Héctor Zamora's Lattice Detour, The Met rooftop

"The wall is a monument to openness over enclosure, lightness over heaviness, transience over permanence — it’s also fraught with political meanings." - Héctor Zamora

Oh the timeliness. Oh the metaphor. Oh the poetry. Oh the delight. Lattice Detour truly has it all. This wall, in fact, may well be the ultimate installation for a social space in 2020 America.

A wall in America - the defining symbol of our (extremely messed up) times. A wall on the Met terrace, one of the most celebrated cultural institutions in the world. A 30-metre long curved wall designed and built by a Mexican artist with humble terracotta bricks made by Mexican labourers with Mexican earth using traditional Mexican processes. With its grid and perforations, this humble Mexican wall redefines the unique experience that is looking out at the breathtaking Manhattan skyline. A Mexican wall towering over Manhattan, not so subtly pointing the finger at the ills of the Western world, but also inviting us to reconsider the way we interact with each other and the environment around us.

New Yorkers, you lucky people, you have until December 7th to go peek through those bricks and tag me.

P.S. Do you think they can see it from 721–725 Fifth Avenue? Has he tweeted about it yet?

#hectorzamora #latticedetour #cantorroof #sitespecific #installation #conceptualart #themet #metropolitanmuseumofart #newyorkcity #IloveNY #vote #art #artblog #artblogger #beyondthecanvasblog

Photos © Scott Lynch, Gothamist

Martha Rosler's iconic photomontages

" I want to open a space in people’s minds where they see that they can be active, intellectually and personally, rather than passive recipients of received ideas and prevailing worldviews." - Martha Rosler

Martha Rosler (b. 1943) is perhaps best known for her seminal 1975 video performance Semiotics of the Kitchen, in which she flicks the finger at the patriarchal system by playing the role of a raging apron-clad housewife who menacingly wields kitchen implements while going through the alphabet. Even after all this time, it makes for rather unsettling viewing.

In the series of photomontages House Beautiful: Bringing the War Home (1967-1972), Rosler articulated her outrage over the Vietnam war by juxtaposing magazine photographs of ideal homes to shocking imagery from the conflict. It's the glossy comforts of the American Dream versus the devastation of war, a distressing contrast between the safety of the domestic sphere and the reality of the outside world. These images were originally made into flyers that she distributed at anti-war demonstrations and also published on underground journals. She returned to the same medium and subject matter in 2004 at the time of the Iraq war.

Rosler's protest brought the war inside the domestic walls in the same way it was done to her when she had to sit through dinner watching footage from Vietnam. The result is a disorientating and quasi voyeuristic experience where the viewer is having to negotiate the contrast between the plush interiors and the violence of the war imagery.

#martharosler #feministart #activism #photomontage #collage #femaleartist #artblog #artblogger #beyondthecanvasblog

Cleaning the drapes

Make up / Hands Up

Patio View

First Lady (Pat Nixon)

Beauty Rest

Tron (Amputee)

All images © Martha Rosler

Lorna Simpson's fantastical hairscapes

"Black women’s heads of hair are galaxies unto themselves, solar systems, moonscapes, volcanic interiors. The hair she paints has a mind of its own. It is sinuous and cloudy and fully alive. It is forest and ocean, its own emotional weather. We are compelled, always, by the phantasmagorical hair, which both invites and obscures. In these pictures, black women’s phantasmagorical hair is like smoke, but nothing is turning to ash. It is a non-consuming smoke, the mesmerizing beauty of smoke as it curls and wafts and draws a viewer inexorably near." - Elizabeth Alexander

My job is done here, I've kind of shot myself in the foot as I cannot think of anything I could say that would add to this brilliantly evocative description of Simpson's sumptuous collages. But I did want to write something that was my own because I find her work spellbinding, so powerful and unique - I simply cannot stop looking at it.

In her collages, Simpson uses 60s and 70s images from Ebony and Jet magazine to explore issues of representation and reimagine ideals of glamour and femininity. These women are so beautiful, so flawless, exquisite and desirable icons of beauty. Once Simpson is done 'embellishing' them, they have flames, tree branches, semi-precious stones, swirls and blotches of vibrant colours on their heads. What is going on here? They have morphed into fierce, all-knowing, all-seeing, omnipotent Sphinx-like creatures.

I am also seeing a humorous element to the artist's work. While this is no doubt an ode to the female universe, I also sense an irreverent, Dadaesque attempt at knocking these models off their pedestal as a way to highlight the obsolescence of this type of imagery.

#lornasimpson #collage #femaleartist #blackartist #contemporaryart #artblog #artblogger #beyondthecanvasblog

Riunite & Ice #23, 2018

Flames, 2019

Triple Burned, 2014

Afraid of blood, 2013

Befitting, 2013

Earth & Sky #16, 2016

Earth & Sky #19, 2016

Riunite & Ice #25, 2018

Artist photo by James Wang.

Courtesy Lorna Simpson and Hauser & Wirth

All photos © Lorna Simpson.