Exhibition Review: Yayoi Kusama
This was an exhibition solely for the work of the contemporary Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama. She works in a range of mediums, but this exhibition was focusing on sculpture, installation and painting. Upon entering the exhibition you are directed to a room upstairs where you then queue for the infinity mirrored room. This is likely to be anyone’s favourite part of the exhibition as it’s an installation room where you immerse yourself in the artists world. Each wall is a mirror, creating the infinity effect complimented by big polka-dotted spheres with lights that alternate in colour creating an extraordinary cosmic and dream like atmosphere. I started to ask myself, how can I decorate my living room like this? Sadly you’re only allowed a minute in there, so you have to soak up the ambience quickly. What I also like about this part of the exhibition is that I feel it’s an experience that could be enjoyed by anyone, whether they have an interest in art or not.
We then move downstairs to the room of paintings and pumpkin sculptures before leading out to the garden area decorated with large and surreal flower sculptures. It’s apparent that though out the exhibition Yayoi has a strong relationship with symmetry, repetition and a connection to growth and nature. Personally I found this very soothing and calming to be around, almost therapeutic and hypnotic. Another thing which I really enjoyed at this point was the scale in which this artists works. She likes to do things big.
I thought this was where the exhibition ended but at the end of the garden was another door leading to an upstairs gallery filled with large paintings completely dominating the entire space. The only thing I really enjoyed about these again was the scale, because I like things big but the content of them was not to my taste. They were called ‘My eternal soul paintings’ which in theory sounds very nice. I did not find them intriguing or special but that is my own subjective analysis.
Images and Narrative
In this session we looked again at comic books and their images, predominantly at the way the narrative flows from one image to the next and how this tells the story. We learned about the different ways in which you can move from one picture to the next and what this is called using Scott McCloud’s theory as reference. We found that movement to movement and action to action were generally the most popular ways to do this.
We also divided into groups to create our own comic strips and tell a narrative using the above method. The main struggles in doing this as a group, besides the obvious time restriction was agreeing as a group what would happen in the story.
It was difficult for me to become enthused about this session as I have no interest in comics and as we have already looked at comics in CTS it’s not a topic I would have chosen to revisit. During one of the tasks we were passing around storyboards were we had 2 minutes to fill in an illustration relating to the previous one in a group of 6. I was passed a storyboard with a cartoon of a character committing suicide and then another sheet with headstones and R.I.P on it. Due to having recently suffered a bereavement of this nature this was quite triggering for me, and another reason that I found it very difficult to engage with the session.
Portaterms
This was one of my favorite CTS sessions so far as we explored and analysed some very thought provoking terms and words. Some of which I was already familiar with like Marxism, capitalism and Communism, and some I had not encountered before such as hegemony, egalitarian and dialectics. I like that the list of words encourage us to think about power, politics, social structures and our own existence as human beings. All fundamental things we should be thinking about as illustrators and image makers.
“All animals are born equal but some are born more equal than others”
;A very affective quote brought up by one of the tutors to help us understand one of the ways society looks at equality. We then split off into groups and explored more words such as globalism, anthropocene, culture, appropriation and cannon and in our groups created a quick piece of work and presentation about our word to express our understanding on it. Below is a picture of Rob. He was made by the group who were asked to represent appropriation, and is a figure of a caucasian male with Rastafari hair and aesthetic style.
Another student said they had had a minor discrepancy with someone about stereotypes and cultural appropriation. She said she considered it not to be cultural appropriation given certain contexts for a caucasian person to have dreadlocks as their is historical evidence of multiple cultures wearing their hair in dreadlocks across different cultures that were not aware of each other so therefore it could not have been stolen. She said someone else had disagreed with this because they believed the hairstyle had derived from black culture and that it had been stolen.
So why is it important that we understand these words and terms? Because as artists and illustrators we were reminded by a tutor that we are here to challenge the status quo and become critical thinkers. If we do not understand enough about the world around us it limits the way we think and make visual media, but also means our work at some point could possibly display a level of ignorance.
Creative Mindset: Bias, prejudice and stereotypes.
During out creative mindset session we looked into the varying types of bias and what is unconscious bias? To me it’s a way of thinking that’s hardwired into your brain. It can be changed, but only by removing and analysing layers of habitual thinking patterns.
We explored some interesting, and poignant case studies one of which was about a student who had wanted to produce work about her identity as a brown, female muslim. A male caucasian tutor suggested she should stay away from terms such as minority as it could unintentionally sound racist. He also went on to say he was also a minority because he is of a certain age in a youthful institution.
Of course we can’t be too hasty with our judgements, this not a court of law examining every aspect of the case study. However, evaluating the information we do have I would say he is being ignorant and in doing so the offensive one. It feels as though he is taking away from her the opportunity she has to express her thoughts about her race, sex and religion. Although being offensive is something we need to question when making work, it’s ironic that to me his commentary is offensive because it’s oppressive. Perhaps unintentionally, which is what brings us around to the subconscious and hardwired ways in which we make judgements.
Another issue is that normally, there will always be someone who is offended when you bring up topics of a political nature. Some of the most pinnacle moments in history which needed to happen to evoke change would have offended some people. Rap artist Stormzy has recently launched a book range and a scholarship to Cambridge for black students and writers to encourage a more inclusive society. Are some people offended by this? Yes. Is he wrong? No.
Stormy and Akala discussing Merky books at his book launch event; Photo by me.
Transnational Histories
This was a really interesting session as we started off by deciding who our top 10 most important artists of all time are. Without being given much time to think or research, it was no surprise that a lot of people came up with similar answers, as naturally a lot of us thought of the most famous artists, especially those who have influenced art in the last century or two.
Once the class had combined their answers and we did a show of hands to see which artists had been voted for the most, the final top 10 were listed on the wall. The list mainly represented a demographic which is known to be the most privileged; caucasian, European males. Although, being one of my all time favourite artists I was very happy that Frida Kahlo made the collective top 10. This set a poignant foundation for the rest of the session and highlighted how the history or art, illustration and visual media as we know it has been dominated by a specific group of people.
“Gatekeeper; someone who has the power to decide who gets particularresources and opportunities, and who does not” – Cambridge dictionary.
The question was asked “who are the gatekeepers?”. It’s apparent it falls back to privilege, and therefore this is why we need to revisit old works and unpick them with fresh eyes and minds.
What I’d like to take away from this session is how privilege effects us, what we can do as illustrators to use our privilege and who might the minorities who still go unheard today as the hand of privilege.
Object Vs Image
In this session we looked at comics, collections and how different physical publications involving illustration have been produced and used. I was particularly interested in a graphic novel which was brought up in the session called Palestine, and the illustrator who produced it; Joe Sacco.
For me what’s so fascinating is that through art and illustration there’s a power to tell stories that you may have difficulty capturing through camera because their in tough to reach places or environments. Hostile war zones, for example in Joe Sacco’s work. Creating something like a comic or graphic novel about this situation makes it accessible and palatable for people who are otherwise unlikely to have the topic being addressed in their eye line.
FrankieIVMBA 