Metro Pulse/Artbeat/Issues of Identity

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What:
Issues of Identity

Where:
UT's Ewing Gallery, 1715 Volunteer Boulevard

When:
Through Nov. 11. Call 974-3200. Reception following a slide lecture by exhibiting artist Enrique Chagoya on Friday, Nov. 2 at 5:30 p.m.in A/A Bldg., room 109.

A new UT art exhibit gets in our faces

by Heather Joyner

A century after Ellis Island's heyday, we are still asking what it means to be a citizen of this country and what we must do as individuals to overcome hatred of those unlike ourselves. Among other things, art can force us to examine our responses to different perspectives and to define where each of us stands in a very complex circle. Featuring works by a variety of artists, the Ewing Gallery's Issues of Identity in Recent American Art is a show that assumes many forms, as well. In addition to painting, there is photography, collage, video, and other media. Curated by Dan Mills of SUNY-Potsdam, the traveling exhibition captures our attention on a number of levels.

Employing their experiences to make important and provocative art are Enrique Chagoya, the late Tseng Kwong Chi, Robert Colescott, Brad Kahlhamer, Michael Oatman, Adrian Piper, Cindy Sherman, Masami Teraoka, and Carrie Mae Weems. Although Oatman, Piper, and Weems create work with a serious tone, other artists in the show revel in wit and sarcasm. For example, no one appears exempt from the fun Colescott pokes in his large expressionist canvases—not even fellow artists. Now in his 70s, Colescott paints buxom women and racism-reflecting images of writhing Africans that are raunchy and hard to ignore. Nineteen ninety-seven's "Venus II," a stab at deKooning, is but one painting that (as Village Voice art critic Peter Schjeldahl puts it) "announces [itself] with a bang, then draws us in for long, detailed perusal."

Photographer Tseng, who died of AIDS in 1990, made his mark with large-scale black and white images depicting a stereotypical Asian tourist. Wearing a Mao suit and stoic expression, Canadian-born Tseng inserted himself into scenes of the Grand Canyon, Niagara Falls, Mount Rushmore, etc. Clenching the camera's cable release in one fist, Tseng made of himself a tongue-in-cheek hero, teetering between cliché and truth. Along similar lines is photography by Sherman. Her self-portraits—appreciated by some, abhorred by others—play (rather than struggle) with appearances and what they say about one's identity.

Both Chagoya and Teraoka utilize their respective cultures' artistic traditions to comment on perceptions of Mestizo Mexicans and the Japanese. Chagoya juxtaposes baby shampoo being poured into a palm complete with stigmata and the words "No More Tears" with a cartoonish nine-fingered hand adorned with every symbol imaginable. His brilliant synthesis of Catholic and Post-Colonial Pop iconography is as charming as it is disturbing. Equally brilliant are Taraoka's Ukiyo-E or "Floating World"-inspired aquatinted woodcut prints from his "Hawaii Snorkel Series (Kunisada Eclipsed)." Their inclusion of a shapely-assed Western blonde splashing alongside classical Japanese figures makes them downright hilarious. But Teraoka is about more than humor. At 65, he considers himself a harbinger of social upheaval and has been quoted as saying, "I thought by the end of the 20th Century we would have evolved enough to stop fighting. We haven't learned much since medieval times. I am disappointed with humans in general. I expected more."

Selected photos from Weems' haunting Sea Island Series show trees dripping with Spanish moss, graves, and views of a man that looks like a slave. Referring to her family's African American roots and often accompanied by text, Weems' pictures are hard to place historically, furthering our sense that the South will forever be steeped in racism. Also inventing details of his ancestry, Kahlhamer paints Native Americans and associated images. Raised by adoptive parents in Wisconsin, he straddles two worlds, painting Indian maidens and a Sacajawea who resemble Eurotrash club girls.

As competent and compelling as much of the work presented is, the motivation for specific statements is sometimes hard to pin down. For instance, performance artist Piper's installation titled "Cornered," a triangular arrangement of chairs facing a television set, sends a "you could never understand my plight" message. However subtle it appears, the set-up sets up viewers to be cornered themselves, and it exemplifies much of what bogs down gender- and race- centered contemporary art.

Flanked by her father's West Virginia birth certificates (one from 1953 describing him as "octoroon;" another dated 1965 declaring him white), a videotape shows the professorial and Caucasian-looking Piper asserting that white gallery-goers must be uncomfortable and nervous upon learning that she "is black." Having created "confrontational" work for 35 years, Piper has been referred to as "determined, didactic, and very political." But her brand of confrontation seems limited to accusations. Is she challenging an audience she assumes is mostly white, or is she merely exorcising her own demons? Is the universality of subjugation at the heart of Piper's presentation or is her personal catharsis exhibitionist? To assume that someone is free from suffering because he or she has not been victimized by the same misunderstandings or injustices as oneself seems na�ve. True, art requires a degree of self-focus to be original. But if it fails to go beyond the strictly personal, we as viewers find it difficult to become involved, let alone moved. If we feel alienated by Piper's approach, are we ignorant?

Alienation, after all, is not limited to gender, race, or nationality. Issues of Identity wisely includes a second video installation by the once-incarcerated Oatman. A white male, he grapples with the denial of personal freedom due to other circumstances. Oatman's creepy shipping crate (sans one side and a lid) labeled "Commission of Correction" contains a desk beneath framed human teeth, an institutional blackboard, a small screen airing his narration, and a phrenological chart. On an adjacent wall hangs his portrait made by a police department artist. Its removal from the "prison set" emphasizes divisions within Oatman's own past. Although the video is more "real" than the image on the wall, neither tells us who Oatman really is. The artist suggests that despite things we cannot control, we can control what we make of our experiences.

As for the gutsy Ewing Gallery exhibition, it will not disappoint viewers willing to open their minds as well as their eyes.