Sarah
I don’t think I’ve ever been in an artist’s studio before quite like this. Walking into Sarah’s apartment after being in the streets of Newark was like getting to see someone’s safe haven from a busy, dirty city. She lives in a studio, so the living room, bedroom and kitchen are all pretty much one room, and then there’s a separate workspace that’s filled with huge windows overlooking the street corner. There were books strewn about the tables and floor about Japanese literature, plant life and what seemed like a collection of random biographies.
The artwork itself was throughout the studio/apartment space. Walking into the kitchenette/hall area, there were smaller pieces that seemed to be from a different period than the large canvases in her studio space. There were also a few sculptures on a table in the studio, “found objects” covered with plaster and a few straws (a box of straws sitting right next to them), and on a different table a set of ten or twelve line drawings on smaller paper.
To me, the most intriguing part of the visit came with Sarah’s explanation of her most recent canvas paintings in the studio area. She presented an idea of playing with the space within the canvas, and using fabrics other than just canvas to create a background. Her main idea in the paintings was a cut and paste method- she would take chunks of the middle of the canvas on a painting and paste it onto another canvas, or on another section of the same canvas. It was almost like testing the visual space set in front of you- when you’re looking at a painting it’s usually assumed to be a “2 dimensional” space, and nothing more. By ripping and playing with the actual material of the background, Sarah is testing the fundamental aspects of observing art. What are we really looking at- an image on a page or an entirely different world that’s impossible to physically enter? The colors of Sarah’s work was interesting as well- she really played with a collage rather than a specific palette. By doing this, I think she was allowing us to more clearly see the intent of the work, and the focus on the holes rather than the content.
Another aspect of Sarah’s apartment I found intriguing was her location. In the middle of a dirty city with a not-so-well-known reputation, I think her work really shows off of a culture we don’t look at so often. She even mentioned the sounds and the lights that she heard every day and was affected by, and I think the nitty gritty surrounding makes her work stand out even more.
Yinka Shonibare
The fact that the Newark Museum is completely attached to the Ballantine house made for a really interesting interpretation of the house upon entrance. I already knew I was in a museum, so I was almost expecting to see things displayed on the walls. However, even with the guarded banisters that each room had in the house, it still felt close to walking through a lived-in house that hasn’t been touched for a hundred years. The entire house is a piece of artwork; my first observation was the molded walls (that were actually plaster!) that were made to look like Moroccan leather. The foyer/central stairwell of the house also has a huge stained glass window that doesn’t necessarily match the old-fashioned style of the house, but still looks beautiful.
Walking into Shonibare’s exhibit was a startling experience. The room is full of color and patterns that just don’t match the rest of the house- the mannequins take up the majority of the visual space, and even before becoming acclimated I could feel the movement and liveliness of the “party.” All of the characters in the scene are in positions of motion, interacting with each other with hand gestures and bodily interaction (rather than with facial expression, seeing as they’re headless!) The headless part is pretty weird, but effective after I realized that it helps the viewer have their own interpretation on the subject of conversation.
The most interesting thing during my initial observation was the Dutch wax textiles that make up the clothing and decorations of the table. The clothing is in the style of the early 1900s, when the dining room of the Ballantine house was being used, but the patterns on the textiles are obviously more modern. (Many of the patterns are birds, one dress has modern-day showers printed on it, and all of the clothing is obnoxiously bright in color.) By doing this, I had the impression that Shonibare is consciously paying attention to the location of this scene, while simultaneously not directly repeating history. He creates a connection with modern day style and behavior that can now be placed in an old fashioned, “expected-to-be” conservative environment. The characters are obviously somewhat inebriated, with one woman’s feet placed on the table, and some of the men and women acting promiscuous with one another. Even the peacock sitting on the server’s platter evokes a feeling of uncomfort that isn’t expected to be seen in a house like this, but accepted merely because of the ridiculous nature of the situation.
Something that the class discussed about Shonibare’s choice of the Dutch wax textiles was the fact that the high period of the Ballantine house was during a period of colonization, and the West’s interest in exploiting the benefits of Africa. In this way, the characters (assuming they represent people from this period) are wearing their own culture’s exploitations. As a site-specific installation, Shonibare successfully reaches the public audience without completely detaching the characters from the scene they are sitting in.
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