Fri Dec 10, 2010 at 09:42:23 AM EST
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( - promoted by RiaD)
Liu Bolin, Hiding in the City No. 86, 2009 |
| slksfca :: Friday Open Thoughts: Invisible |
About the artist:
Liu, 36, of Shandong, China, spends up to 10 hours a time being painted so he perfectly matches the background.
Spots he has chosen in China and the UK include a phone box, a cannon and even earthquake rubble.
Some people walking past have no idea he is there unless he moves.
Liu calls his Hiding In The City series a "protest against the state" for cracking down on artists.
Hiding in the City also speaks to me of another kind of invisibility, illustrated by ongoing attempts to censor and suppress artistic freedom here in the United States. The Smithsonian in Washington, DC is currently in trouble over its exhibition, Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture, the first major American art show to look at art history from a queer perspective.
Hide/Seek considers such themes as the role of sexual difference in depicting modern America; how artists explored the fluidity of sexuality and gender; how major themes in modern art - especially abstraction - were influenced by social marginalization; and how art reflected society's evolving and changing attitudes toward sexuality, desire, and romantic attachment.
Earlier this week a somewhat bemused journalist from Britain's Guardian interviewed the show's curator, art historian Jonathan Katz. From that article:
Last week, after a sustained attack by opponents, including Republican House Speaker John Boehner and the Catholic League, the Smithsonian withdrew from Hide/Seek a video by the artist David Wojnarowicz, Fire in My Belly, which includes a crucifix covered in ants, symbolising the suffering of people with AIDS; Wojnarowicz died of the disease in 1992. Georgia congressman Jack Kingston, railing against the gallery's depictions of "male nudity" and "Ellen DeGeneres grabbing her breasts", is calling for a congressional review of the Smithsonian's funding.
"When," Katz asks, "will the decent majority of Americans stand against a fringe that sees censorship as a replacement for debate?" Hide/Seek sought to conquer what Katz calls "the last acceptable prejudice in American political life" - but the conservative right, rampant after last month's midterm elections, won't relinquish their prejudices without a fight. And so, "an exhibition explicitly intended to break a 21-year blacklist against the representation of same-sex desire," says a dispirited Katz, "now finds itself in the same boat."
In other words, back in the closet. Invisible. |
