Daniel Alexander Jones I Choose to Remember Us Whole (Altar no 3)

 

 

 

 

“I Choose to Remember Us Whole (Altar no 3)”, a project by Daniel Alexander Jones

On a sunny midday in May, I joined about 50 people for a procession sponsored by Meany Center for the Performing Arts that was part of “I Choose to Remember Us Whole (Altar no 3).” Daniel Alexander Jones, an artist, theatre artist, singer, performance artist, and educator, imagined the idea and invited Seattle artists to collaborate. The title suggests the purpose, healing by reconnecting to unseen forces.

The performance began at the Henry Art Gallery with the artist singing about wholeness, accompanied by Walter Kitundu playing a harp like instrument.

We were encouraged to wear earthy colors:  I wore a bright green tee shirt from my Qi Gong class (which turned out to be the perfect prelude to the afternoon). A number of young women dressed in various shades of yellow began to dance. A drum beat signaled the beginning of the procession. As we passed through some trees the dancers  reached to the sky then to the earth. It was a gesture familiar to me from QiGong, receiving positive energy from trees and giving stale energy back to the earth.

 

“I Choose to Remember Us Whole (Altar no 3)” is a new iteration of a project that Jones created at Cal Arts Center for New Performance called ALTARED STATES which:

“invites participants into an intentional relationship with unseen forces that shape our lived realities, including waves of history, culture, cosmology, and Soul. Altars have traditionally served as meeting places between the material and the numinous, among and across a range of cultures and artistic forms.”

 

Our invitation to wholeness embraced these forces. “What would it feel like to remember and to be remembered as whole beings? What would change? What would enable wholeness? And what can we do to embrace as whole what now seems irrevocably torn asunder? “

That’s the artist in yellow, and Valerie Curtis Newton on the left.

 

 

Valerie Curtis-Newton, the head of the Drama Department at UW,

greeted us at the “The Wisdom Walk”, in the courtyard of the art building.  We were asked to take a prompt, walk a labyrinth and write in a book at the center of the labyrinth in response to the prompt.  My prompt was “what do you wish someone had told you when you were five years old?”

 

 

Diana Garcia-Snyder head of Dance department and her students

led us throughout the procession and performed periodically.IMG_2893

Our second stop “Altar to Interdimensional Entanglements” by Afroditi Psarra, a (Multidisciplinary Artist and Associate Professor, UW Digital Arts and Experimental Media DXARTS) intervened in a preexisting public art installation of metal chairs set in open metal structures. Afroditi (who is Greek – Aphrodite, Goddess of Love!) hung knitted fabrics as portals on the scaffolding of the outdoor rooms. Collaborating with AI (!) through prompts such as “black holes” and “warped passage,” she knitted patterns. Each hanging composed a different sound when we stroked the fabric.

That’s the artist dressed in yellow

 

Not far away at Leon Finley’s “Altar to the Death of the Sun” we were asked to think for a minute about “what will we become when the sun burns out”. We faced West  across this walll covered with dirt and spoke our answer out loud.

 

The fourth destination Altheo Rao’s “Chestful of Whispers” at the UW Farm near the southwest corner of the campus, focused on fertility with history, poetry and planting seeds.

Then the procession wound its way to the end of Rainier Vista for the grand finale: Timothy White Eagle’s “Sacrificier Les Vivants” (sacrifice the living). White Eagle has long experience with ritual performances: we experienced death and resurrection through stories, and actions. Here IMG_2908 is a short clip.  Finally, he offered us fireweed tea brewed from the first plant to grow back after a forest fire.

 

 

So we experienced a sequence of rituals that expanded our spiritual and emotional wellbeing.  As a mystic, Daniel Alexander Jones seeks to collaborate in our recovery after the shattering events of the pandemic. Instead of presenting his own experience through art, we were expected to be part of the process of exploration.

 

 

 

Fortunately my Qi Gong practice works with unseen energy (Qi) in our organs, bones, and spirits:  a good foundation for a procession to wholeness. I have not achieved wholeness of course, but this event was another step in the process.

Post script

Until July 9, the Henry Art Gallery displayed an altar that was the starting point for Altar no 3 ( sorry no image) , a collaboration with several artists from WaNaWari, expanded with parts of the five altars that we visited.  You can contribute to this installation by writing about “what would it feel like to remember and to be remembered as whole beings? What would change? What would enable wholeness?”

The installations at the Henry Art Gallery included these artists , a [ublic participation piece  well as WaNaWari artists

We responded with prompts and hung them on a “tree”

Inye Wokoma(WaNaWari) altar

 

 

 

Elisheeba Johnson (WaNaWari)

 

Valerie Curtis Newton, prompts and answers

 

 

Timothy White Eagle

 

 

Altheo Rao

 

Afroditi Psarra

 

 

Leon Finley

Antelope, The Hop and Turner

 

In London Trafalgar Square on the Fourth Plinth we saw “Antelope”

by Samson Kambalu from Malawi

It restages a photograph of a Baptist preacher  and pan Africanist

 

John Chilembwe and European missionary John Chorley as a sculpture

“The photograph was taken in 1914 at the opening of Chilembwe’s new church in Nyasaland, now Malawi. Chilembwe has his hat on , defiying the colonial rule that forbade Africans frm wearing hats in front of white people. A year larter, he led an uprsisint against colonial rule. Chilembwe was killed and his church was destroyed by the coloonial police.

Chilembwe is larger than life, while Chorley is life-size, revealing the hidden narratives of underrepresented peoples in the history of the British Empire in Africa and Beyond”

 

The Hop

outside the Hayward Gallery we saw The Hop by Jyll Bradley

honoring working class Londoners who escaped the pollution of the city to be paid to harvest hops in rural England.

 

And finally, at the Tate Britain I end with JMW Turner whose images of disaster catastrophe, floods, fires, Destruction of Sodom,  Snowstorm ( Hannibal crossing the Alps), The Flood, Whalers,

seem like where we are today!

 

 

 

 

 

Contemporary Art in Cathedrals : Lincoln and Ely

On our recent trip to the UK to visit Henry’s wonderful familly, he wanted to visit two cathedrals, Lincoln and Ely. With a few logistical tricks and help from the family we made it to both! After we went I could see why he wanted to see them so much.

Here is Lincoln Cathedral, from the nearby castle, the interior and from the side. The Romaneque church was built by the Normans who apparently brought a lot of masons and other skilled workers with them. The city goes back to the Romans and has a few Roman structures .

 

It also has what I learned from a brochure was “The Secret Jewish Heritage of Lincoln.” It dates back to 1159, “second only to London in numbers, wealth, and scholarship,remaining prominent right up to the expulsion of the Jews from England in 1290” . Jews are readmitted to England under Oliver Cromwell, but in Lincoln a community didn’t reappear until late 18thc which lasted to mid 19th. Then many Jews came during World War II, but a community wasn’t reestablished until 1992.

 

Looking at the beautiful cathedral, we see Romanesque carvings on the West front, which we were told is meant to be the gates of heaven, and impress us, it is a portal to the sacred.

 

Across the entrance are a row of kings starting with Edward III. I like the one in the middle with his bare legs crossed, apparently that is King John who got a new leg. The kings receive authority from God.

 

Here is a relief of devils seducing sinners and the original color scheme!.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Noah’s Ark

 

Much as I love Romanesque sculpture, my real theme here is inside the Cathedral the Stations of the Cross by a contemporary artist. I thought they were really moving.

This is no 1 The whole series of Stations of the Cross, here called “The Forest Stations” were created by William Fairbank

“Jesus a Man of Truth is Condemned to Death by the crowd, through their government.”

 

 

no 2 The truth is beaten and flogged and roped to the execution beam.

 

no 3

He falls  under pressure from without

 

 

 

 

no 5 He is helped by his mother

You can see from these examples how moving each piece is.

 

Lincoln Cathedral also had a chapel painted by Bloomsbury artist Duncan Grant- theme is St Blaise, patron saint of wool gatherers

He included a lot of his friends! then the chapel was closed when the church discovered he was homosexual until 1990!

 

 

 

Ely Cathedral had a single piece of contemporary art at the entrance

But the story of Ely is feminist! Founded by St Etheldreda! She was a Saxon princess married off for political reasons, but her first husband died and left her the land that Ely is on. Then she was married again to a Northumbrian Prince, but refused to consummate the marriage. He let her go to be a nun!, until his father died then as King he wanted her to start breeding, but she ran away!! went back to Ely, founded a monastery that later became the site of this cathedral.

 

 

 

East Anglian Princess

Northumbrian Queen

Nun at Coldingham

( Northumberland)

Abbess at Ely

She never consumated her marriages so was able to be given sainthood! The church was visited by thousands of pilgrims honoring her.

 

 

 

Here is the exterior

 

And the interior with the famous octagonal dome

and its model

 

 

 

We left just two days before the coronation.

England was going crazy with paraphernalia

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nalini Malani at the National Gallery London “My Reality is Different”

 

 

 

Nalini Malani’s immersive animated installation at the National Gallery London plunges us into a world of bizarre figures, creatures, and energy waves that swirl and constantly change shape as they invade the complacency of the people in famous European paintings, bit by bit . Nalini Malini

(That’s a clip from the installation. It has to be downloaded, but it is short)

 

Chosen for the first National Gallery Contemporary Fellowship, gave Malani the opportunity for a new direction in her multimedia work. She selected a group of 24  paintings from the National Gallery, London, and several from the Holburne Museum in Bath, then bascially attacked them with dramatic animation drawings created with her finger on an ipad.

 

The amazing complexity of pattern, color, texture and image speaks to the artist’s command of this new medium which she has been working in for several  years in short animations that she posted on Instagram.

 

The animations are agitated, threatening and occasionally playful.

We see only fragments of the original works.

 

The result is a dizzying array of images that are in constant motion, accompanied by a sound track that is a long lament by Cassandra who predicted the Fall of Troy, but no one believed her. What better mythic character for our times, when no one is changing their ways as we approach the precipice of no return on our climate

The overall theme is an attack on colonialism and white patriarchy based on the idea that “My Reality is Different”

 

So for example

Johann Zoffany’s The Auriol and Dashwood Families 1783 to 87

an image based on a painting of three influential families in Bengal India. The man in the green jacket on the right receiving a letter was an administrator of the East India Company. It shows the hierarchy of wealthy white British and their Indian servants

On the right you see clearly that same man with the green jacket, as well as some of the other members of his family, but the portrait is torn apart and basically undermined by Malani’s caricaturesque drawings.

Here is another example, harder to see. Caravaggio’s Supper at Emmeus and Malani overlay. You can see the detail of the Supper in the middle.

 

 

 

Nalini plucked the face of Darius from the huge painting by Veronese The Family of Darius before Alexander. The painting is an example of Alexander treating the defeated Persian king kindly, but the subject of course is imperialism as Alexander marched through country after country all the way to India.

 

Most of the source paintings Malini chose are examples of either arrogance, colonialism, or, in some cases feminism ( as in the Head of John the Baptist or Samson and Delilah).

In the gold cirecle is only the head of the Angel Gabriel, half of an Annuciation scene from the 15th century.

 

Malani most frequently excerpts heads and hands from the original paintings, it is fun to spot them and trace them to the original works.

But of course that is so Eurocentric of me! The main point is the many many other figures that race through the video, and those shadowy portraits of people exist on the margins of this imperial world of white people.

 

As  you immerse yourselves in the room, surrounded on four walls by animation, the dizzying array of images overwhelms us ( that is the point). The source images disappear or flash by in small fragments as we see their decimation and fragmentaion.

The installation is an attack on Western imperialism as seen in these paintings full of complacent white people, conquerors, rapists and even a scientist suffocating a bird.

The artist projected a 9 channel installation in what she called the “animation chamber”. Each channel had three looped videos of about 3 minutes each. In the catalog she lists all the source paintings, but she illustrates only the ghostly figures who have been added by the artists so the “subaltern can speak”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here is a sequence that almost captures the effect of constant metapmophosis, you can recognize some repeated figures ( note creature in a heavy yellow outline, and running figure to left) and at the end the traces of that same painting by Zoffany of the East India families and their servants of color.

In addition to the layers of animations, the installation also includes a sound track, it of course is also consisting of several elements:

the sound of a sailing ship on the sea, “Rule Britannia” interrupted by a folk song sung by an Indian woman. Thefocal point, though, is the long chanted poem in the identity of Cassandra who is of course the prophetess of Troy who precidted its fall and no one believed her.

She could not be more pertinent today. ( it was adapted from Christa Wolf’s Cassandra:A Novel and Four Essays by the artist and Alaknanda Samarth)

 

 

At the Tate Modern Part II Maria Bartuszová and Magdalena Abacanowicz

I just read an editorial  by Eddie Chambers in the Art Journal, that women artists are still being slighted in the art world and by art historians. Price wise their art has much less value and they are not given the same attention in museums because, Chambers declares that curators say they are “in hock” to commercially successful contemporary artists.

 

Hopefully that is changing.   I saw this book The History of Art Without Men, for sale at the National Gallery, London, when I went there to see the amazing Nalini Malani exhibition ( more on that soon), and at the Tate Modern there were three major exhibitions of work by women.

The first is Cecilia Vicuna, just discussed above.

The work of the second artist Maria Bartuszová. (1936 – 1996)

you see at the top of this review.

A sculptor from Slovakia,

 

 

first a Communist country, then a former Communist country ( a monumental fact that is oddly omitted from her biography- as is much else)  she was not seen in exhibitions outside her country during her lifetime.

 

Bartuszova’s exhibition is part of an initiative at the Tate Modern that includes Cecilia Vicuna and Magdalena Abakanowicz, presenting women artists who have revolutionised modern sculpture.  All three of these artists are from outside the “Western” world,  Communist Czechoslavakia-Slovakia, Peru – indigenous, and Poland also Communist.

 

Bartuszová is the least well known of the three artists. She was able to support herself under Communism with public commissions. But her public work was not ideological, but abstract.

 

She learned about mainstream art from books while she was living in Košice the  second largest city in Slovakia, deep in central Europe not far from the border of Ukraine and Hungary. She moved there from Prague and its exciting intellectual community lured by possibilities of public art commissions in a rapidly expanding city, and inexpensive housing.

 

As she was raising her small children she had the idea of casting plaster over balloons., often submerging the forms in water in a technique she called “gravistiumlated shaping” as th weight of the plaster determined the shape of the sculpture.

From there she began to blow into the balloons and poured plaster over them , she called it ‘pneumatic casting’ the result was a fragility  that evokes eggs or shells.

 

She also created temporary works in nature and later in her life hung her work in trees.

The playful quality of the work pairs with an intense feeling for nature and original forms that create a lyrical presence. She was familiar with Luca Fontana and Brancusi, and we see that in these works.

So we can place her in the cerebral, sensual category of contemporary sculpture, courting the line between abstraction and naturalism.

 

 

Magdalena Abakanowicz “Every Tangle of Thread and Rope” 

 

While Maria Bartuszová creates fragile intimate works,  Magdalena Abacanowicz creates  large muscular pieces made from sisal as well as horsehair and hemp.  The works called “abacans” to indicate her originality (named after her) moved  in her early career from the wall

 

to the middle of the gallery, taking on a creature like presence. As we walk among them we feel the innate energies of nature. in this one we see a fibrous connection between two lung like shapes.

 

 

Abacanowica was born in 1930 to Tartar Russian Polish nobility, at the beginning of the war they retreated deep into the forest, then they lost everything. that experience in the forest deeply marked the artist, and she feels strongly the power of the forest.

In her late work she turned to trees themselves

 

 

“Arboreals symbolise our concern with nature, which neglected and abused by man, now turns against him with vengeance. They remind us that a tree is our friend; it gives shade and oxygen, bears fruit, shelters birds and animals and makes climate hospitable to all ”

 

“I use the tree as a metaphor for the ecological architecture of the 21st century, just as the human body served as a metaphor for the shape of a Romanesque cathedral. ”

Both of these artists are immersed in nature, and concern for its future. Both grew up under Communism, but supported themselves as artists. Abacanowicz gained great esteem while Maria Bartuszova was unknown. I am thankful they are side by side now at the Tate, as it gives us in both cases a highly original approach to sculpture using organic materials.

At the Tate Modern Part I: Cecilia Vicuña

We missed the Cecilia Vicuña full installation. It was being taken down when we were there, but the label and a piece of it was still

visible

Since I didn’t fully experience it, I give you the label information:

 

“In the Andes people did not write, they wove meaning into textiles and knotted cords. Five thousand years ago they created the quipu (knot), a poem in space, a way to remember, involving the body and the cosmos at once. A tactile, spatial metaphor for the union of all. The quipu and its virtual counterpart, the ceque ( a system of sightlines connecting all communities in the Andes) were banished after the European Conquest. Quipus were burnt, but the quipu did not die. It symbolic dimension and vison of interconnectivity endures in Andean culture today.” Cecilia Vicuña

 

“27 meters pale ghostly, quipu sculptures hang from the ceiling at opposite ends of the Turbine Hall. Cecilia Vicuña’s Brain Forest Quipu continues her long-standing work with the ancient Andean tradition of the quipu. Woven together from different materials including found objects, unspun wool, plant fibres, rope and cardboard, the sculptures are combines with music and voice that emerge at mements as you move through the space.

 

This multi-media installation is an act of mourning for the destruction of the forests, the subsequent impact of climate change, and the violence against indigenous peoples. It is also an opportunity to create a space for new voices and forms of knowledge to be heard and understood, as we take responsibility for our part in the destruction.

 

Vicuña’s reimagining of the quipu contains a number of layers, sculptural, sonic, social and digital. She invites us into the “Dead Forest Quipu,” a pair of sculptures whose skeletal forms draw attention to the severity of the climate crisis and the delicate nature of our ecosystems. Their bone-white colour reminds us of bleached bark of trees killed by drought or intentional fire and other dried-out substances like snakeskin.

 

Placing the sculptures at either end of the Turbine Hall, Vicuña creates an alternative architecture binding the two ends of the space. Made from a range of organic materials and items collected from the banks of the River Thames by women from local Latin American communities, the work extends Vicuña’s practice of assembling found, imperfect and modest materials that she calls precarios (precarious).

 

The ‘Dead Forest Quipu’ sculptures are accompanied by a ‘Sound Quipu’ playing from within the sculpture and under the bridge. This sonic element, conceived by Colombian composer Ricardo Gallo, brings together indigenous music from several regions, compositional silences, new pieces by Gallo, Vicuña, and other artists, and field recordings from nature.

 

The interwoven moments of sound and silence span 8 hours of sonic breathing and symbolize the earth’s life in the face of the loss taking place across the globe.

 

The ‘Digital Quipu’ weaves together videos of indigenous activists and land defenders from regions around the world who are using digital platforms to amplify their calls. Shown on video monitors throughout the building and online, the Digital Quipu offers political and economic context for the material realities faced by communities in the ongoing struggle to protest and preserve their respective ancestral territories, communities and traditions.

 

What Vicuña describes as the ‘social weaving’ will extend through a ‘Quipu of Encounters: Rituals and Assemblies’. This series of global events, or ‘knots of action’, connect ancient Andean tradition and contemporary culture, inviting visitors to become active participants in the prevention of climate catastrophe.

 

Vicuña writes ‘ the Earth is a brain forest and the quipu embraces all its interconnections.’ Brought together , the elements of Brain Forest Quipu emphasize the contradiction and complexity of our time. This entanglement of our bodies – with both the material world of nature and the places that we live – is enmeshed in the hive-mind of technology that connects us with each other, while isolating us in new and often uncertain ways.

 

Vicuña suggests that we are at the beginning of a new time, one where we must first become aware of our collective responsibility in order to change destructiveness, injustices and harm. Through Brain Forest Quipu she invites us to create spaces for imagining and dreaming so that we can ‘bring our heart-minds together to give life to a new forest in a spirit of reparation.’”

 

Here are a few press photos:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We had a Cecilia Vicuña exhibition in Seattle in June 2019  that I wrote about on this blog. On that occasion I was fortunate to attend a poetry reading performance at which we created a community by winding a quipu around us.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We can hope that the survival of this ancient knowledge which colonialism tried so hard to wipe out, will also provide us with a way to the future on our troubled planet.

Mike Nelson’s “Extinction Beckons” at the Hayward Gallery London

 

 

 

 

“Extinction Beckons” by Mike Nelson gives us decay, nostalgia, destruction, resurrection, all layered in profoundly moving installations.

I first saw his work in Istanbul at the Büyük Valide Han, a caravanserai built in 1561.

That installation is one of several recreated at the Hayward, but my experience of seeing it in its first incarnation is worth quoting here:

 

“Mike Nelson lived for several weeks in a crumbling market building in Istanbul, defying the usual segregation of Biennial art from ordinary people. He set up a dark room, took photographs of the Büyük Valide Han, made friends with the elderly craftsmen living there, hung up his negatives and photographs, and then left town.

 

Not far from the more famous Grand Bazaar, it required alert navigation through streets packed with people shopping to find the Han. The quiet courtyard felt like a dying historical space, but on entering the shop of a weaver the loud slam of his enormous antique loom filled the air. He took pride in his work, as did his father and grandfathers. In Nelson’s workshop, in semidarkness, hung his photographs of the weaver and other people he met, as well as of the ancient building itself. ”

[Here are my photos of the installation in Istanbul in 2003;  in London it has some of the same elements, but lacks the total context of the building as a whole and the people who worked there. ]

 

“But Nelson’s work was not about him, nor about the photographs—it was about respect for the history and the poetry of the building and its workers—soon to be swept away by disintegration and globalization. Most art critics found Nelson’s area shut and believed they had missed seeing the art work. In fact, they had missed seeing the point of the art work, which was about the life and history of the ancient building and its aged workers. The fact that they thought they had missed something was perfect “poetic justice.” (  quoted in my book Art and Politics Now, 2010)”

 

“Poetic Justice” was the title of the 2003 8th Istanbul Biennial, curated by Dan Cameron, in which Nelson showed this work. He has subsequently shown it in Venice and now at the Hayward, where it is embedded in a series of disorienting installations that require us to again navigate carefully.

We  had a personal guide through the exhibition. Her name was Charity

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

These strange objects, belong to various odd reference points.

a gambling den, a captain’s bar and a travel agent’s office.

 

“The rooms are deserted, but convey a feeling of unease as if they have only recently been vacated . . .

The title refers to a 17th century shipwreck, the survivors of which ( many of them prisoniers or indentured laboureres) attemted to create a free society in Bermuda before they were forced to build new ships The Deliverance and the Patience – to continue their journey to Virginia. ”

 

So how does the title fit with what we experience and what we see. Ideals of travel as freedom as opposed to forced travel, gambling as a hope for a better life usually lost in addiction,  a Marxixt manifesto, again a hope that has not been realized.

 

The next part of the exhibition called “I Imposter” recreated Nelson’s photographic studio in the Buyuk Valide Han.

 

Another major installation “Triple Bluff Canyon”

layered references to Smithson’s early work “Partially Buried Woodshed,” with references evoking the deserts of the Middle East destroyed by war.

The exploded tires were gathered near the M25 motorway and Nelson sees them as sculptures that speak to the violence of our society.

Note the reference to Shell in the buried pipeline.

 

The next part of the exhibition included extensive references to obsolete tools now enshrined as sculpture.

 

 

 

The next installation Amnesiac referred in its title to a fictious biker gang. Imaginary creatures and an imaginary fire from junk

 

The largest installation and most peculiar had this strange title;

‘Studio Apparatus for Kunsthalle Munster – A thematic instalment observing the Calindrical Celebration of its inception: Introduction; towards a linear understanding of notoriety, power, and their interconnectedness, furtuobjext ( misspelt); mysterious  island** see introduction of Barothic Shift”

I don’t know what most of this means, but here is the installation.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The whole experience was unsettlng to say the least. Let’s go back to the title “Extinction Beckons” and that helps to put it all together. All of Nelson’s materials are gathered from junk yards, extinction, but he has brought them into a new environment, an art gallery! at the same time  extinction is beckoning us, and part of the reason is a profligate disregard for what we throw away and the companies packaging all that plastic. So yes, extinction does beckon, and walking through a series of disorienting spaces can perhaps give us pause about what we are doing to our planet.

The Wondrous World of Ikat at the Seattle Art Museum until May 29

 

 

 

 

 

Curator Pamela McCluskey began the tour of her dazzling new “Ikat” exhibition at the Seattle Art Museum by pointing out that almost all the clothes we wear are made from oil based polyester with toxic dyes.
“Ikat” celebrates cotton, harvested and dyed by hand in a technique used for centuries. Ikat means binding, and it refers to a specific technique of binding sections of cotton to resist dying during weaving.

I was skeptical of the exhibition at first because I am not at all familiar with textiles. I thought it might be boring! I couldn’t have been more mistaken! The exhibition is riveting in so many ways, that I have been three times, and still haven’t nearly absorbed everything.

 

Before you enter the exhibition watch one of the videos of contemporary weavers in Indonesia and look at the work in the adjoining gallery; they provide insights into the gathering of the sources of the dyes in the jungle, the process of preparing the yarn, and the weaving, particularly featuring Tamu Rambu Hamueti queen of the Prai Yawang kingdom on the island of Sumba, Indonesia.

 

We also begin to learn of the ritual, mythological and symbolic meanings of the textiles, particularly the “geringsing,” a ritual cloth for coming of age girls.

 

But each of these textiles has a deep spiritual significance. As one weaver explained:

“The spiritual force in natural dyed cloth is amazing. Sometimes people feel as if the cloth has a soul, as if it is alive.”
—Madi Diavi, dyer and weaver in Bali, from the “Touching the Ground” documentary, 2021

 

The historic textiles in the exhibition are all anonymous, so this contemporary gallery provides an invaluable opportunity to more fully understand the role of Ikat in these cultures.

 

In the main entry to the exhibition we see a spectacular contemporary art work that blows up the technique itself to a huge scale. Zurash/Slipped took artists Chinami and Rowland Ricketts an entire year to complete. The process involves special organic cotton, here in over one thousand bundles bound to resist the dye. The pattern emerges only in the weaving process. Zurash/Slipped has a stepped (slipped) pattern, but the installation is like a giant loom ( 6000 verticals) of 200,00 warp yarn

 

 

strands

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For the historic textiles, galleries have been entirely transformed: each region is a different color and the fabrics on the wall are now protected not by plexiglass, but by sinuous wooden platforms that prevent us from getting too close.

 

 

The regions and colors in the order we walk through them are

Japan gray blue

Africa raspberry red

India mustard

Southeast Asia Cinnamon

Uzbekisan lime green ( above)

Indonesia dark blue

Europe pale blue

Americas pink

Contemporary US white (!) and

Contemporary Ikat dark gray

 

Another helpful aspect of the exhibition is what the museum calls “living labels” short videos in each region that provide more insights into the process by contemporary weavers.

These historic fabrics require us to immerse ourselves in their complex patterns and meanings.

Also crucial to remember is that they originally were an active part of life, as a kimono in Japan, or a ceremonial robe in Africa worn as a political statement in opposition to British colonialism. Here we see the textile immobilized as a flat shape on the wall. It was usually worn by someone in movement

In Uzbekistan Ikat weaving filled the houses as carpets on floors, walls, pillows, and room screens. Women laboriously raised the silkworms for the weavings themselves.

The imagery evokes the flowers, plants, birds and insects of a paradise. The colors all come from natural sources:
red from the madder plant, yellow and green from buds of a Japanese pagoda tree, black from pomegranate peel, magenta from scale insects obtained from galls on pistachio trees, and indigo blue imported from India.
The Uzbek weaving traditions were wiped out by the Soviets, but in recent years have seen a huge revival.

 

Indonesian Galleries 

To quote the wall label:

“Indonesia is a polestar of ikat. Like a vast net supporting Asia’s southeast region, its 17,000 islands are home to many who revere cloth as a means of honoring relationships, old and new, personal and environmental. Indonesian dyers and weavers hold on to difficult, time-consuming processes sanctioned by tradition. Some of these cloths are worn daily, and others are brought out for ceremonies and to assist in times of crisis.”

 

 

 

The Americas are also represented with their own weaving traditions and materials.

 

There are even contemporary Ikat examples: artist Polly Barton states:“When tying a knot of resist on thread, this act encodes the thread, locking in the mark of design which carries memory, an historical marker, a global or locally identifiable story which is passed down culturally in the woven membrane or fabric. My own challenge with ikat is when the threads resist, push back, push me forward as an artist while keeping me connected to the web of woven history.”

This is just a brief taste of an extraordinary exhibition by the amazing curator Pamela McCluskey. She has travelled to Bali several times to meet artists at the “Threads of Life,” an organization that has been helping traditional weaving to survive since 1995.

“Ikat” gives us immersion in a rich tradition. Each of these textiles requires intense viewing to appreciate their process and meaning.

 

 

And the next time you buy a garment, think about who made it.
So I end with a plug for Flood my favorite environmentally friendly clothing designer based right here in the Northwest. Their hand made clothing is made from fabrics that are 100% upcycled!

 

 

Rita Robillard Time and Place

 

Nesting from the series Flower Serenade: A Gift of Time 2021

 

“Rita Robillard Time and Place”,
Hallie Ford Museum of Art, Salem Oregon
Tuesday to Saturday noon – 5pm Until March 25, 2023

 

Rita Robillard was a colleague of mine in the art department at Washington State University in Pullman in the 1980s. Later she moved to Portland State University and became chair of the department. We have remained close friends, partly because we have a common childhood experience growing up in downtown New York City. Here is a detail of a print she gave me of Gramercy Park where we both grew up. As you can see it is  a gated park to which only people who lived on the park could gain access. As I remember it the park was hostile to children playing, so it was gated in more ways than one.

She declared at the opening that growing up in New York, where nature is scarce,  led her to a love of nature and the outdoors. I feel the same way.

She moved from Manhattan to California, and then Brazil from 1971 to 1974.

The experience in Sao Paolo and in a rural village in Brazil was especially crucial. She learned new mythologies, as well as music and dance that have stayed with her all her life. She immersed herself in the luscious tropical environment as she taught art to children and also learned from them.

 

Above we see Heroes in the Seaweed, 1980 one of the works in the exhibition based on her experiences in Minas Gerais, Brazil near the Sumidouro River that “disappears under the earth  to form a network of underground caves full of stalactites”

 

After returning from Brazil Robillard attended graduate school at University of California, Berkeley in the late 1970s early 1980s. Robillard responds to the “time and place” in Berkeley with a few geometric works, but soon shifts to evoking the  luscious soft forms of the Sumidouro River which she describes as having “eerie beauty.”

 

She called this mystical and mysterious series “Spirit Ground.”

 

Robillard declares an affinity with the Northwest School mysticism with their emphasis on Asian Art techniques and philosophy. Ongoing study of Asian Art has been another focus throughout her career.

 

Robillard is a master printmaker.

Doves in Space 2007 from the series Luminous Frontiers

 

The entire exhibition consists of prints some very large in scale, from multiple plates. Technically they range from etching and screen prints, to more complex processes that create subtle textures. In looking closely at her work, we can explore layers sinking deep into another world. The work Doves in Space, 2007 ( screenprint and colored pencil on paper) from the series Luminous Frontiers suggests some of those subtle textures.

 

Orbs of the Forest II from the Series Waters of March 2019, screenprint and acrylic on panel

 

Some are views of a glowing sky imprinted with a lace pattern, and trees in the foreground. The lace pattern suggests a reference to early abstractions and patterns that connect to nature. It also includes her grandmother who created what were called anti-macassars, lace doilies that protected upholstered furniture from hair oil (maccasar). She also refers to them as a reference to a domestic environment and a type of reclamation, a type off “hopeful and protective element, a talismanic element and a shield” (Linda Tesner).

 

Or in contrast there are details of flowers , Queen of the Night 2021 in a recent series, “Flower Serenade: A Gift of Time” created during the pandemic.

 

 

Altogether the exhibition includes ten different series. They make a type of poem, I have mentioned several, here are all of them: Spirit Ground, Cottonwoods of the Palouse, Votives for Hanford, Essence and Artifice : Views of Spokane” Lookout/Outlook” “Time and Place”

“Luminous Frontiers” “Thicket Threshold” Polarities: Patterns in Time 1880- 2016 2.3 Degrees Fahrenheit, ” And Then Again: Rifts on the Forest and Time””Flower Serenade: A Gift of Time”

 

Several stand out as engaging specific places, for example the Cottonwoods of the Palouse, 1993  – 1995, painted while Robillard was on the faculty at Washington State University. There are hardly any trees in that region, but she found these beautiful cottonwoods to celebrate.  ( Apparently they are no longer there)

 

 

 

Two of the most striking and specific series  are “Votives for Hanford,” and “Lookout/Outlook.”

 

In the Hanford Series, here in Annunciation, we see a vision of holocaust in reds and blues, a flaming earth.  The artist faces the intractable problem of nuclear waste with angels as witnesses to our “enchantment with invisible powers, questioning the omnipotent attitude of human beings creating a product that will have to be safeguarded for a millennium. “

 

 

 

 

Detail of textures  in background

 

“Lookout/Outlook” 1996-2009 depicts forest fire look out towers where the artist stayed for a summer. We see a panoramic view in small digital photographs suggesting a flaming landscape against a subtle background based on filigree patterns from medieval stonewalls. Robillard points out that the lookout towers are now anachronistic, replaced by digital surveillance.

 

Other themes  are more general but address the planetary crisis as in Conflagrations and Rain from the series Polarities: Patterns in Time 1880- 2016 2.3 Degrees Fahrenheit, 2016

The artist states: ” a mix of observation and appropriations  seeking to layer sensual, tactile images that encourage the viewer to ponder the future of this planet. . . . I juxtapose flat and iridescent colors with screen printing and sand and carve each layer to create a visual history. ”

 

 

Pillars: Trees in the Hills from the series And Then Again: Rifts on the Forest and Time, 2017

Robillard sees these tall trees as  “Stand -in for the people who have gone and will go before. They are pillars and graceful sentries”

 

Thicket/Threshold I 1989 from series Thicket Threshold

This intense work suggests nature under stress from fire and wind.

 

Many of her works ( not possible to show here) included reprinted historical prints from 19th century books on landscape. Here she connects to the generation of the pioneers, as the first to  come into the pristine wilderness and deeply alter it.

 

Robillard’s work engages nature with a romantic passion. She celebrates its beauty, its complexity, and its fragility. The range of her themes, approaches, and techniques all center around different aspects of our stunning natural world. She gives us a new intimate yet majestic look at what is still surviving our onslaught. Hopefully, we will continue to be able to see these places, but if not,  we have the paintings of Rita Robillard.

Mygration: Sámi Reindeer Herders in Alaska

Note: this article was published in a slightly different form in Art Access, and Leschi News.

 

Mygration : Tomas Colbengtson and Stina Folkebrant

National Nordic Museum until March 5

Did you know that Rudolf, the celebrity reindeer of Santa’s sleigh would have to be a female. Male reindeers shed their antlers in the winter. This is one of the many facts I have learned in order to understand “Mygration” a new exhibition at the National Nordic Museum.

 

In March 1898 Woodland Park visitors would have seen a surprising sight: Sámi reindeer herders and their reindeer. They came from what was then called Lapland, in Scandinavia, on a contract to teach reindeer herding to Alaskan natives! The expedition had the dramatic title of the “Lapland-Yukon Relief Expedition.”

 

“Mygration” addresses a strange plan to bring 100s of reindeer and Sámi  herders from “Lapland” (now Sápmi ) to Alaska in order to “civilize” Native tribes there ( then called Eskimos, now Inuit and Yupik) . It was the misguided plan of Sheldon Jackson, General Agent of Education in Alaska. He spread the idea that Alaskan Natives were starving. He had first tried to bring in a much smaller number of reindeer and herders from Siberia in 1893 , across the Bering Straits, a much shorter trip!

 

But that effort failed.

 

So in 1898 he declared, as the Alaska Gold Rush was at its peak, that the Gold Miners were starving, as a ploy to raise money. The Gold Miners were devastating the environment ( the topic for a separate show, and something we never hear about) and local food gathering  was in a decline, but no one was starving.

 

Jackson’s real agenda was actually part of the late 19^th century efforts to “civilize” and assimilate Native peoples-in this case the Alaskan natives, who had not been touched by the boarding school and other policies in the lower 48 states.

 

Like the Alaskan natives, the Reindeer were also to be domesticated, to be used as draught animals as well as providing food.( Someone pointed out to me that Santa Claus was using reindeer as draught animals!)

It was a very long trip from Sapmi territory ( as it is now known) and Alaska!

Initially the expedition included 87 Lapps (now called Sámi), some Fins and Swedes and 530 reindeer. The Sámi were touted as “model” Indigenous people as they travelled across the sea and across the country.

 

By the time they reached Seattle many of the reindeer died of starvation because their diet of lichen was not available.

They stopped in the Woodland Park, perhaps for the reindeer to eat, but not surprisingly, the grass didn’t suit them.

 

The first small gallery of the exhibition features several photos of  the Sámi by Anders Beer Wilse. In one they are disembarking from the long train ride, in another about twenty herders (it isn’t clear if that was all that survived), pose along with their families, including very young children and a few Swedes who came along.

The herders stand out in their distinctive crown-like hats and clothing made of reindeer hide.

Also in this gallery is Sheldon Jackson’s,  Report on Introduction of Domestic Reindeer into Alaska, and Wilhelm Basi’s ( a cook on the expedition) Diary, 1897 – 1946

In this first gallery, don’t miss the small ceramic works by Tomas Colbengston, a Sámi artist works include two examples of photo transfer with historic Sámi images (the artist collects them).  He is South Sámi and grew up in a tiny village in central Sweden. The third ceramic work depicts the reindeer, and a rendering of a figure perhaps based on a ritual drum (one of which you can also see elsewhere at the Nordic Museum).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the second gallery life size paintings of reindeer by Stina Folkebrant surround us.

The artist is inspired by Chinese ink brush paintings: all of the paintings are in shades of gray. Her focus is the relationships of animals and humans and here indeed we feel that we are wandering in a field of reindeer.

Each large painting presents a one of the eight seasons of the Sámi mountain year. We feel the powerful presence of the reindeer as we gaze back at them in the gallery. We can sense the artist’s deep feeling for her subject.

 

But climate change is affecting these cycles and the reindeer. As the artist told me on email:

“time is circular that is the seasons, something that returns over and over again. We also think about time as the past , present and the future. The past meets the present in our exhibition.

 

          Climate change affects the reindeer herding because the winters are warmer and the snow melts and then it gets really cold and the ice prevents the reindeers from eating so they starve and die. The seasons are changing and that’s a problem also when the reindeers are giving birth to calves in springtime. If its to cold they die and if there is no food… etc. So climate change affects reindeer herding a lot when the seasons change.”

 

As described by Alaska writer Vivian Scott “Both male and female reindeer grow antlers. In early December, after mating season, male reindeer shed their antlers (unless they’re castrated males, then their antler growth has a similar cycle to female deer). Pregnant females retain their antlers throughout winter until spring.”- (Capitol City Weekly). Thus Rudolf was a female!

 

Her article includes many other fascinating facts about reindeer such as “Reindeer antlers are the fastest growing ‘bones’ in the world, growing up to ¾ inch per day. Reindeer have the largest and heaviest antlers of all deer species.”

Hanging in the center of the gallery are transparent plexiglass panels as well as a panel with a mirror in the center all suspended from the ceiling. Sámi photographs have been printed onto the plexiglass by Colbengston.  Herders seem to move among the life size reindeer in the paintings. We are also reflected in the mirror in the center and become part of the movement.

 

The artists also state in the  exhibition  that they are evoking the Sámi concept of herd mentality

Reindeer are herd animals and being together offers protection         from danger. The whole herd becomes a single organism with a         thousand eyes that can detect danger; if one turns around, the         others follow. People are also herd animals; they want a sense           of belonging.

 

The story of the Sámi and the reindeer in Alaska follows many twists and turns, with various odd power plays, including being taken over by a Gold Rush family, but in 1937 the Alaska indigenous people were given ownership of the herds from the Sámi ( we are good at taking things away from people) .  Alaska natives mostly didn’t like herding which required them to be away from home for months at a time, although one woman was famous for her success. They let them go to join their caribou cousins.

 

In other words instead of assimilation to white man’s ways, they assimilated the reindeer to their own habitat.

Some Sámi stayed in Alaska and intermarried with the Indigenous people. They are still very much part of Alaska today as evidenced in a recent exhibition in Juneau.

 

“Mygration” is a celebration, not a documentation of the next parts of the story. As the moving plexiglass images of the Saami intersect with the reindeer the installation perfectly conveys the magic of nomadic herders of reindeer.

 

National Nordic Museum

Until March 5, 2023