Week 3: Spirituality

The work we have been previewing in class this week has been in the medium of fibers. The class, myself included, had only a limited understanding of the scope and application of this medium and the many ways in which it has been used to create discourse on domestic issues,

feminism, and slavery. This is only a sampling of the many topics that fibers can be applied to.

To me, what sets fibers apart from any other medium is its strength. The idea that I am fascinated with about thread is the idea of smaller bits of thread condensed into a structure that creates strength. Thread can be used to hold something together, attach something, or to connect one point to another. However, once the thread is unraveled and split, the strength is gone. Therefore, fibers are also a transitory medium. This gives the artist a lot of flexibility in their message. It can also be said that fibers have a unifying, communal quality to it that no other medium possesses. One of the artists we have studied this week, Ann Hamilton, works in many different mediums besides fibers, but she approaches her work from a fibers standpoint. In the PBS documentary series, Art 21, Hamilton says of fibers:

"The metaphors that the cloth offer up are really, extraordinarily beautiful because every piece of cloth that we wear is made up of all these individual threads, whatever their weave, and that each one of those is still something that you can see. And the whole cloth kneads (needs) each one of those. SO it's a social metaphor for me, and it's actually very beautiful." (00:04:04 - 00:04:31)

One of Hamilton’s work, Linement, done in 1994, is one such example where she approaches words from a fiber standpoint. She actually lifts the lines in a book from the page and wraps these strands of paper into balls. When I think about it further, I see no fundamental distinction between words and letters and abstractions. The letter, "a" does not point to the sound or the component that makes up the word. It is just a shape of lines put together in a certain way that we register the concept that it is referring to: that is, the concept of the letter. We have been conditioned so well to no longer see letters as shapes. This is the notion that

Hamilton is playing with.

Contemporary art plays with every aspect of the physical world. In this work, Ann is actually lifting a flat, two-dimensional plane and creating a three-dimensional space with it. Once an object is changed so fundamentally, it interacts with the environment differently. The idea of playing with space is also an concept that artist Cai Guo-Qiang plays with in his installation work. It becomes something that moves around you and you around it, something that you develop a personal relationship with. Once the space is animated, don't know what that space will do to you. This sense of the uncertain is in strong contrast to a finished painting or flat surface. A visceral space is something you can walk into in one state, and leave in another.

Cai studied stage design at the Shanghai Drama Institute, which has deeply informed his installation work. He approaches every installation as a theatrical scene frozen in time. It is as though time stopped the moment you approached the work. To attempt to discuss or describe

his works with mere words do not do justice to the epic quality of it.

"Art is not about what you say. It's about those things you don't say."

Stage setting. Theatrical, visual impact that you enter into. And it's through visual impact that this pain is felt.

To be able to see this in person, to become a part of the performance, to become a part of the installation, to move through the environment, is truly powerful. Seeing these on video or in pictures does not do the work justice. They must be experienced in order to experience the full effect. These are overwhelming, beautiful, majestic in a melancholy and beautiful decay.

Decomposition, nostalgic, sentimentality, suspended in antiquity.

I am truly grateful to have had the privilege of seeing these works in person at Cai Guo-Qiang's show at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City.

I remember when I was an art student going to school in New York. The school was only 20 minutes away from central Manhattan, so it was a relatively short distance to access the dozens of world-class art museums that were in the city. Our teacher brought us on outings to the Natural History Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of Art, The Neue Gallerie, The Guggenheim, the Cooper Hewitt. These were all the museums we went to BEFORE our professor would bring us to the MoMA. She said that the MoMA was what we were working up toward, because in order for us to fully appreciate the MoMA, we had have practice of seeing art. Experiencing the MoMA is something that asks a lot from you, it demands a lot of effort on the part of the student to fully appreciate the work in there.

I have not really touched on this work as much as I would have liked to. However, my blog post is due in 5 minutes. I will discuss Cai and Hamilton's works in more detail in later supplementary blog posts and comments on this one.