Which of the Following Works of Art Deals With the Role of Women as Seen by Others? Art 101
This week's Art 101 looks at anti-colonial art, from a gun shooting cherry blossoms to masks made from Air Jordans.
Hi guys! I'yard Professor Lise (not really a professor) and this is Fine art 101 (not really a form). Nosotros're here to go on a deep dive of an thought, an artwork, or a story from the art world that's controversial, inexplicable or just plain weird. Today on Fine art 101, we're going to talk about what happens when artists use the tools of colonialism to push back against their colonizers. In the image higher up is a lady wearing a batik dress and shooting crimson blossoms out of a gun. It'due south by a British artist named Yinka Shonibare CBE (that means Commander of the Nearly Fantabulous Order of the British Empire). What do the dress and the gun mean? Both are souvenirs of colonialism. Yinka Shonibare was born in London and raised in Nigeria, and he moved dorsum to England where he went to fine art school. In a lot of his works, you'll run across people dressed in these batik fabrics. These are patterns that people have oftentimes considered as more often than not "African." Why'd we think that? Because the history of colonialism is insidious and has often given united states of america some bad intel. But Shonibare'southward pointing at the bodily history of the fabric, which is non actually African at all. It was inspired past designs in Dutch Indonesia, produced in England and so sold back to Westward African colonized lands. By the 1960s, it had become not but known as an "African" looking fabric, it was actually considered a symbol of African independence and civilization — by Africans! By inserting it into his sculptures, Shonibare uses his art to wake u.s.a. up to some of the things we don't know about colonialism and to challenge some of the things nosotros think we practice. Canada has its own long history of colonialism. Kent Monkman, a Cree Canadian painter, has taken on this history using a language we might be familiar with: massive paintings that usually feature political, biblical or historical events. You know the kind — they might depict the French Revolution, or a raft lost at ocean. Monkman turns this genre on its head in the most agonizing means, like in "The Scoop," his painting from 2018. The colours and the arrangement of figures mimic the huge paintings we're used to seeing. But what's actually happening on the canvas is something much more than terrible: the kidnapping of Indigenous children from their parents and their homes to be taken to residential school where they were cut off from their language, culture and families. Past making this work, Kent Monkman uses a form of painting that's usually state-sanctioned and that normally celebrates colonial triumph to betrayal the evil reality of colonialism. Brian Jungen is another artist who's used unusual methods to point to the history of colonialism, commodification and civilization. His sculptures look like intricate masks from the northwest declension of Canada. They have faces, eyes, even real pilus — just closer up, you find out they are made out of Nike Air Jordans. Jungen says his art fights against "the trap of racial dove-holing" while it makes references to racism, cultural stereotypes and even the sweatshops in which mass marketplace products often get fabricated. 1 of the best services art can do is take a elementary idea and make it nuanced, or make a complicated idea something we can get our minds around — or our feelings. And then there's "Primitivism." Recall Picasso? His "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon" from 1907 was based on a series of Iberian masks he saw at a museum. Picasso's love of them was part of a pretty insidious manner of seeing fine art of other cultures — African, Asian, Near Eastern — equally "archaic," made by people who were less connected to technology and more connected to nature, sexuality, even violence. This way that many white Europeans saw the cultures they were busy colonizing made its way into all kinds of art earlier and after Picasso. And because part of the way nosotros learn about civilization is from art, ideas of primitivism or almost myths about other cultures sort of sneakily made their way into the minds of generations of art viewers. Art is a trickstery little game that way. Jungen, Shonibare, Monkman — these artists all make works that question narratives of colonialism, racism and misunderstanding or appropriation of other cultures in a way a textbook simply can't. And past doing then, they give u.s. a run a risk to change how we take in and how nosotros question history. See you next fourth dimension for more Art 101!
Source: https://www.cbc.ca/arts/3-artists-pushing-back-against-colonialism-by-using-the-tools-of-their-colonizers-1.5747178
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