CollageCommunity
by Josie Mai

May 2004

“Art is an instrument of change and transformation” (Clemente Padin). I believe this whole-heartedly. I would not choose to be involved in artistic dialogue if I did not believe this was possible. Keywords of course of “an” instrument of change, not “the” instrument of change. I am not naïve enough to think that only artists have the power to shed light on society’s struggles. As an artist I am just one member of a community of concerned and involved global citizens who ache for equity.

My challenge as an artist is to identify my community, my influences, and my resulting processes. In the words of artist Romare Bearden, “I am trying to explore, in terms of the particulars of the life I know best, those things common to all cultures.” Referencing my particular community will hopefully engage the viewer to reflect on their specific community, and from there, hopefully our global community.

Two art practices inform my process, collage and community art. Collage is defined in the Dictionary of Art as “[Fr. Coller: ‘to stick, glue’]. Art form and technique, incorporating the use of pre-existing materials or objects attached as part of a two-dimensional surface. Despite occasional usage by earlier artists and wide informal use in popular art, collage is associated closely with 20th century art, in which it has often served as a correlation with the pace and discontinuity of the modern world” (Turner 577). Artists like Picasso, Braque, Hoch, Schwitters, Cornell, Rauschenberg and Bearden himself were drawn to collage’s spontaneity, immediacy, and the visualizing of final results quickly. Collage encourages the creative transformation of the most ordinary materials, and 20th century postmodernism was all about this transformation.

In 1977 gallerist Andrew Crispo said, “Collage as a fine arts medium represents one of the most radical changes in art history. Radical changes in art concepts are rare occurrences.” But Picasso was making collages 100 years ago. We are all aware that today’s radical change is digital technology. I have been neck deep in this evolution of technique. My desire is still to collage, to spontaneously visualize my ideas quickly. But I am beginning to realize that digital is the new collage for me. I don’t need glue anymore. And according to the Dictionary of Art’s definition, I am still dealing with the pace and discontinuity of [my] modern world. Digital is this century’s version of “incorporating the use of pre-existing materials or objects attached as part of a two-dimensional surface”.

Yet I know I will need to be careful. I cannot and will not get lost in the screen, cut off from the interaction of my community. Digital collage and community must go hand-in-hand for me. Artist Chuck Welch said, “We live in an information age and yet we often lack vision and the capacity to experience the mystery of nature and life”. As soon as my artwork begins to lack vision, it will be time to immerse myself once again into the global community because “much great art grows out of dialogue. It is not only the work of the individual genius working in solitude who creates and innovates—it is the individual genius working in social context, responding to others and to the times” (Ken Friedman from Welch). The hardest part is defining this community. And discovering what community-based work if for myself. “There is much talk about ‘community-based’ work, but as yet insufficient debate around what community is, which communities artists should relate to, and who constitutes the community we all generically call the art world” (Carol Becker).

Artist and writer Suzanne Lacy edited the important book Mapping the Terrain: New Genre Public Art in 1995. Her following thoughts—in the introductory essay about combining different media in a community context—easily encompass the digital techniques in art that were in its toddler stage of development in 1995:

“For the past three or so decades visual artists of varying backgrounds and perspectives have been working in a manner that resembles political and social activity but is distinguished by its aesthetic sensibility. Dealing with some of the most profound issues of our time—toxic waste, race relations, homelessness, aging, gang warfare, and cultural identity—a group of visual artists has developed distinct models for an art whose public strategies of engagement are an important part of its aesthetic language. The source of these artworks’ structure is not exclusively visual or political information, but rather an internal necessity perceived by the artist in collaboration with his or her audience. We might describe this as ‘new genre public art’, to distinguish it in both form and intention from what has been called ‘public art’—a term used for the past 25 years to describe sculpture and installations sited in public places. Unlike much of what has heretofore been called public art, new genre public art—visual art that uses both traditional and non-traditional media to communicate and interact with a broad and diversified audience about issues directly relevant to their lives—is based on engagement. (As artist Jo Hanson suggests, ‘Much of what has been called public art might better be defined as private indulgence. Inherently public art is social intervention’.) The term ‘new genre’ has been used since the the late 60s to describe art that departs from traditional boundaries of media. Not specifically painting, sculpture, or film, for example, new genre art might include combinations of different media. Installations, performances, conceptual art, and mixed-media art, for example, fall into the new genre category, a catchall term for experimentation in both form and content. Attacking boundaries, new genre public artists draw on ideas from vanguard forms, but they add a developed sensibility about audience, social strategy, and effectiveness that is unique to visual art as we know it today” (Lacy 19-20).

The work of several community artists has greatly inspired me. In the words of artist Patricia Johanson, these artists “break down the barriers between the arts—painting, sculpture, architecture, landscape, and planning—and create relationships rather than objects” (Lacy ed. 245). The following is a brief description of those artists and the pieces that have so far intrigued me the most.

Sheila Levrant de Bretteville is an activist and artist who emphasizes ethnic and gender equality through rigorous public communication. She, like many community artists, “explores ways for the marginalized to make their way into the cultural mainstream” (Lacy ed. 217). In her work Pink of 1973, she handed out pieces of pink paper to women in Los Angeles, her own friends and others on the street. She asked them to describe what pink meant to them, and then assembled the responses on a poster along with blank spaces for audience responses.

Tim Rollins co-founded a group of twelve artists in the late 70s called Group Material. Their goal has been to include diverse groups and circumvent the elitism historically associated with curating. Group member Doug Ashford has written, “Often the social purpose of a particular artwork has been clouded by the way it gets seen within the [art] market and the museum. The juxtaposition with other practices, some not even by artists, shows that art has other possible functions and readings”. In Group Material’s piece People’s Choice of 1979, a storefront gallery in the Lower East Side of Manhattan displayed precious objects collected door to door in the neighborhood. The objects were displayed originally in homes and represented cultural values and included religious icons, souvenir calendars, sports posters, and even traditional art.

Jim Hubbard is a photojournalist. He considers himself an “advocacy journalist” and an “issue artist”. He received much attention for his documentation of the Detroit riots of 1967. He earned his Master of Divinity degree in 1990 and started to document the homeless, focusing on photographing the process of eviction and its impact on poor families. As he worked he realized that the kids he was photographing were interested in taking their own pictures. So Hubbard founded the Shooting Back Education and Media Center to teach photography, writing, and media skills to homeless and at-risk children in the DC area.

Alfredo Jaar is a Chilean photo-installation artist. His art continually deals with “the issue of the widening gap between the so-called Third World and the industrialized world”. In his installations he employs photographs, light boxes, and mirrors to create uncomfortable, complex situations in which the viewers become aware of their own complicity. In The Booth of 1989, three sides of a large, black, cube-shaped booth contained huge backlit photo transparencies of individuals he had worked with in non-Western countries. Their faces stared directly into the camera. In the fourth wall of the cube was a doorway where viewers could have a Polaroid taken. Upon looking at the photo they see themselves surrounded by the other faces. Patricia C. Phillips noted, “This surrounding filigree was the human evidence of suffering, of struggle, of the insidious perpetuation of the other in order to confirm the centrality of the self. Making the viewer complicit in the process of distancing, Jaar enacted a startling betrayal of individual security and complacency” (Lacy ed. 245).

Recently I was able to personally view the work of Emily Jacir at the Whitney Biennial. Jacir is a Palestinian-American living in Brooklyn. Her powerful piece Where We Come From (2001-2003) documents the restricted movement of Palestinians to and within the historic area of Palestine. Thirty photographs and corresponding texts in Arabic and English document Jacir’s attempt to fulfill the requests of this posed question: “If I [Jacir] could do anything for you, anywhere in Palestine, what would it be?” She performed the requests to the best of her ability; requests based on imagination and sometimes need. Requests included “water a tree in my village”, “walk the streets of Nazareth”, and “bring clothes and gifts to my family whom I have not seen for five years”.

Robert Filliou, founder of the Eternal Network, a correspondence art group in the 70s said, “The purpose of art was to make life more important than art” (Welch). I agree with the idea that art is not just a matter of technique. Technique is secondary to conception. Intention, idea, inward reality is foremost. Technique is merely a means of realizing ideas, of making ideas real. This is a tricky stance in art school, where focus can quickly and easily shift from process/idea formation to object/display. My first year of graduate school has been full of experimentation in technique. I drew, painted, collaged, photographed, sewed and made prints. I have ripped these up, put them back together again, posted them on the web. Through my exploration it has become clear that my process involves collage and community. Balancing the two will always be my challenge as an artist and a human being.

Andrew Crispo Gallery, Twelve Americans: Masters of Collage, 1977.

Becker, Carol ed. The Subversive Imagination: Artists, Society, and Social Responsibility, Routledge, New York, 1994.

Lacy, Suzanne ed. Mapping the Terrain: New Genre Public Art, Bay Press, 1995.

Lacy, Suzanne “Cultural Pilgrimages and Metaphoric Journeys” from Mapping the Terrain.

Turner, Jane ed. The Dictionary of Art v.7, Macmillan, New York, 1996.

Welch, Chuck ed. Eternal Network: A Mail Art Anthology, University of Calgary Press, 1995.