“Being in a state of vulnerability is when you truly let out your grief,” he says. “Lately it’s hit me more and more how these atrocities have shattered my family. Committing myself to a performance that makes me physically and emotionally vulnerable helps lower barriers. It brings me closer to reality and allows me to comprehend what I have lost.”  Read More >>

Here is some great advise from Amiri Baraka for artists – in particular artists who are interested in making socially engaged work.

This interview is pulled from A Gathering of the Tribes Issue # 13, 2011.  Amiri Baraka is interviewed by Brian Boyles at Dillard University, New Orleans, Louisiana.

TRIBES

That leads me to my first question, actually.  Down here, right now, a lot of us are trying to make community art, to find ways that art can address community problems.  You have a lot of experience doing that in heated situations and in ground breaking ways.  When your trying to address community needs when making art, how do you go about working that dialectic out?  Figuring out, how can my creative force affect issues like crime or blight?

Amiri Baraka

Well, you have to first go back to what Mao says, “For whom?” You have to figure out, who your doing it for? And if you can identify the “For whom?” then you can understand exactly what effect it’s going to have for who you’re doing it for.

Because if you really are creating for some kind of elitist projection of what you think is valuable in that, it’s going to miss the masses of people.  Did you ever read an article called “Yenan lecture on Art?”

TRIBES

No.

Amiri Baraka

You should read that. 1941, Mao Tse-Tung.  I read it maybe 10 times.  It’s important, because he lays it out.  “For whom do you write? What is art? Art: An ideological reflection of the world.”  So what are you trying to tell people?  Once you know that, then clarify your intentions to yourself.

And a lot of times when your young, you don’t understand who you’re writing for, who you’re painting for.  For instance, Sartre says, “If you say, ‘Something is wrong, but I don’t know what it is,’ that’s art.  But if you say, ‘Something is wrong, and I do know what it is,’ that’s social protest.”  See you have to be willing to adjust to the needs of the community.  And the art that you create will be aimed at them.  Because the worst thing in the world is a skilled artist with bad ideas.  You can convince people.

My sister and I started a new project dedicated to Persian poetry written by women poets in the early Islamic period in Persia. We are producing a handmade artist book honoring the voices of Rabia Balki (early 900′s) and Zebun Nissa (1637-1701).

The Persian culture included and includes Iranians, Afghans, Tajiks, Sunnis, Shittes, Parsis, Ismailis, Sufis, Jews, Bahais and many others. Therefore one of our goals is to counter the hegemony of certain Persian traditions by making the project representative of and inclusive of all those people who share Persian history.

http://persianpoetryproject.com

I have recently been awarded the Keyholder Residency at The Lower East Side Printshop.  With access to The Printshop, I hope to continue building my work on the politics of representation.

McKee Gallery presents new work by Vija Celmins. (more…)

I have always been taught in my art history classes that oil painting originated in Europe in the 15th Century.

My sister, who recently came back from Afghanistan, told me that she saw oil paintings in the caves behind the destroyed Buddhas in Bamiyan.

I looked this up and it seems to be true :::

Samples from paintings, dating from the 7th century AD, were taken from caves behind two statues of Buddha in Bamiyan blown up as un-Islamic by Afghanistan’s hardline Taliban in 2001.

Scientists discovered paintings in 12 of the 50 caves were created using oil paints, possibly from walnut or poppy, the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) in France said on its Web site on Tuesday.

World’s oldest oil paintings in Afghanistan | Reuters

Stux Gallery presents Barakat.  Barakat is an Arabic word, meaning a gift or an offering.  Nine artists were invited from the Middle East and Africa to make a cultural offering.

A few artists spoke to me.  Sara Rahbar’s photographs are compelling.  I did not need a back story or even to know that she is from Iran to make a connection.  In Love Arrived and How Red #8 we see what looks like a woman in a white wedding dress.  She is wearing a black fabric mask over her face with only her eyes and red lipstick lined mouth peering out.  Her head-dress is a an American flag draped down her back.  The flag functions as an opened burqa – revealing the awaiting bride.  (more…)

David Zwirner gallery presents Who is sleeping on my pillow, new works by Swedish partners Mamma Andersson and Jockum Nordström.  Married for 24 years, they are exhibiting together for the first time with concurrent solo shows in opposite rooms of the gallery with collaborations in the Middle Gallery. (more…)