DAAPWorks Thesis

I am a multidisciplinary artist who leverages space, material, and medium to interrogate the biased economic systems that Marginalize working class ‘Rust-Belt’ and Appalachian communities. The work evokes an ethereal and often spiritual quality imbued by a combination of salvaged material, subtle religious iconography, and suggestive arrangement. I borrow techniques from Northern Renaissance artists who are deeply symbolic and mathematical in composition, as well as the passionate motions rendered in the vivid emotional detail by abstract expressionist painters. The aggregate of all these things culminates in to a sculptural experience meant to evoke our most primal feelings of pain, joy, and redemption of spirit. Communing with art and God have a deeply interwoven history, leading to my exploration that a profound religious experience can be found purely within the engagement of art itself.

 The salvaged material is a condensed view of my regional surroundings and influenced by my familial heritage: the collapse of the Rustbelt industry and the commodification of humans and natural resources in Appalachian mining industry. There is an exploitation of low-class workers in these capitalist driven systems that have a multi-generational fallout that is felt by their descendants. Through the bodily and spiritual pain inflicted upon us in the past and the fallout of those consequences felt presently, we can manage to find peace and salvation of these pains through ritual and contemplation.

The found objects in my artwork exist as artifacts to these communities. Something once looked at with a sense of dignity lack the same level of importance. To use an object to the point of it being worn, fractured, or destroyed makes it inept. When I utilize something worn past it’s original purpose in my art, it transcends into a sort of “junk heaven.” It becomes revered for it’s life well lived, and celebrated for it’s martyrdom. The spirit of the object lives on and becomes a symbol of itself, rather than something that is plainly utilitarian. It’s new afterlife allows the symbolism behind it to more effectively engage in a conversation with it is new and alive counterparts. We are the gods of their universe, molding and shaping these objects to suit our needs

The thesis work (insert work title) is not meant to be tread upon. The internal space of the curtained box is a sacred space (much like the internal struggle of a working class person), that isn’t meant to be closely examined, or scrutinized by the common man. There is a physical barrier to the external representation of an internal struggle. The objects represented feel familiar and resonant with the viewer, this aids in the viewers introspection of the arrangement, and how it applies to their own struggle and our humanistic desire of peace and redemption. While the objects themselves are common, the part they play in this spiritual awakening elevates them beyond their “thingness.” Through compositional arrangement these objects offer a physical manifestation of a higher authority.

Silvia Battista in her text “Posthuman Spiritualities in Contemporary Performance” relates the work of Marina Abramović and James Turrell to Michel Foucault’s philosophical concept of a “dispositif.”  The work acts within the philosophy’s structure of a  “dispositif” or apparatus, a philosophical idea coined by Michel Foucault;

“It  is  possible to summarize Foucault’s model in four points: firstly, an apparatus is the network that is established between linguistic and non-linguistic  elements;  secondly,  each  apparatus  has  a  ‘concrete  strategic  function  and is always located in a power relation’; thirdly, it ‘appears at the inter-section of power relations and relations of knowledge’ (Agamben 2009, 2–3);  and  fourthly,  it’s  nature  is  to  have  a  dominant  strategic  function  (Foucault 1980, 195).” (Battista)

The arrangements of “the Artist is Present” by Abramović and the “Deer Shelter Skyspace” by Turrell are specifically mentioned in Battista’s essay are specifically identified as having a sort of religious arrangement to the works. Although neither offer any indication of specific quality of religion, the influence of how the viewers engage with. the of the work is undoubtedly influenced by religious practice. The “skyspace” resembles a Quaker meeting house, and Turrell being a devout quaker for most of his early life, there is undoubtedly a connection between the two (Battista).

There are certain limitations put on the viewer to control and manipulate the viewers engagement with my thesis work. The viewer is allowed a narrow space, with a fixed low window and a narrow hard bench to kneel on in order to peer into the window inside. This humbles the viewer and creates a bodily discomfort as well as a stature of humility. The silence forces introspection of the viewer, unable to focus on the exterior world in any capacity. There is nowhere to focus the viewer’s attention except for the installation itself, and how it is communicating with the viewer directly.

Being forced into these tight parameters is a highly suggestive motivation, forcing the viewer into a space of isolated contemplation. The act of contemplation is an act shared both in art, as well as religious practice. The mental space held within during this completive time heightens a viewer’s senses of the corporeal. Being more in tune with the corporeal reduces our humanist tendency to analyze and imbues a greater sense of abstraction within the mind. Introspection in a sacred space allows the viewer to connect with the ethereal plane of existence, and see connections between themselves, humanity, and beyond the liminal plane of our shared physical realm.

When art is created, it is consistently distilled from the artist’s lived experience. Although the work is synthesized within my own craft and vision, it is almost always perceived by the public, allowing a certain amount of interpretation with their own lived experience. When they view this work, often the viewer unavoidably becomes part of the art. They must consider all elements I have incorporated, combining aged and used materials with a variety of more classical mediums. Rotten wood taken from an old house next to new fresh paint, rusted metals, raw, unfinished wood with a new finished material, the viewer is led to reflect on their own experience of the harsh juxtaposition between new and used. Society holds inherent biases to objects that are aged past their formal use. There is an instinctual repulsion of something in this state. Without any personal context, we consider things we may see around our town, such as the abandoned factory down the street from our office, as an affront to our optical cohesiveness.

We often try to protect ourselves from the realities of challenging architecture, because there is a reminder of our own lack of control, and the impermanence of life and our ideologies. Yet in this personal attack, there is another instinct that can coexist in our headspace. There is the “good ole days” mentality when we see them tear down a historic building in favor of building a new five-story condominium space. We think “well why didn’t they just fix the old building that was there?” We want the old life to find a sense of immortality, to cheat death one more time and eek out a couple more decades before we have to have this same consideration. We are constantly finding ourselves caught in the middle of this balance between modern advancement and traditional values. In this thesis I am exploring the forever shifting balance between modernity and tradition, and finding the beauty in balance, as well as the consequence of when one idea overtakes the other.

There is a stark contrast between beauty and suffering that manage to coexist in these places. in these dank dark worn-out old places you can un-earth a great deal of beauty and simplicity. Being able to see something so full and wonderful in a place that from the outside can be perceived as destitute and dangerous can be a powerful reflection of the world in it’s current which we reside, where danger is imbedded in a cultural allocation of money and resources. The danger stems out of the chokehold that capitalist systems have on these marginalized communities that forges a community of desperation. When the resources are restricted, and  robs a community from it’s own self sufficiency, the infrastructure begins to collapse on itself like a supernova. A massive explosion from the inside that leaves behind an irreparable void.

Theaster Gates is one of those artists who has a remarkable ability to take objects of the past and place them right on the edge of modernity. His core values as. an artist focus heavily on his cultural and personal identity, and the artist leverages places an objects in his community to weave the fabric of a story, and illustrate the historical impact on the modern age. His work on community spaces comes from the practices of the religious priests of South Africa. These religious healers create sacred spaces by a process of manicuring and repairing an otherwise ordinary place. The local tribal community assists in these repairs, and the belief of sacred is reenforced by the action of care. You see this same practice on the south side of Chicago, where Theaster has transformed multiple abandoned buildings into community and cultural resource centers that is focused on uplifting and celebrating his community and heritage. When Theaster takes over these unusable buildings and spaces within his community, he is taking something that once had history and reverence, faced many long years of hard neglect and choking of community resources, and now becomes a social gathering place for his community to celebrate their rich history and their overcoming of immense adversity.

Theaster also uses found objects and intentional materials to reflect on not just the positive experiences, but also the difficult history of prejudices and extreme violence that Black Americans faced. By utilizing things such as the fire hoses to create the “civil tapestry” series, he not only has crafted an aesthetically beautiful piece of art, but he has literally woven the fabrics of history that had a consequential impact on all Black Americans. The clear identity of violence is inferred by the fire hose itself, which was created with the intention to assist and save a community but was ultimately used as a weapon against Black Americans during the civil rights movement.

In many ways Whitfield Lovell incorporates remarkably similar techniques that Theaster Gates used. Between these two artists they hold shared identities of Black modern men existing in a country that has suppressed and savaged their ancestors. Being stripped of identity and historical relevance, Whitfield Lovell found that there were many missing pieces in the quilt of American history and decided to sew in some of his own narratives. Because information about Black Americans before a certain time is so sparce, Lovell borrows elements of his own lived experience and familial identity and applies narratives to these anonymous black figures in his work. Through the storytelling of the chosen found objects or assemblage of various sounds and sights, he is able to give them a story in which all Black Americans are able to find a sense of heritage, identity, and reflect on their own family’s historical relevance. By giving the anonymous a voice and a story he manages to heighten the awareness of these individuals and restore value to a marginalized population.

Robert Gober is an artist who similarly utilizes everyday objects and subverts them into the surreal. Common objects like a sink transcend their utilitarian function into a symbol of something much bigger. He integrates various sculptural elements rendered in realism, mostly body parts or domestic objects and adds something unusual (i.e. body hair on a slice of cheese) to enhance his narrative. The placement of the objects are vital to the narrative as well, curating symbolic communication with the viewer. He involves overt religious iconography in some of his works, and despite their unusual manipulations of the object, it retains it’s reverent placement, allowing the object to retain it’s power as a iconographic symbol.