rosemarysealavender - sea lavender
sea lavender

kit / 20s mostly a repository for articles, websites, fandom, and other resources i like and want to share. 

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'Untitled (Polka Dots - Providence, Rhode Island, 1976)'

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'Untitled (Polka Dots - Providence, Rhode Island, 1976)' 

I was just thinking, “I bet Francesca Woodman woulda liked Tumblr.”

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More Posts from Rosemarysealavender

2 years ago

Reblogging to clarify —

It’s unclear in the article if Kaphar actually crumples the original painting; usually as part of his practice he produces a replica that he then crumples to create the intended effect. 

HOWEVER, this does not undermine the impact of his work. 

I’m just being a nitpicky loser to point out the unlikelihood that Yale would actually encourage/permit him to transform the artwork (”damage” in registrars’/conservators’ parlance) via crumpling. (Having spent time working in the art collection of a university for which the posting of a sticky note on the frame of a painting was considered a veritable Art Emergency, I felt obliged to clarify that outside the Studio MFA program at Yale, the actual crumpling of the actual canvas is unlikely. 

There’s also an art-historical argument to retain the original painting as-is (though not in a place of prominence and not without interpretative text/ presentation) to underscore the concept of what it is that Kaphar’s painting (which should be in the place of prominence) radically rejects; i.e. to say, this is what came before and this is what we must be sure to not return to. 

But it can also be said, the visual indicators of the blood-soaked histories and present-day of the U.S.A. mandates the re-interpretation of the artwork via the visionary work of a Black artist, just as it mandates the destruction of Confederate monuments. The university is named after Elihu Yale, the physical and metaphorical landscape of the U.S.A. is still shaped (still scarred) by the legacies of enslavement and human trafficking and genocide that Euro-Americans committed against Black Americans and Indigenous peoples. White people still get married on plantations. 

We still don’t know the name of the Black child depicted in the original painting. Kaphar’s endeavor to humanize him only does so in the present day; we cannot reach back in time to hold the baby child and spare him the horrors of enslavement nor can we undo the centuries of white supremacy that inform our mindsets today. 

So if Kaphar were to transform the original canvas, to re-focus our attention onto the life and lived experiences of the little boy, that would be good/great/powerful. But I just don’t see Yale University owning up to its legacy in this way. 

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More resources, for the interested:

Titus Kaphar’s TEDtalk, ‘Can Art Amend History?’ (open-source video)

Lisa Farrington’s African-American Art: A Visual and Cultural History (link to WorldCat, a global library catalog)

Lorraine O’Grady,  “Olympia’s Maid: Reclaiming Black Female Subjectivity” (open-source academic article)

The late, great, bell hooks (RIP) wrote articles, including “The Oppositional Gaze,” 1992, (in response to Laura Mulvey’s “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” from 1975, which coined the term the ‘male gaze’) that might be of interest. I’m sorry; I don’t have a link for this one.

Now THIS Is Art.

Now THIS is art. 😍


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2 years ago
Milton Park - Cressida Campbell

Milton Park - Cressida Campbell

1989


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2 years ago

On 15 August 2021, one year ago this Monday, the city of Kabul fell to the Taliban. I’m marking this anniversary because it is an event that shattered the lives of so many people I know— people who continue to persevere in the face of fear, despair, uncertainty, and grief. 

A huge amount of journalism has been produced about the U.S.-coalition withdrawal, the fall of Kabul, the abandonment of Afghans, and the humanitarian crisis that is ongoing in Afghanistan right now. Here, I’ve gathered just a few pieces that I particularly recommend. Please consider reading these.

George Packer: “The Betrayal.” The Atlantic. 

ProPublica: “Hell at Abbey Gate: Chaos, Confusion, and Death in the Final Days of the War in Afghanistan.” ProPublica

Eliza Griswold. “The Afghans America Left Behind.” The New Yorker. 

Dan Lamothe and Alex Horton. “Documents reveal U.S. military’s frustration with White House, diplomats over Afghan evacuation.” Washington Post. 

Ben Smith: “How the U.S. Helped, and Hampered, the Escape of Afghan Journalists.” The New York Times. 

James Landale and Joseph Lee: “Afghanistan: Foreign Office chaotic during Kabul evacuation - whistleblower.” BBC. 

Mark Townshend: “‘Shameful’: Afghans who helped UK abandoned to a life of fear under the Taliban.” The Guardian. 

“Last Days in Afghanistan: Reflections on the U.S. Withdrawal.” The New York Times. 

Christina Goldbaum and David Zucchino: “Taliban Rewind the Clock: ‘A Woman is a Helpless and Powerless Creature’” The New York Times. 

Alive in Afghanistan: a ProPublica initiative to continue covering stories from Afghanistan. 

Zan Times: A woman-led human rights-focused news site covering life in Afghanistan under the Taliban.

***

I don’t want to participate in the portrayal of Afghanistan, and Afghans, as exclusively a nation and people of suffering. Some of the funniest people I have known in my life are Afghan. The Afghan students I know have continued posting on Facebook and TikTok even as their nation fell and they became refugees. They write poems. They read poems. They make memes. We should care about Afghanistan not because it is so extraordinarily indigent or abject in some sense, but because it is not: because there is so much to it that is lost through the act of not-caring.


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