugène Delacroix], a rallying point for ideas, and we are a very image driven species. Art can change the world, it has done so in the past–I can count at least 50 instances in which it has–and will continue to do so in the future.

The Return of the Real: Robert Lazzarini and Rodrigo Valenzuela
opens at the USF Contemporary Art Museum in Tampa on August 26th and runs through December 7, 2019. The exhibition is curated by Christian Viveros-Fauné, and organized by the USF Contemporary Art Museum.

Artist’s Conversation and Exhibition Reception
Friday, September 6, 6-9 pm
Conversation in the galleries with artists Robert Lazzarini and Robert Valenzuela, and USFCAM Curator-at-lare Christian Viveros-Fauné.
The exhibit reception follows from 7-9pm.
Free and open to the public.

For additional information about a symposium, curator’s talk, spoken word and open mic events, and concerts in the gallery throughout the run of the exhibit, visit the USF Contemporary Art Museum’s website.

Amanda Poss received her MA in Art History from the University of South Florida in 2015 specializing in Modern and Contemporary Art, and a BA from the University of Saint Francis, Fort Wayne, Indiana in 2011. Poss currently holds the position of Gallery Director at Gallery221@Hillsborough Community College, Dale Mabry campus, where she also oversees a growing permanent art collection. She is the former Gallery Director at Blake High School, where she organized and curated exhibits from 2015–2017. Poss also has also held positions at the Scarfone/Hartley Gallery at the University of Tampa as a Gallery Assistant, Adjunct Professor at the University of Tampa, and Adjunct Professor at Hillsborough Community College.

USF Public Art Walking Tour

In this month of March, celebrating Women in History, Sarah Howard, USF Curator of Public Art & Social Practice, will lead a free walking tour on Wednesday, March 27th of site-specific public art on the Univerity of South Florida campus in Tampa. The one-hour tour starts at artist Nancy Holt’s Solar Rotary at noon.

USF’s public art collection includes some significiant examples of works by major female artists. It is of particular interest to see how artists have applied their practice to site-specific commissions in the university environment. It is the sense that thoughts which should be of interest; relationships with place, environment and, indeed, with each other as a community, are explored and provoked is the remit of successful public art, especially so in a place of education.

Specifically, the women represented in this tour have added significantly to important gender equity issues over time. Women in History Month seeks to highlight and celebrate, indeed educate the public of such contributions. The nexus of important matters and public art within the university campus, irrespective whether they are accurately, in fact, purely a historical matter should be of great interest to us.

Alice Aycock, *Maze*, 2000. Photography courtesy of USF Public Art.

Per the USF Facebook event page, “The tour will feature site-specific works by renowned artists such as Alice Aycock, Lynda Benglis, Nancy Holt, Stacy Levy, and Janaina Tschäpe. Participants will have the opportunity to learn about the history of the program, and the artists and collaborators who created the public artworks. Tour will begin at Nancy Holt’s Solar Rotary, adjacent to the USF Communication & Information Sciences Building (CIS), weather permitting.”

A Wall for Today

Bosco Sodi, Muro. Installation view in Washington Square Park, New York. September 2017. Photo: Diego Flores and Chris Stach. Courtesy of the USF Contemporary Art Museum, Tampa, FL.

Bosco Sodi’s MURO (WALL) A one-day public installation and performance in conjunction with USF Contemporary Art Museum’s current exhibition Visible Turn: Contemporary Artists Confront Political Invisibility. Over some 10 hours on Thursday, January 24th, from 10am onwards at the USF Contemporary Art Museum artist Bosco Sodi’s Muro will be installed and then dismantled. Literally, at 20 feet long and 6 feet tall and composed of 1080 clay brick timbers, a wall be will be constructed. The public is invited to experience the wall’s construction and participate in the wall’s deconstruction and walk away with one of the timbers in a customized tote bag along with a certificate of authenticity. This will be the third iteration of Muro after similar installations in New York’s Washington Square Park in 2017 and in London’s South Bank in 2018. Bosco Sodi’s Muro is one component of USFCAM’s Visible Turn: Contemporary Artists Confront Political Invisibility curated by Christian Viveros-Faune, who is the Museum’s Curator-at-large and the Kennedy Family Visiting Scholar at the USF School of Art and History. During his tenure at USF, Viveros-Faune has curated a series of challenging and thought-provoking exhibitions which concentrate on politically based artistic practice. In the sense that art can engage, be part of a society’s political dialogue, and bring to bear witness, this exhibition seeks to reveal the concealed and acknowledge that art has the potential to redress the imbalances of representation that are all-to-often defined by prevalent political and cultural hegemonies. Perhaps, it is in the nexus of the questions “How we see ourselves?” and then “What we don’t see?” that Viveros-Faune is elucidating issues which are important but have been marginalized and unnoticed. With respect to Bosco Sodi’s Muro, a wall will be made visible, but only ever so briefly, before it will be taken apart and distributed to this community. In this way, it speaks to what might be considered the precarious nature of visibility and also to our ownership of that “visibility” or specifically, the lack thereof. The timbers are handcrafted in the artist’s studio in Mexico by craftsmen, many of whom have had the experience of being migrant workers in the United States of America. Without a doubt, there is a poignant irony attached in using a material made by a specific constituency to build a wall which by implication can be potentially seen as a barrier to that exact same constituency. In this case, to read a wall as a barrier can be interpreted as to what we want to keep out and make invisible: what we want to exclude. Importantly, a wall determined by such factors directly reflects back upon ourselves. It refers to our insecurities as to what we may fear and out of such emotions the hubris of a wall is made explicit. Superiority, control, authority, and making invisible the visible are all provocatively questioned by Sodi’s Muro. That there is also a present controversy about what is largely considered a futile wall only adds further power to this. As an installation, questions are raised through the process of building a wall as to how we might isolate, insulate and conceal. The response to dismantle and so diminish such exclusionary tendencies presents the possibilities of a politically-based art practice. Engagement and participation are critical factors in an open and free society and Viveros-Faune has cogently and powerfully asserted through this exhibition and installation that art has a significant role to play in understanding ourselves as political beings: that art, in such instances, does have a peculiar and particular power to convey. Art Thursday, January 24, 2019 Bosco Sodi, Muro Public installation and performance. USF Contemporary Art Museum, Tampa, FL 10am-3pm: Viewing of Muro installation 3-8pm: Dismantling of Muro by the public 6-8pm: Public Reception; remarks by Bosco Sodi at 6:30pm All events are free and open to the public. The Stanton Storer Embrace the Arts Foundation is the major supporter of The Visible Turn: Contemporary Artists Confront Political Invisibility. Bosco Sodi, Muro is sponsored by The Gobioff Foundation and USF World. For additional information visit about this event or the exhibtion visit: www.usfcam.usf.edu Photography credit: Bosco Sodi, Muro. Installation view in Washington Square Park, New York. September 2017. Photo: Diego Flores and Chris Stach. Courtesy of USF Contemporary Art Museum, Tampa, FL.

Faces in the Crowd

By Sabrina Hughes

Miki Kratsman’s exhibition People I Met at the University of South Florida’s Contemporary Art Museum (USFCAM) is a challenging exhibition, but maybe not for the reasons you would think. Though it deals with the emotionally and politically charged subject matter of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the subject matter itself is blunt and direct, a presentation of visual facts. Miki Kratsman: People I Met doesn’t ask viewers to do much more than to look, and continue to look, even if it makes us uncomfortable.

Kratsman is an Argentinian-born Israeli photographer who began his career as a photojournalist before he began to exhibit in an artistic context. The photographs in the exhibition borrow the aesthetics and content of journalism but subtly transcend the strict ethics of non-interference that is the photojournalist’s code. One senses the presence of Kratsman’s own compassion to create work inviting viewers to take a prolonged look at faces and places that may be otherwise easily passed over with a glance.

Installation view of *Miki Kratsman: People I Met* at the University of South Florida’s Contemporary Art Museum. Photograph: Sabrina Hughes

The dominant work in the USFCAM galleries is the project that gives the exhibition its name. The installation People I Met in the Lee and Victor Leavengood Gallery is an ongoing (2010-2018) collaboration between Kratsman and the Palestinian individuals who have borne witness to and participated in the decades-long conflict. Two-thousand grainy portraits fill three gallery walls, a scale that is challenging to describe and overwhelming to experience. Some people are looking straight at the camera and some gaze elsewhere. Kratsman’s source images are his own photographs from his career as a photojournalist, from 1993 to 2012. He delves into his archives to look behind the central subject matter and to create new images that isolate the faces of the countless bystanders.

Installation view of the exhibition *Miki Kratsman: People I Met* at the University of South Florida’s Contemporary Art Museum. Photograph: Sabrina Hughes

Detail of the installation of the exhibition *Miki Kratsman: People I Met* at the University of South Florida’s Contemporary Art Museum. Photograph: Sabrina Hughes

The photos, and especially some of the expressions on the people’s faces, make me wonder what was happening in the foreground of the photos these were excerpted from. What are they witnessing–what is making them smile or shout? And to speak more broadly to their original context, what or who are we overlooking in the background of the billions of images that have already been made? Whose daily routines brought them into the path of some newsworthy event, and therefore into the frame of the photojournalist present to document it? What photos are you in, unknowingly? Who were you then and are you different now? Most importantly, who is interested in what happened to you after the shutter clicked?

The photos are not only intended to be seen on gallery walls, in fact, they were first disseminated digitally. Kratsman posts the excerpted portraits to a Facebook Page dedicated to the project. More than twenty-thousand followers of the page see the images and comment on the photos of people they know, people they knew, or sometimes photos they recognize as themselves. Kratsman is literally picking faces from the crowds dispersed years ago and crowdsourcing the reply to the question “Do you know who this person is and what is his condition right now?” In the exhibition, some of these responses from the Page’s followers have been engraved on brass plaques. “My teacher, he was in prison but now he is out.” “He was the best man in Jordan Valley. Now he is dead.”

The plaques are in conversation with the photographs but exist at a physical and interpretive remove from the anonymous portraits. We don’t know to whom the plaques refer. If any of the 2,000 individuals pictured in this iteration of People I Met have been identified, are dead or alive, or of unknown status, we viewers do not know. We are invited to consider the text and the image separately and perhaps to imagine more about the relationship between the sea of faces and the comparatively few who have been recognized and whose status is known.

Kratsman’s People I Met runs counter to the emotional distance photojournalists must cultivate in order to do their job. Photojournalists often face criticism for taking a picture of a heinous scene rather than trying to help the people they photograph. Kratsman’s project of attempting to follow the thread of each individual’s life forward from when their paths crossed, always asking if they are in good health when a Facebook follower recognizes a friend or family member is a heartening gesture.

If the installation People I Met magnifies the sense of scale by isolating so many individual faces each affected by the conflict, the video 70 Meters… White T-Shirt (2017) does the opposite and compresses the impact. The video is a montage of every weapon discharge in the small village of Nabi Salih over the course of one year. After the sound of every gunshot, a rapid cut to the sound of another gunshot. We don’t always see where the shot is coming from and thankfully we never see anyone hit by a bullet. Watching the video, it all seems too brief. The shots come quickly and without reprieve (literally rapid-fire) but the acceleration of all of these incidents into the span of fewer than nine minutes seems to reduce the impact that these violent engagements have on the residents of the town. A shot that may change a life irrevocably is decontextualized and shortened to the length of time that the sound reverberates on the video.

Displaced (2010) and Bedouin Archive (2015-2016), the other two projects in the exhibition document Bedouin life in the Negev desert and towns that are targeted for demolition. In Bedouin Archive, photographs of individuals and buildings in various states of demolition are identified only with the latitude, longitude, altitude, image direction, and time stamp. A document in the truest sense to record where Kratsman was and when, and what was in front of his camera at that moment. If the villages are demolished and people scattered, these photographs serve as a map of sorts to locate the inhabitants in a time and place that may be lost.

One of photography’s unique qualities in relation to other art media is its indexicality. Most photography operates on the principle that what the viewer sees on the print was at one time in front of the camera. Indexicality is photography’s mirror-like characteristic that most of us now take for granted; that which makes it possible to see photography as a presentation of facts, of truth. The person we see in the photo stood in front of the camera if only for a fraction of a second. These people were here. Some still are. I know that person, she is well. This building stood here at this time. This is what the village looked like. These are the sounds residents experienced regularly.

Once an artwork is released from the protected insularity of the artist’s studio into the world, the artist can no longer control its interpretation. Every individual who looks at a work brings her own subjective viewpoint and beliefs to bear. Remarkable in Kratsman’s work is his retention of a documentary viewpoint while treating such highly emotional and potentially polarizing subject matter. One does not engage in light discourse about Israeli-Palestinian relations. By its very nature, this body of work, in particular, has the potential to be highly polarizing. Yet, when in the gallery space, the exhibition seems instead to function as a document of life in this historical moment.

Kratsman’s photographs and videos open a space for questioning the monolithic perception of both Israeli and Palestinian identities and instead to think about the subjectivity of each person, photographer and photographed, as a sum of their experiences extending forward and backward in time from the split second recorded in the photograph.

Bay Art Files contributor Sabrina Hughes holds an M.A. in Art History from the University of South Florida, with a focus on the History of Photography. Hughes has worked at the National Gallery of Art and the Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg and is an adjunct instructor at USF and is the founder and principal of photoxo, a personal archiving service specializing in helping people preserve their family photos. She also has an ongoing curatorial project, Picurious, which invests abandoned slides with new life. Follow her on Instagram @sabrinahughes for selfies, hiking, and dogs, and @thepicurious for vintage photos.

Miki Kratsman: People I Met is the first solo exhibition of this award-winning Israeli conceptual photographer to be presented in the United States and is on view at USFCAM through Saturday, December 8. It is the first exhibition organized by USFCAM’s newly appointed Curator-at-Large Christian Viveros-Fauné. A highly regarded international art critic and curator, Viveros-Fauné has also been named the 2018-2019 Kennedy Family Visiting Scholar at the USF School of Art and Art History.

RELATED EVENT: Film on the Lawn

Friday, November 16, 2018
6 PM
Free and open to the public.

USFCAM presents the award-winning documentary 5 Broken Cameras as part of their outdoor Film on the Lawn series. A first-hand account of non-violent resistance in the West Bank village of Bil’in, documented over a span of many years by Palestinian farmer Emad Burnat and then edited and co-directed by Israeli Guy Davidi, the documentary has been hailed as an important work of both cinematic and political activism. For more information about this free event, visit the Museum’s Facebook Event Page.

Related event:

Faces in the Crowd

By Sabrina Hughes

RELATED EVENT: Film on the Lawn

Friday, November 16, 2018 6 PM Free and open to the public.

Friday, November 16, 2018
6 PM
Free and open to the public.