Guy Tillim 'Library, Sports Club, Kolwezi, DR Congo' (2007) pigment print

The photography shares the large size and technical refinement of international norms. Many of the themes have international currency as well: uncovering political and social exploitation of the past, peeling off the façade of media stereotypes (established by Nigeria’s Nollywood rather than California’s Hollywood), investigating the construction of memory and of national histories, observing the remains of failed utopian aspiration, and exposing the hidden lives of society’s poorest and most marginalized members.

Despite the familiarity of the works’ format, much of the content requires a certain amount of back story to appreciate its meaning; some, but not all, of this is provided by the exhibition labels and the attractive catalog which is available (free) at the gallery.  But much of the subtlety certainly depends upon a detailed knowledge of the history and present circumstance of places likely to be unfamiliar to most visitors. Pieter Hugo’s striking portraits of oddly-costumed figures in unexplained settings  resemble a style of  fashion photography popularized by Irving Penn and others; but it turns out the characters are ordinary people, made up and attired by film technicians to conform to popular, Nollywood types and photographed in non-filmic settings (Nollywood refers to the popular film industry of Nigeria,  the world’s second largest after India; its films are distributed throughout  Africa and the African diaspora). The man, attired in a dark suit and tie, with one foot resting upon a slaughtered bull as he holds its heart aloft, turns out to refer to working-class suspicions that great wealth is associated with occult practices. The curator suggests that to the uninformed Western viewer…, the man standing over a bull with his [sic] heart in his hand might represent all that “Africa” as sign stands for in the Western imagination; this strikes me as both facile and unlikely. The image is simply too odd to conform to anyone’s pre-conceptions. My first response was bewilderment; what is going on here? The image of three girls playing at being a heavily-armed gang is rather more straightforward.

Pieter Hugo 'Chommy Choko Eli, Florence Owanta, Kelechi Anwuacha, Enugu, Nigeria' (2008) C print

The pensive, three-channel video installation, Square Stories, by Salem Mekuria, is an  exploration of the varying political and social history of a central space in Addis Ababa. Young people today, training for sports events in a thoroughly global environment of automobiles and Coca-Cola signs, bear obvious comparison to soldiers under Mengistu’s rule who would have had similar physical training, and who were responsible for dreadful civilian slaughter. The record of that violence is the subject of a museum built on the square; its images of the executions and the extent of the killing are recorded on cell-phones, by visitors too young to remember the events. The elderly woman being guided through her family home, which has been converted to another national museum, is again a meditation on changing times. But  subtler connections with the events of Ethiopia’s recent past are likely to be lost in translation.

Salem Mekuria still from 'Square Stories' (2010) 3-channel video projection

Guy Tillim‘s arresting and beautiful photographs from the series Avenue Patrice Lumumba record a number of late-colonial buildings that Tillim had visited across West Africa during the violent period of Lumumba’s post-colonial rule in the Congo.  Each of the four on view portrays a very different picture, and while according to the catalog, Tillim has said that the photographs are not histories of collapsed post-colonial African States,  it is hard to see anything else in his image of the laundry of the poor, who have taken residence in the abandoned, modernist grandeur of the Grand Hotel, Beira, Mozambique.  Tillim’s image of Athenee Royal High School, Lubumbashi, DR Congo, however, portrays a group of high school students going about their day with a calm ordinariness that students at West Philadelphia High School can only imagine;  the boarded up windows behind them are clearly not the dominant influence in their surroundings.

Symposium: Imaging Africa

On Saturday, March 19, Talmor also organized the symposium, Imaging Africa, which brought together an extraordinarily international group of scholars, curators and filmmakers - an amazing  achievement for a small, liberal arts college. They addressed a broad range of questions about photography, film and video by Africans and members of the African diaspora: its place within global discussions of post-modern art, its interaction with Northern photography,  its circulation and control of its production, and its role in explorations of evolving identities.

The symposium opened with Renee Mussai, curator at Autograph, London, an organization devoted to photography that addresses issues of  identity and social justice. She began, as did most speakers, by emphasizing that Africa is not a single entity, despite our tendency to treat it so, and raised a subject that was central to the entire day’s discussion: that of modernity. The concept, which grew out of a particular, European history of the transition to industrialization and an artistic turn away from academic and traditional forms to artistic self-exploration, sits uneasily in post-colonial states without a parallel historic sequence; India certainly faces the same question. What is African modernity ? Musai dated the change of photography’s position and the concern for modernity in Africa with  Malik Sidibe’s winning the Golden Lion award at the 2008 Venice Biennale.

The award-winning British filmmaker, John Akomfrah spoke of a problem that arose in his, so far, unsuccessful attempt to make a film about Fela Kuti, the Nigerian musician, political activist and self-proclaimed Black President.  Kuti lived in a commune, Kalakuta, which appointed one of its members, Femi Osula, to take photographic records of commune activities. The photos were occasionally used by members to portray Kalakuta’s activities to the outside world, more or less as political propaganda. When Akomfrah found the photographs he considered them an archive; but who owns them? Femi Osula? The commune?  The situation was too uncertain for Akomfrah’s possible backers, so the film  exists only in the form of the tantalizing trailer made to attract funding.

Jennifer Bajorek, lecturer at Goldsmith’s College, London, described the complexity of African photography whose status and economic rewards have often been determined by Northerners. Exhibitors at the Bamako Biennial of African Photography are controlled by its French sponsors whose decisions, Bajorek found,  seemed largely based upon competition with German sponsors. In Zimbabwe, all news  photography was taken by licensed members of either BBC or CNN news staff until both agencies were barred from the country. At that point the only source of photographs were the African photo-journalists whose work had previously been excluded from international view.

Awam Amkpa, professor of drama at NYU, suggested that Africa should be thought of in terms of overlapping modernisms which create an oppositional stance toward European modernism. He emphasized the fact that, as diverse as Africans are, many now identify beyond tribal or national divisions, and he spoke of an aesthetic of displacement and fragmentation, with some movement towards a creolization of conventions. Where, he asked, would such creolized works be legible? How would we read them?

Guy Tillim ‘Administration Building, Antsirana, Madagascar’ (2007) pigment print.

Friday, March 25 at 6:30 pm Sheila Hicks will speak about her work at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (more information here).  The lecture is in connection with the retrospective Sheila Hicks 50 Years March 24 – August 7, 2011 at the Institute of Contemporary Art, U Penn. Hicks is a sculptor and installation artist whose original training in fiber arts, and residence in Paris,  is probably the reason that her distinctive and ambitious work has not been sufficiently exhibited in U.S. museums. She has done many large installations commissioned for permanent view.

Sheila Hicks ‘La Clef’ (1988) rubber bands, metal key; 9 1/2 x 6'’ private collection

April 16 at 5 and 7:30 pm, International House will show a two-part program: Independent Artists Movement in Cinamatography; Origins in Avant-garde film, including work by Alberto Cavalcanti, Marcel Fabre, Hans Richter and others.

Hans Richter still from ‘Race Symphony’ (1928)

April 21 at 7 pm, International House, will screen Monument of Sugar: How to use artistic means to elude trade barriers, Lonnie van Brummelen and Siebren de Haan’s intervention in the EU’s trade barrier on sugar imports in the form of sugar sculpture.

April 28-30 Pop Cinema: Art + Film in the UK and US 1950s-1970s, at International House, includes three screenings and a panel discussion.  The April 28, 7 pm  screening focuses on UK pop and includes work by Lindsay Anderson, Karel Reisz, Ken Russell and others; April 20, 7 pm will be US filmmakers including Robert Breer, Stan Vanderbeek, Bruce Connor; April 30 will have a panel a 2pm with artist Derek Boshier and several film historians then at 7 pm films by Boshier and Peter Whitehead with Nikki de Saint Phalle.

Robert Breer still from ‘Recreation’ (1956)

Saturday, May 14, 8 pm at International House Nadia Hironaka, Matthew Suib and C Spencer Yeh present a multimedia event that revisits the spectacle  of Expo 67. It will include performance, text and lecture in addition to projected imagery.  The subject centers on the role of the artist and revolutionary relative to historical developments in global politics and media.

Nadia Hironaka and Matthew Suib, cropped detail from 'The Soft Epic or: Savages of the Pacific West' (2008)

Sex Drive is a thoughtfully curated 22-person group show that coincides with the humanities seminar “Sex, State and Society in the Early Modern World.” The show brings together a diverse array of sex-infused artworks that deal with all manner of relevant sexual themes, including fetish, fantasy, infatuation, sin, gender persuasion, public scandal, romance, and the role of political and religious conventions.

David Wojnarowicz - "Untitled (One Day this Kid...)"

Greeting you upon entering the gallery is a 4’ x 6’ vinyl reproduction of David Wojnarowicz’ “Untitled (One Day This Kid…),” 1990. Wojnarowicz, a prominent NYC artist throughout the 1980s who died of AIDS in 1992, most recently made headlines after the Smithsonian rashly removed one of his video pieces because of vitriol from conservative right wing Christian politicians over the image of ants crawling over a crucifix. “One Day This Kid…” consists of a picture of the artist in his youth, surrounded by text explaining the negative domino-effect of events that would befall him because of being gay. This poignant work touches on the religious, political and societal pressures and injustices that shape people’s perceptions regarding gays in America. According to Stuart Horodner, the curator of the show, the inclusion of Wojnarowicz’s piece “tells us that matters of the flesh remain contentious and timely.”

Untitled sculpture by Anissa Mack

Switching gears, another standout is a simple, untitled sculpture by Anissa Mack. A small stack of about 15 Playboy magazines sits neatly piled in the middle of the floor. On top of this stack rests a small bronze sculpture, painted to look like a paper mache jack-o-lantern. If analyzed in strictly aesthetic terms, the little bulging pumpkin resembles a breast with a burnt marshmallow nipple, while its face has a suggestive, open-mouthed and orgasmic expression. Yet the bronze pumpkin may represent an immovable obstacle that stands between a person and his/her desires. On the other hand, if the pumpkin’s one tooth is regarded as a baby’s tooth, the piece could comment on how the arrival of children can put stress on a couple’s sex life.

Looping on a TV in the corner is a re-edit of a mysteriously gothic-looking, soft-core spanking video by Leigh Ledare. The woman starring in the film is the artist’s mother, who is said to have produced this spanking movie with “some family friends.” The low budget film is somewhat mesmerizing, and appears to be shot on location in a strange mansion bringing to mind the old 1960s TV show Dark Shadows. Ledare’s mother does her best to stay focused as the directors call out awkward sounding instructions and fumble with the camera work. I’m sure this footage, if properly edited, would qualify as an erotic spanking film, but Ledare instead chooses to emphasize the rougher, uncut behind-the-scenes POV, giving incite to the humor and confusion that can go into making a porno movie. The video also seems to allude to a sort of inevitable sexual perversion that grows from the glamorous boredom of the affluent.

Ion Birch - "Young Love"

Alas, no art exhibition of such titillating subject matter would be complete without some good old-fashioned, low-brow pencil drawings. Ion Birch, an artist whom I’ve been following for a while now, has two excellent pieces in the show. Giant erect penises jut towards equally gigantic and gaping vaginas, as everywhere innocent-looking nymphs grab for any penis they can get their hands on. These are trippy-fun, garden orgies a la Alice in Wonderland. The exaggeration of sex organs surely brings to mind the hedonistic imagery of pre-lava Pompeii, but what amused me the most was the faces of the men in these drawings, who resemble middle-aged Dorian Grays lost in a fountain of youth fantasy, where all the girls are happy to oblige.

Sex Drive runs until March 4 at Haverford College in the Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery, which is located on the second floor of the Whitehead Campus Center.

Selections from the Hokes Archive on display at the APS Museum

Lyons is a tall, sober man dressed somewhat anachronistically in a straw boater and bow-tie, and often has a Bible tucked under his arm. He walks up to the visitors, hands them his pamphlets and says Here, have some propaganda, and proceeds to guide them around the display, drawn from the Hokes Archive. It is, he explains, devoted to zoomorphic juncture e.g. hybrid animals whose top portion is one species and bottom portion another (like W.S. Gilbert’s character in Iolanthe who’s a fairy down to the waist and a man below).

Beauvais Lyons

The pamphlet describes the Association for Creative Zoology, dedicated to understanding the beauty and complexity of God’s creation and ends with the 104th Psalm: O Lord, how manifold are thy works! Lyons begins his tour with Biblical and historical precedents (dragons, unicorns and satyrs), which provide textual documentation of zoomorphic junction, before turning to modern examples. These are depicted in lithographs and on a Ming, blue-and-white, porcelain dish. But the most compelling examples are certainly the stuffed specimens.  Pointing out the ground-hog-fish, Lyons explains that the fisherman didn’t eat his catch because he suspected that gamey-fish might not be to his taste. At this point Barbara and I were literally hiding behind our hats, trying not to tip off visitors with our uncontrollable laughter.

Taxidermied female Gorilla-hen, from the Hokes Archive

Stopping in front of stuffed examples of a Pekingese dog-duck and a crow-dog, Lyons asks which his visitors prefer.  Always the dog-duck!, he says, remarking that people are drawn to the more anthropomorphic features of mammals.  Lyons then turns to his final evidence, certain to win over doubters: an excavated skeleton of a zoomorphic junction.

Excavated skeleton of a hybrid animal, Hokes Archive

Brought to Philadelphia in connection with the current APS exhibition devoted to Charles Darwin, Lyons’ work raises the unfortunately-ongoing controversies over evidence refuting evolution, and the gullibility of a public that uses the Bible as a science text.  He took the archive to the 2007 John Scopes Trial Festival, in Dayton, TN where he had the chance to show it to Creationists; he found  they lack a sense of humor. If you want to believe in the Loch Ness Monster and the Piltdown Man, don’t miss the Hokes Archive!

Exhibition and Panel Discussion This Weekend

The Hokes Archive will be on view Sept. 16-18 from 11 am-7 pm and Lyons will also participate in an artists’ panel discussion, A Priest, A Rabbi and Charles Darwin Walk Into A Bar… on Sunday, Sept. 19th at 3 pm at the APS Museum; the other participants are Brett Keyser and Eve Andrée Laramée who also did projects in connection with the Darwin exhibition. Lyons is a professor of printmaking at the University of Tennessee whose courses include one on pranks. A video of Lyons and the Hokes Archive at the Scopes Trial Festival can be found on You-Tube.

Problemy: The Dufala Brothers at Haverford College

The Dufala Brothers Insulation Living-Room Set (2009)

Steven and Billy Blaise Dufala’s exhibition, Problemy, is on view at Haverford’s Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery through Oct. 8.  Their work entails the same sort of boyish entrepreneurial fantasies that inspired Chris Burden’s B-Car (1977, a fully functional, extra light-weight automobile built from mostly hand-made parts) and Fischli and Weiss’ video, The Way Things Go (1987, a Rube-Goldberg-like chain reaction featuring tires, ladders, oil drums, steam and fire).

The Dufala Brothers Typewriter (2010)

The gallery is filled with exquisitely-crafted but distorted, domestic objects: a hammer whose handle is sized for a giant; a typewriter with a keyboard filched from a Blackberry; a living-room set whose un-covered upholstery is made of pink, fiberglass insulation; a large broom formed to fit the profile of stairs. Then the photographs, large and lush (as is the current mode) which depict the equally unlikely: sports shoes that have grown, like Pinocchio’s nose, so their toes loop around and around into snail-like forms.  The Dufala’s adaptive re-use yields use-less objects of contemplation. Or art.

The Dufala Brothers Stair Broom

And then there are the drawings: exquisite, large forms that on close inspection are composed of delicate renderings of empty, plastic drinks bottles tethered together; a typewriter made of topiary; the Free Wall of take-away drawings (individually-signed multiples)  depicting the scatological, sexual, playful and silly (the young woman tending the gallery said these were a favorite with Haverford students).

The Dufala Brothers Free Wall of take-away drawings at Haverford College, 2010

Two large pieces were sited out-of doors: on the building’s exterior a tubular, aluminum vent connected to an air-conditioner compressor morphs into a huge set of letters, F-R-E-S-H, before returning to tubular form and running up and into the stone wall; and largest of all, a full scale suburban house, complete with bay window and chimney, made of chain-link fencing and outlined in fence-posts. Its form resembles an idealized child’s drawing.

The Dufala Brothers Fresh (2010) at Haverford College

detail of Fresh

Text in the exhibition catalog and press release suggest that the Dufalas’ work is concerned with trash, waste and our commodity-centered culture. But for me the exhibition comes across as a celebration of the imagination and freedom of adolescence, when ideas are generated for the fun of it or just because, and objects are cobbled together to see what might happen. At that age you’re invincible, and nothing really matters.

The Dufala Brothers House (2010) at Haverford College

Donald E. Camp, Man Who Hears Music, Andre Raphael Smith, Earth pigment and casein mono-print, 22” X 30”, 2006

I don’t want to say much more about the ideas in there (so many more I can hardly believe it) because if you go, the show will reveal itself to you in ways you won’t expect. And you should go.

Here are some more reasons why:

Photographer Donald Camp’s elemental, giant portraits of African American men dominate the show. If you have never seen these one-offs printed with earth and casein, you owe it to yourself to see them now. These portraits tell a tale of self-invention and gravitas that overwhelms the popular culture’s focus on African American men as gangsters and gangstas. Camp is a former photographer for the Philadelphia Bulletin who manages to indict even the crappy newsprint and its quick and dirty printing methods in these masterpieces of material and social depth.

James Mundie, Portrait of a Big-fingered Boy, Pen and ink, 8” x 6”, 2004

James G. Mundie’s small ink drawings of circus freaks–another group of outsiders reimagined, dignified, and preserved by portraits that borrow art historical compositions–stand up well, even next to Camp’s gorgeous ultra closeups. Mundie and Camp are both on a mission to reestablish into the mainstream the rejected, without tampering with the subjects’ self-images and their control of their own destiny.

Matthew Fisher, The Ocean, Pencil on paper, 10 1/4” x 9 1/8”, 2009

Two other drawing wizards–Matt Fisher and Rob Matthews–are still more reasons to see this exhibit. Fisher’s 18th Century soldiers are vulnerable and awkward, even when they cavort or daydream. The delicate drawings are everyman in costume, playing a role and yet not quite inhabiting the clothes,  adult boys who are confused about how they could possibly be who they are and where they are–models of self-doubt as modern as they are antique. The deadpan drawings are delightful and quite like the soldiers–dreamy storybook figures that leap off the page into your heart.

Rob Matthews, Steve, Graphite on paper, 9” X 9”, 2008

In contrast to Fisher’s figures who exist as universal soldiers of any time, Rob Matthews’ portraits are documents of this time–ordinary family and friends depicted with art historical allusions that preserve the subjects in the continuum of history, that place them in that collective memory that erases most mortals in a couple of generations. Matthews said he thinks of these as memorials, and therefore has written on the back the subjects names and particulars. The context of this show highlights all the thinking and complexity that has gone into this seemingly deadpan take on social circumstances that nearly consume individual identity.

Joshua Mosley, Commute, Still image from mixed media animation, 2003

Out on his own moon, Joshua Mosley’s claymation cyber-video Commuter uses the cell phone as the opening metaphor for journeying beyond concrete physical circumstances to some place in the imagination or the mind. The mind’s world here is futuristic, an adventure down the wormhole of technology where physical and genetic facts seem almost beside the point! The journey is playful, defying nature, gravity, and other limits–and highlighting how technology is a magical mystery tour where we can escape who we really are where we really are.

Laura Graham, Forrest, 40” x 60” inches, Archival pigment print from 4x5 film, 2006

In the context of these complex works, Laura Graham’s large, introspective photos of women seem too large, their hints of psychological depth and mythic underpinnings not fully realized.

Beautiful Human, curated by Shelley Spector, is up to Oct. 9, 2009.Bea