Contemporary Art Commons^™

Disabling The Abled Eye: Disability In Contemporary Art, Audrey Washuta

Honors Theses

In this thesis I examine the disability identity reflected in contemporary art history. This thesis utilizes theorists in disability studies to expose the lack of meaningful discourse regarding the disabled experience. By focusing on the need to dismantle the abled lens and highlighting disabled artists themselves, I bring to light the need for disability to be viewed as a social construct and not something to be fixed or eliminated. I highlight the importance of bringing disability to contemporary art as it fosters a space for the disabled narrative to come to light. I also highlight that the field of the …

(End)Zones And (Out)Fields Of Production: Contemporary Conditions Of Labor And Artistic Critique, Stephanie G. Anderson

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In a 2013 exhibition publication titled It’s the Political Economy, Stupid!, John Roberts made the observation that “Over the last ten years we have become witness to an extraordinary assimilation of art theory and practice into the categories of labor and production.” Whereas once art claimed for itself a critical capacity in relation to the larger system of capitalist domination by its status as a putatively ‘autonomous’ sphere of production from which it leveraged its difference and critique, today it is largely acknowledged that there is no longer any such ‘outside’ to be aspired to. If, in the recent …

Picturing A Pandemic: Zoe Leonard’S Analogue, J. Nathan Goldberg

Binghamton University Undergraduate Journal

This paper examines Zoe Leonard’s Analogue and its implications in our contemporary society, tracing a globalized economic system and its perpetuation of inequalities to the present COVID- 19 crisis. I argue that through temporal shifts, her photographs of closed storefront, empty streets, and an interconnected world commerce, Leonard not only depicted a moment at the turn of the twenty-first century, but also created a work that is prescient, one that speaks to our current moment. By exposing the economic system and inequalities that ordinarily remain hidden in our world, Leonard marks a historical juncture of change (that is, the closing …

Recoding The Archive: Memory And Identity In The Photographic And Filmic Works Of Shirin Neshat, Shoja Azari, And Alia Ali, Olivia K. Johnson

LSU Master's Theses

Shirin Neshat, Shoja Azari, and Alia Ali are artists of Middle Eastern descent living and working in the United States, mainly in photographic and filmic modes. Neshat and Azari were born in Iran and immigrated to the U.S. amid the 1979 Iranian Revolution, which drastically changed the political and cultural landscape of the country. Ali was born in Yemen but her father is specifically South Yemeni and her mother Yugoslavian, two countries that no longer exist. As artists experiencing exile and diaspora, with complicated relationships to their home countries, their identities are muddled by hybridity and the struggle between being …

An Ode To James Van Der Zee: Lorna Simpson’S 9 Props, Emilie C. Boone

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

(Review) Indelible Ink: Native Women, Printmaking, Collaboration, Presented At The University Of New Mexico Art Museum, David Saiz, Paloma Barraza

Hemisphere: Visual Cultures of the Americas

No abstract provided.

(Review) A Memorial To Those Who Mourn: Marie Watt’S Untitled (Mother, Mother) And Correlating Sewing Circle, Angie Rizzo

Hemisphere: Visual Cultures of the Americas

No abstract provided.

The Jewish Museum Of Florida-Fiu: Archives On The Edge, Todd Bothel, Jacqueline Goldstein, Luna Goldberg

Archives Day

As the COVID-19 pandemic has threatened much of our access to communal spaces of learning and research such as universities, libraries, and museum collections, many new technologies have emerged to make these resources accessible to the public from the comfort of their homes.

The Jewish Museum of Florida-FIU (JMOF) collection consists of ~60,000 objects, documents, images and ephemera. The collections are wide-ranging in content, cover numerous subject headings and geographically represent all sixty-seven counties of Florida and Cuba.

Join the JMOF staff for a series of lightning talks with Registrar Todd Bothel, Curator Jacqueline Goldstein, and Education Manager Luna Goldberg. …

Optics In Art: Ways Of Seeing, Christian J. Baker

P-12 Lesson Plans

In this lesson, which relies on art from the ZMA Collection and the exhibition it's your world for the moment displayed in fall 2020, students will learn about the basic mechanics of the eye and its similarities to the camera, explore the history of the camera obscura and its use in art and early photography, learn about perspective as a principle of photography, and learn to relay information on major artists by way of their relationship or impact on photography as an artistic medium.

The Art Of Opacity: Guy De Cointet In L.A., Media Farzin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation provides the first detailed study of the work of French artist Guy de Cointet (1934–1983), specifically the books, objects, and performances he produced in Los Angeles between 1971 and 1983. Much of this work mined pop-cultural sources—genre fiction, magazine advertising, and television serials—for texts, which he reused in deliberately obfuscated ways: in pseudonymous publications written in code or invented languages, as well as in sigil-like paintings that doubled as props for performances in which actors delivered contradictory interpretations of the encoded objects. I argue that Cointet’s appropriations of the visual and narrative logics of postwar culture provide a …

Northwest Coast Native Art Beyond Revival, 1962–1992, Christopher T. Green

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Histories of “primitivism” in the avant-garde show that Euro-American modernism was always engaged in the appropriation of nonwestern and Indigenous art, with particular interest in Northwest Coast Native art forms by the Surrealists, Abstract Expressionists, and Indian Space Painters. However, there has been little consideration for how Northwest Coast Native artists chose to engage with the styles and tenets of Western modern art. To date, the history of post-war Northwest Coast Native art has been dominated by what is known as the Renaissance, a narrative in which artists pursued a neo-traditional style in modern times through the recovered and revival …

Relocated Pilgrimage: An Artistic Via Dolorosa In The Heart Of Amsterdam, Lieke Wijnia

International Journal of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage

The route of the iconic Stations of the Cross is not only connected to physical locations of the Via Dolorosa in Jerusalem, but is also manifest in Catholic churches, processions, and passion plays, as well as heritage sites and shrines around the world. A twenty-first-century relocation of this pilgrimage is the international project Art Stations of the Cross. With the aim to offer artistic reflections on social injustice, each station is represented by an artwork especially located in a heritage site. Presented as a journey of contemplation, the 2019 edition took place in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. In this article, participant …

Cecily Brown And Maureen Gallace: Teaching Covert Feminism In Public School, Danielle Salyers

Institute for the Humanities Theses

Feminist art consisting of explicit, provocative, and politically charged imagery is common in the university setting and the wider art world. Although this freedom from inhibition certainly functions as a valuable source of inspiration for those fortunate enough to participate in the institution of higher education, content of this nature potentially works against feminism’s goals by excluding the youngest audience at the moment they are forming ideas about gender relations; students at the K-12 level. As a public-school art educator, I am faced with strict censorship policies that make it difficult to include students in the ongoing feminist conversation by …

Imperial Myths, Abject Devotion: Mapping Affect In New Mexican Visual Culture And Discourse, N. C. Lira-Pérez

American Studies ETDs

New Mexican visual art and culture, as molded by state-sanctioned endeavors, is often casted in order to conceal the tension, conflict, and violence of settler colonialism and imperialism. Widely known myths of empire, such as the Tricultural myth, create a visualizing enterprise through which settler colonial logics transit and create political material reality. This thesis explores the following questions: How do New Mexican Hispanos and queer Chicanxs position themselves in relation to the logics of settler colonialism and empire? How are they positioned in relation to settler colonialism and empire? On the one hand, I argue that the state of …

The People Who “Burn”: “Communication,” Unity, And Change In Belarusian Discourse On Public Creativity, Anton Dinerstein

Doctoral Dissertations

The main intellectual problem I address in this study is how everyday communication activates the relationship between creativity, conflict, and change. More specifically, I look at how the communication of creativity becomes a process of transformation, innovation, and change and how people are propelled to create through everyday communication practices in the face of conflict and opposition. To approach this problem, I use the case of communication in modern-day Belarus to show how creativity becomes a vehicle for and a source of new social and cultural routines among the independent grassroots communities and initiatives in Minsk. On one level, I …

Being In The Place Of Possibility, Laura Domencic

MFA in Visual Arts Theses

This paper explores my art practice as a phenomenological search for understanding how to be in the world. It begins with a description of my practice as a way to access the place of possibility that exists between faith and doubt. I examine materiality in art making to encourage consideration of both the physical and temporal nature of experience and to find balance with the increasingly incorporeal experience of the digital world. I discuss the materials and processes of drawing, sewing, and printmaking within their historical contexts. This paper connects my practice with artists who consider the act of perception …

Contemporary Handicraft, Textile Art, And Feminist Social Critique, Kaitlynn Blow

Honors Theses

My thesis looks at the work of female contemporary artists who use what has historically been considered “women’s craft” such as embroidery, knitting, stitching and other various textile arts. Since the Women’s Art Movement of the 1970s, women have used these creative outlets to express discontent and injustice in their lives revolving around gender and identity. In my research, three main themes emerged as addressed in each chapter. The first theme addresses the topic of domesticity and memory including unseen female labor, such as domestic chores and motherhood, and how fabric holds memories. Chapter two covers gender politics- specifically the …

My Exploration Of Treasures From The Mind Of David Park, Brittany Schwartz

Honors Theses

My honors thesis, “My Exploration of Treasures from the Mind of David Park” draws attention to communicate my sense of the female figure to the viewer, while taking particular gestures from the figures of the Bay Area painter David Park’s work. I seek to convey how the self or essence of being can appear on canvas. David Park resonated with me because of his eye for exceptional color combinations, physicality he builds with substance on canvas, use of bold mark-making and simplicity of forms. I am manipulating David Park’s representations of figures and making my own compositions, applying drybrush, oil …

Tactics For Thriving On Multiplicity: Liliana Porter’S Photo-Drawing-Installations, 1973–Present, Jennifer Bratovich

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines Porter’s hybrid 1973 works during a period of transnational artistic mobility. It argues she employed strategies of reproduction and contingency to circulate the works among multiple contexts, and shows how her 2012 revisiting of these works led to their revitalization within current reassessments of Latin American conceptualism.

Beyond Movements: Senga Nengudi’S Art Within And Without Feminism, Postminimalism, And The Black Arts Movement, Tess Thackara

Theses and Dissertations

An examination of Senga Nengudi's relationship to Feminism, Postminimalism, and the Black Arts Movement. This thesis argues that, while her work overlapped with those three movements and tendencies, she ultimately expanded each of them to absorb greater sets of cultural references and formal criteria into their makeup.