{"id":1485,"date":"2020-12-16T22:03:35","date_gmt":"2020-12-16T22:03:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/farefwd.com\/?p=1485"},"modified":"2020-12-27T01:59:11","modified_gmt":"2020-12-27T01:59:11","slug":"lacma","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/2020\/12\/16\/lacma\/","title":{"rendered":"LACMA"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Home - So Different, So Appealing: Art from the Americas since 1957 <\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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The organization and subject matter of LACMA’s exhibition on home points to the true heart of hospitality and of what it means not to have a place in the world.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Review by Meaghan K. Ritchey<\/em><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Though I live in New York, my hometown on the Texas-Mexico border is never far from my heart. El Paso tugs on heartstrings and makes it\u2019s way into my conversations and tastes. Traces of burnt color, images of family, distinctively hispanic sculptural techniques, and the history of hispanic and indigenous religiosity make me nostalgic. So it was with enthusiasm that I went to see LACMA\u2019s summer exhibition Home\u2014So Different, So Appealing: Art from the Americas since 1957, <\/em>funded by Pacific Standard Times\u2019 \u2018\u201cLA\/LA: A Celebration Beyond Borders.\u201d At home both in the art world and in the culture being celebrated in the exhibit, I thought I was in for an easy treat.<\/p>

\u00a0<\/p>

The exhibit\u2019s unusual framework was my first hint that the experience would not be what I\u2019d imagined. Very often survey shows like this are organized by chronology or geography, but works in this exhibition were organized conceptually. The curators used a \u201cconstellation model,\u201d grouping works by artists from different nationalities, generations, and levels of success together. Curator Mari Carmen Ram\u00edrez, whose earlier exhibitions developed this model, explains, \u201cThe constellations are arranged according to conceptual or formal affinities as well as tensions that illuminate unsuspected relations between the artists and their production.\u201d<\/p>

\u00a0<\/p>

In his forward, Chon Noreiga, co-curator, explained: \u201cThe constellations are just a starting point\u2026These artists break down the notion of home as somehow a boundary between inside and outside, public and private, self and other, citizen and foreigner.\u201d This exhibit was not about geography as much as about displacement and migration amid a changing political and socio-economic landscape. It was about \u201cotherness\u201d and \u201cabsence.\u201d Rather than finding myself at home in a place I knew, I was going to have to wrestle with how one might be \u201cat home with oneself\u201d when there was no place to come home to.<\/p>

\u00a0<\/p>

The exhibition\u2019s title is pulled from a text-based work (the first piece on display) by Miguel Angel Rojas, a response to British artist Richard Hamilton\u2019s iconic pop art collage Just what is it that makes today\u2019s homes so different, so appealing?<\/em>, a mid-century depiction of American excess and post-war consumerism.\u00a0 The images in the collage were sourced from a stash of American magazines, and the work\u2019s title a caption to an illustration in the cast-off trimmings. Though clearly an \u2018interior\u2019, the image is more of an allegory than a representation of a room. Expanding on Hamilton\u2019s statement about the United States, Rojas used coca leaves \u2014cocaine\u2014 to link American consumerism with the trafficking of drugs between the US and Colombia, his home country.<\/p>

\u00a0<\/p>

That consumerism to which Hamilton referred has in many cases blunted the edge of the art world even when it desires to comment on American excesses. Peter Schjeldahl, art critic from The New Yorker, <\/em>describes this as \u201can irony endemic to museum presentations of politically refractory art: whatever discontent the artists express is cushioned by their inclusion in\u2014say it\u2014\u00e9lite institutional culture.\u201d Paradoxically, statements on poverty and \u201coutsiders\u201d are all too often redirected by their funding and presentation by the wealthy and at-home who can\u2019t help but twist the stories they wish to tell.<\/p>

\u00a0<\/p>

This exhibit should have been no different. But the sincerity of these works and their resonance both with their audience and those related to the subject was uncanny. I\u2019ve only been to LACMA one other time, so I don\u2019t know what their audiences are normally like, but Home<\/em> had drawn a very intrigued and diverse public. Though the works were by world class artists, there was an absence of the usual gallery-going pretense I\u2019ve come to expect in NY.\u00a0 I can\u2019t know, but as a robust and multi-site education initiative, my hunch is that Pacific Standard Times\u2019 \u201cCelebration Beyond Borders\u201d was just that\u2014for all.<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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As a child, familiarity had disguised the disparity between the housing in the states and the housing a few miles south. The arbitrariness of human dividing lines was a little more clear to me now as I viewed Cruzvillegas\u2019 house.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Constellations included \u201cModel Homes,\u201d focusing on the fabrication of the American Dream as seen in the single-family home. \u201cArchaeology of the Home\u201d explored domestic objects in public\/private life, \u201c<\/strong>Mapping Home\u201d traced geography and movement, and \u201cGoing Home,\u201d displayed works capturing northern journeys of migration and diaspora.<\/p>

Walking into Room 1, I entered a constellation called \u201cRecycled Home,\u201d a collection of works blurring the boundary between debris and domesticity, especially in low-income urban centers. In one work,\u00a0 Carmen Argote had turned the rug from her childhood home into a massive wall sculpture (“720 Sq. Ft. Household Mutations – Part B” ). As a hanging sculpture, the cutout was gigantic, but when considered as the blueprint of a house in the Argentine countryside\u2014every stain and mark a family story\u2014it seemed quite small.<\/p>

Abraham Cruzvillegas\u2019 work \u201cAutoconstruccion\u201d is a sprawling site-specific makeshift house that could have been found in Colonia Ajusco, the shantytown he grew up in south of Mexico City. Deemed uninhabitable and hazardous by urban planners, it reminded me of my childhood view of Juarez, Mexico\u2019s colonias seen from the door of my American ranch style house.\u00a0 As a child, familiarity had disguised the disparity between the housing in the states and the housing a few miles south. The arbitrariness of human dividing lines was a little more clear to me now as I viewed Cruzvillegas\u2019 house.<\/p>

The house\u2019s proximity to Julio Cesar Morales\u2019 video \u201cBoy in Suitcase,\u201d <\/em>part of the \u201cGoing Home\u201d constellation, \u00a0<\/em>intensified its effect. Though Morales is Latino, \u2018Boy in Suitcase rehearses the real-life story of an eight-year-old boy who was smuggled inside a suitcase from the Ivory Coast through Morocco and Spain.\u00a0 According to Morales, the work \u201cattempts to create visuals from the boy\u2019s perspective of what he might have seen through a small zipper and tiny holes in the suitcase that features some kind of spiral hallucinations and a bewildering type of colors and sounds.\u201d After two minutes of seeing what the boy may have seen, viewers see the actual x-ray image taken by Spanish custom officials when the boy was discovered.<\/p>

Round the corner from Morales\u2019 piece was a constellation I\u2019d thought would provide me with another opportunity to reminisce. Earlier this summer I had the privilege (made more apparent to me over the course of this show) of seeing the fully restored Ghent Altarpiece at St. Bavo’s Cathedral, so I was transfixed by \u201cPol\u00edptico de Buenos Aires\u201d (2014\/2016), a sort of full-scale replica of the altarpiece depicting wealth disparities amongst dwellers of the Argentinian capital city. Panel by panel, I saw a meticulously painted scene of Buenos Aires\u2019 wealthy downtown pushed right up against a local shanty town called Villa 31.<\/p>

\u201cBadge of Honor\u201d left the strongest impression on me. I tend to shrug off too literal depictions, but that\u2019s just what was needed to dignify and ground what could\u2019ve been simple spectacle. Here, Puerto Rico-born Philadelphian Pep\u00f3n Osorio, split a 12ft x 8ft room in half: on one side is a typical Latino boy\u2019s room, packed with posters, sports equipment, and a dazzling lava lamp (you have to see it to believe how right it was). The painstaking and meticulous rendering of the space drew me in, prompting me to notice CD collections and magazines. But it was the stark contrast of the other side of the room — an empty prison cell, with only a cot, latrine, and bedside table — that shifted my perspective.\u00a0 In video projections on opposite sides of the room, the boy whose room I see talks with his father, who has been jailed for an unspecified crime with a release date unknown.<\/p>

Perhaps the most widely-recognized artist in the show, Cuban-born Felix Gonzalez-Torres\u2019 \u201cUntitled (North),\u201d closed the exhibition with one of his minimalist light bulb installations. I\u2019ve tended to see his work with some political urgency, however, situated as a part of this \u201cconstellation,\u201d the fifteen strands of bulbs took on new meaning, and the title made sense. \u201cNorth\u201d were the lights of American border cities in view on a long journey to an unknown destination.<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Whether its audience is moved to love or not, in Home<\/em> the sincerity was palpable in a way unusual in the contemporary art world.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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In her catalogue for Rhetorical Image<\/em>, a group show at the New Musuem of Contemporary Art, curator Milena Kalinovska recalls what Gonzalez-Torres remarks about one of his portraits memorializing an AIDS victim: \u201cI suppose I would be satisfied if [the audience] took action sometimes, or if it caused them to be critical, moved, inspired. Or to celebrate difference and the idea of change and renewal, the chance for love.\u201d<\/p>

Whether its audience is moved to love or not, in Home<\/em> the sincerity was palpable in a way unusual in the contemporary art world. In an ecosystem where consumerism is currency, and duplicity is a commodity, intimacy and sincerity are difficult to maintain. But because of the organizing curatorial principles behind this exhibition\u2014home as the crux, not just the artist\u2019s country of origin, kitsch reads true, plastic somehow seems organic, bling has a good tarnish, and the stationary rages with the movement of an exodus.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>

When reviewing Home<\/em>, Schjeldahl (cited above) mentioned an earlier event he\u2019d covered, the 1993 Whitney Biennial, arguably the most important contemporary art event in the United States, and remarked that he had initially panned the show for its politicization of aesthetics, a newish but growing trend at the time. A decade and a half later, his views had changed: \u201cNow I see that it had to happen, for urgent social reasons, and that it energized a then pepless art world.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>

Politically charged yet not blatantly activist, I was gently reminded that nostalgia is the basest response one can cultivate when encountering new works of art. Though nostalgia is pleasurable and has a certain utility, to visit the exhibition expecting and desiring nothing else is a privilege given to those of us who are already at home, <\/em>secure enough in our experiences to long to experience them once again.<\/p>

Fortunately, Home<\/em>\u2019s curator assembled an exhibit that could subvert even the most sentimental viewer\u2019s backward glance. Those looking for a cozy feeling of home encountered a kind of political statement, but not one pasted on or contrived. The statements made were inseparable from the art, forcing viewers who have never been homeless and most likely never will be, to become temporarily conceptual wanderers.<\/p>

Writing about the Jews in Europe after the war, Jacques Derrida asked which was more essential to authentic hospitality: the possession of a home in which to host or the experience of dislocation that would inspire the hospitality? As he suggests, \u201cperhaps only the one who endures the experience of being deprived of a home can offer hospitality.\u201d<\/p>

In an unexpected turn of events, Home\u2019s <\/em>next home is in Houston, where it will be mounted from November 2017 – January 21, 2018. This was the plan long before the havoc that Hurricane Harvey wreaked on the area leaving thousands displaced and without shelter. As Houstonians resettle, finding new homes or returning to homes made strange, perhaps they will find themselves especially drawn to an exhibit that reminds viewers that, the experience of home is an experience of transience, impermanence, displacement, and otherness when one\u2019s house is a new home.<\/p>

Will that message result in increased empathy and hospitality? Whether or not it does, I know my own ideological dislocation was a good thing. Home <\/em>met me where I was and made that world strange, welcoming me into the artists\u2019 world. As their guest, I didn\u2019t get what I wanted; I got so much more than I deserved.<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Originally from El Paso, Texas,<\/em>\u00a0Meaghan Ritchey<\/strong> has been in NYC since 2005. This autumn she started as\u00a0<\/em>Commonweal Magazine‘s Director of Community and Events. Concurrently she adjuncts for Baylor in New York, the University’s Film and Digital Media Studies Program in the city and operates MaKeR Projects to serve organizations like CIVA, Sea Dog Theater, and Mockingbird. Previously she was Director of Global Community at International Arts Movement and publisher of\u00a0<\/em>The Curator, an online arts magazine.<\/em><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The organization and subject matter of LACMA’s exhibition on home points to the true heart of hospitality and of what it means not to have a place in the 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