How can art effect political change?

Ink: Notes on the Contemporary Print

Ink | Political Art for a Contentious Time

Ink: Notes on the Contemporary Print

Ink | Political Art for a Contentious Time

Following a trend that began with the Enlightenment, prints play a role in today’s political discourse by disseminating artists’ views and rallying the public.

The MCA’s “This Will Have Been” and the Subjectivity of History

The MCA’s “This Will Have Been” and the Subjectivity of History

Westin reviews a new exhibition surveying the art of the 1980s that includes the work of numerous artists featured in “Art in the Twenty-First Century.”

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Occupy This

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Occupy This

Yinka Shonibare MBE says in his season 5 segment that he would like to have the “trappings of wealth” himself, even though he may be criticizing it. And being made …

5 Questions for Contemporary Practice

5 Questions for Contemporary Practice With Gregory Sholette

5 Questions for Contemporary Practice

5 Questions for Contemporary Practice With Gregory Sholette

Artist, scholar, organizer, and professor, Gregory Sholette embodies multiple ways that artists can interrogate history, politics, and public discourse. Through his initial work with the group REPOhistory (1989-2000) (as in, “repossessing …

Community Arts Training Institute: A Conversation with Roseann Weiss

Community Arts Training Institute: A Conversation with Roseann Weiss

During my time as a guest blogger for Art21, I’ve examined various initiatives that have transformed the cultural landscape of St. Louis. Despite the city’s dwindling population, the arts are …

Creative Rebuild: Theaster Gates in Hyde Park, St. Louis

Creative Rebuild: Theaster Gates in Hyde Park, St. Louis

Artist Theaster Gates likes systems. And what he likes more than a system itself is knowing how to leverage it. Though formally trained in handling clay, Gates also uses the …

Of Monuments and Memorials: St. Louis Modernism and Juan William Chávez’s Pruitt-Igoe Bee Sanctuary

Of Monuments and Memorials: St. Louis Modernism and Juan William Chávez’s Pruitt-Igoe Bee Sanctuary

Notable attention has turned to what many consider the golden age of modern St. Louis—the 1950s—when the city reached its highest population and garnered international attention for its architectural contributions. …

Turkish and Other Delights

Turkish and Other Delights | Cengiz Tekin

Turkish and Other Delights

Turkish and Other Delights | Cengiz Tekin

If Şener Özmen (the subject of last month’s Turkish and Other Delights post) is the godfather of Diyarbakır’s contemporary art community, then his long-time collaborateur, artist Cengiz Tekin, is its …

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Teaching About Poverty and Homelessness

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Teaching About Poverty and Homelessness

This past Saturday, New York Times columnist Charles M. Blow wrote an op-ed piece called Them That’s Not Shall Lose which highlighted, as James Baldwin put it, how expensive it …

5 Questions for Contemporary Practice

5 Questions for Contemporary Practice with Carlos Motta

5 Questions for Contemporary Practice

5 Questions for Contemporary Practice with Carlos Motta

While Carlos Motta’s work exists through a number of different media, I think of it primarily as putting forth a series of socially and politically committed archives. These archives are …

Turkish and Other Delights

Turkish and Other Delights | Şener Özmen

Turkish and Other Delights

Turkish and Other Delights | Şener Özmen

While preparing to travel to Diyarbakır, the largest city in southeastern Turkey, I discovered that telling Turkish people who live outside of that region that you’re going to visit Diyarbakır …

Inside the Artist's Studio

Inside the Artist’s Studio | Gregory Sholette

Inside the Artist's Studio

Inside the Artist’s Studio | Gregory Sholette

Gregory Sholette is a New York-based artist, writer, and founding member of Political Art Documentation/Distribution (PAD/D: 1980-1988), and REPOhistory (1989-2000). A graduate of The Cooper Union (BFA 1979), The University …

5 Questions for Contemporary Practice

5 Questions (for Contemporary Practice) with Not An Alternative

5 Questions for Contemporary Practice

5 Questions (for Contemporary Practice) with Not An Alternative

I encountered the art group Not An Alternative for the first time about a month ago in Corona, Queens, where Tania Bruguera (featured last month in 5 Questions) had assembled …

Center Field: Art in the Middle with Bad at Sports.

Center Field | Visons for Chicago: Public Art with Organizer Daniel Tucker

Center Field: Art in the Middle with Bad at Sports.

Center Field | Visons for Chicago: Public Art with Organizer Daniel Tucker

I’ve known Daniel Tucker for about five years now and I’ve always thought of him as a true Chicago artist, somewhere in between artist, organizer, writer, and administrator and always …

Open Enrollment

Open Enrollment | Love Everyone’s Futures

Open Enrollment

Open Enrollment | Love Everyone’s Futures

The rain finally stopped this past Sunday so that 1001 chairs (or at least a good few hundred of them) could be set up outside Chinese embassies across the globe …

Looking at Los Angeles

Looking at Los Angeles | Vija Celmins’s Visions of Violence

Looking at Los Angeles

Looking at Los Angeles | Vija Celmins’s Visions of Violence

Last Saturday, March 19—the day that the US began air strikes in Libya—I passed an anti-war demonstration while driving to LACMA to see Vija Celmins: Television and Disaster, 1964-1966. It …

5 Questions for Contemporary Practice

5 Questions with Colectivo Situaciones

5 Questions for Contemporary Practice

5 Questions with Colectivo Situaciones

* This interview has been translated and co-edited by Brian Whitener. I first heard about Colectivo Situaciones about a year ago, when I received a publication in the mail titled …

Turkish and Other Delights

Turkish and Other Delights | An Interview with Vasıf Kortun (Part II)

Turkish and Other Delights

Turkish and Other Delights | An Interview with Vasıf Kortun (Part II)

Following is the second half an interview Elizabeth Wolfson conducted with Vasif Kortun. Read part one here. — Ed. Perhaps more than any other individual, Vasıf Kortun has redirected the …

How Much Does Corn Matter? Glory and Humility in the Work of Eduardo Villanes

How Much Does Corn Matter? Glory and Humility in the Work of Eduardo Villanes

As I am grieving the disappearance of the Minimalist from the pages of the New York Times, I am also pondering Mark Bittman’s statement from his farewell column, “the continuing …

Between Barcelona’s Soft Shoulders and Its Hard Underbelly: A Conversation with Daniela Ortiz

Between Barcelona’s Soft Shoulders and Its Hard Underbelly: A Conversation with Daniela Ortiz

Several months ago, even before I set my foot on Catalan ground, I was captivated by a seemingly modest photograph: a chocolate candy in a golden wrapper set on a …

Turkish and Other Delights

Turkish and Other Delights: Extramücadele/Extrastruggle

Turkish and Other Delights

Turkish and Other Delights: Extramücadele/Extrastruggle

Extrastruggle is an enormous project which began in 1997. It works on imaginary demands from imaginary customers. Just like a graphic designer designing a logo for a client, it designs …

5 Questions for Contemporary Practice

5 Questions (for Contemporary Practice) with Rigo 23

5 Questions for Contemporary Practice

5 Questions (for Contemporary Practice) with Rigo 23

I first encountered Rigo 23’s work this past summer staying with friends in San Francisco’s Mission, where Rigo 23 partially got his start as an artist through his engagement with …

Teaching with Contemporary Art

It Ain’t the Heat, It’s the Stupidity

Teaching with Contemporary Art

It Ain’t the Heat, It’s the Stupidity

As promised last week, let’s talk about the plight Mr. Curtis Acosta finds himself in. As a public school teacher in Arizona, obviously a state with its share of issues …

Negotiating an Artistic Practice in a Capitalist Ecology: An Interview with Anne Elizabeth Moore

Negotiating an Artistic Practice in a Capitalist Ecology: An Interview with Anne Elizabeth Moore

This introduction is short. Anne Elizabeth Moore gave such thorough answers, it seemed more important to let those stand than offer an interpretation of her merit. Safe to say having …

5 Questions for Contemporary Practice

5 Questions (for Contemporary Practice) with Nato Thompson

5 Questions for Contemporary Practice

5 Questions (for Contemporary Practice) with Nato Thompson

I am a bit late coming to the curatorial work of Nato Thompson, which first became recognizable to me at this past October’s second annual Creative Time Summit, a gathering …

Connecting – Part 4: All spin of one kind or another

Connecting – Part 4: All spin of one kind or another

Errol Morris said at a Chicago Humanities Festival Q&A in 2006, on the iconography of Abu Ghraib, that human stupidity is one of the only things he really believes in, …

Looking at Los Angeles

Looking at Los Angeles: Senators with No Talent

Looking at Los Angeles

Looking at Los Angeles: Senators with No Talent

I woke up Wednesday morning to news of fracas at the opera. The La Scala opera house in Milan had just hosted its annual gala, the sort of event heads …

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Teaching About a Day Without…

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Teaching About a Day Without…

Today marks the observance of Day Without Art, a day when the arts community takes the time to remember and respond to the AIDS crisis and its impact worldwide. Day …

5 Questions for Contemporary Practice

5 Questions with Carin Kuoni of the Vera List Center for Art and Politics

5 Questions for Contemporary Practice

5 Questions with Carin Kuoni of the Vera List Center for Art and Politics

For six years, Carin Kuoni has been director of the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School in New York City. I wanted to pose my …

Recap: Creative Time Summit, Saturday October 9th, 2010

Recap: Creative Time Summit, Saturday October 9th, 2010

This past Saturday, I attended the Creative Time Summit at The Cooper Union in NYC, and I’m glad I did. Whatever one may say about Creative Time’s role in the …

(UC Crisis) Post 3: Try Not to Do This Again

(UC Crisis) Post 3: Try Not to Do This Again

In a series of special posts, guest blogger alum Marc Herbst and regular contributor Catherine Wagley chronicle the University of California education crisis. Following is Wagley’s take. — Ed. When …

Pardon this Brief Commercial Interruption: Liz Magic Laser

Pardon this Brief Commercial Interruption: Liz Magic Laser

Currently on view at Derek Eller Gallery in New York, Liz Magic Laser’s chase (2009) stems from interpretation of Bertolt Brecht’s Man Equals Man (1926), performed by eight different actors …

(UC Crisis) Post 2: The Feeling of Embalming Education

(UC Crisis) Post 2: The Feeling of Embalming Education

In a series of special posts, guest blogger alum Marc Herbst and regular contributor Catherine Wagley chronicle the University of California education crisis. Following is Herbst’s second installment. — Ed. …

uc occupation

(UC Crisis) Post 1: The Story of a Movement – Overview

(UC Crisis) Post 1: The Story of a Movement – Overview

To explain the recent investigations into the web-art projects of both Ricardo Dominguez and  b.a.n.g. lab collaborators at UC San Diego and Ken Ehrlich of UC Riverside is to tell …

Eve Essex and Cornelius Cardew

Eve Essex and Cornelius Cardew

Continuing the tenuous thread I’ve begun to weave, today’s post concerns Eve Essex, an artist I’ve been interested in since she was a resident with the Berwick Research Institute in …

Flash Points

Inside the Artist's Studio

Inside the Artist’s Studio: Corey J. Escoto

Flash Points

Inside the Artist's Studio

Inside the Artist’s Studio: Corey J. Escoto

Corey Josiah Escoto is an artist based in St. Louis, MO. He also happens to be a tranquil, discreet, and steady 26 year-old art surprise who acts, talks, and walks like …