"Currency: What do you value?" Catalog

What do you value?

Exhibition Catalog

FRONT COVER: Erika Harrsch, Inverted Sky (detail) BACK COVER: Keith Hale, In the Woods

What do you value?

Curated by Josie Lopez & Manuel Montoya

November 17, 2018 – February 23, 2019

516 Central Avenue SW Albuquerque, New Mexico 516arts.org

ARTISTS Mel Chin

Keith Hale

Christy Chow

Erika Harrsch

Jennifer Dalton

Steve Lambert

Nina Elder

Lance Ryan McGoldrick

Leonard Fresquez

Occupy Museums

Ramiro Gomez & David Feldman

Yoshiko Shimano

Hernan Gomez Chavez

Evan Desmond Yee

Scott Greene Curated by Dr. Josie Lopez & Dr. Manuel Montoya The New Bootleggers: Fabricating (Im)Propriety

Debtfair Organized by Occupy Museums (names listed as artists requested) Gallery Display: Jordan Alvarenga Frank Blazquez Emma Casady Caitlin Carcerano Amanda Dannáe George Evans Simone Frances Tlacaelel Fuentes Richard Garriott-Stejskal Isabel Hees Bryan Konefsky Patrick Manning Lance Ryan McGoldrick Danai Morningstar Yvette Nary Eden Radfarr Renee Romero Harold Specter Jasmine Vigil Digital Display: Alec B.C. Anderson Anonymous Anonymous Anonymous Anonymous Anonymous Alex Athens Chantel B L. BaLoMbiNi Hazel Batrezchavez

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Mitch Berg Beth Blakeman Bollinger Janet Bothne BreannaEmerencianaMora Sean Burke Lia Conzemius Jeanette Cook Lauren Deyo Erin Elder ELE Elizabeth Juana Estrada Hernandez Ranran Fan Tristano Farzan Lane Fenner Marie-Pier Frigon Elliot M Fubar Sean Paul Gallegos Erin Galvez Catherine Page Harris Thom Hölzer Emily Hutchings Jennings JG Jordan Jirschele Shirley K. Joanne Keane Lopez Chuck Lathrop Chuck Lathrop Lorraine E. Leslie Roe LiBretto loriMetals Gerald Lovato

Organized by Leonard Fresquez liliths love Sonia Luévano luke Lucinda Lynch Mezaland Mark Migliaccio Drew Miller Billy Joe Miller Mrs. Amnesia Candy Nartonis Nicky Ovitt Allyson Packer Vincent A Piazza André Ramos-Woodard Austin Reed Kari Kaplan Reeves Sheldon Richards Holly Roberts Terri Rolland Denise Weaver Ross RT David Rudolph Sarah Michael Schippling Michael Sharber Justin Thor Simenson Myriam Tapp Nick Tauro Jr. Nina Tichava Piers Watson Fehrunissa Willett Robert Willits Andre Woodard

Sven Barth Sterling Bartlett Raven Chacon Marissa Chavez Brendan Donnelly Max Farber Stefan Fitzgerald Leonard Fresquez Ry Fyan Thomas Christopher Haag Internet Discount Mall Ken Kagami Malcolm Kenter Rye Purvis Gregory Shimada Jillian Stein Jaime Tillotson Scott Daniel Williams Chase Winter

By Josie Lopez Co-Curator

INTRODUCTION

Examining a World-Upside-Down Currency: What do you value? began as a conversation with

The exhibition includes three large collaborative projects. In

Professor Manuel Montoya on various themes about money

Debtfair, Occupy Museums continues their ongoing inter-

and how it tells the story of our economic realities. After

vention that began at Art League Houston and appeared at the

exploring a deep field of artists working with currency as a

Whitney Biennial in 2017. The collective asked New Mexico

medium, we decided that the works selected for this exhibition

artists how debt affects them and their art and uses collected

had to address more than just the materiality of currency. We

data to explore the real impacts of debt. A total of 95 artists

chose to focus on work that embraces the multiple ways in

from around the state are represented in an installation on the

which we measure the worth of other aspects of life. Through

entrance wall of 516 ARTS.

this series of conversations, we selected 15 artists who expose the complex relationships between money and how society values or doesn’t value art, work and time. Many of the artists employ wit and satire to reveal economic inequities and dysfunctions. They ask: how do materialism and corporate interests take precedence over human and environmental concerns? How do debt and money impact art and creativity?

Literary critic and philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin described the concept of the Carnival as a subversive, disruptive, worldupside-down event in which the hypocrisy of everyday life was unmasked. During Carnival, social structures, including those that defined class and status, were disrupted. In Currency: What do you value?, artists reveal that everyday priorities are often upside down, and they encourage us to re-examine our relationship to money and how we live our lives.

One of the overarching issues that emerged from discussions with participating artists is the struggle to survive financially as an artist. As Nina Elder points out, the artist is one of the professions in which you are often working without knowing if you will be compensated. While there are many factors that contribute to the plight of the professional artist, including gallery and museum systems, the goal of the exhibition is to spur dialogue and create a space where challenging conversations about the worth of art and creativity can take place.

Albuquerque artist Leonard Fresquez has organized The New Bootleggers: Fabricating (Im)Propriety, an exhibit within the larger exhibition, which examines how commodities are valued. It features a bodega storefront. Rather than typical convenience store products inside, viewers are confronted with artist-produced bootlegged and knock-off goods created by 20 artists from around the world.

Mel Chin’s ongoing, national Fundred Project continues as an outreach program with local schools around New Mexico.

Leading up to and throughout the duration of the exhibition, students and participants of all ages are invited to create handmade currency with the ultimate goal of raising awareness about lead poisoning. The Fundreds will then be presented to our nation’s leaders in Washington DC, with the value embodied in them given as a down payment for political action.

The process of organizing this exhibition has itself been a collaboration with my co-curator Manuel Montoya, all of the artists, 516 ARTS Executive Director Suzanne Sbarge and our staff including Claude Smith, Mackensie Lewis and Katie Doyle.

I would like to thank them all for working together with me on this ambitious project, and the Board of Directors for believing in the freedom of expression and the power of art to create dialogue. Thank you to all of the generous supporters of this exhibition, who are listed on page 12. This project would not have been possible without a lead grant from The National Endowment for the Arts.

Josie Lopez, PhD, Curator at 516 ARTS, was born and raised in Albuquerque. She received her B.A. in History and M.A. in Teaching from Brown University.

She completed an M.A. in Art History at the University of New Mexico and her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. Her research interests include examining art as a discursive agent in the political arena, modern and contemporary Latin American art, 19th century France and Mexico, and the history of New Mexican art with a focus on printmaking. Lopez recently curated Puerto Rico: Defying Darkness at 516 ARTS, and wrote the book The Carved Line: Block Printmaking in New Mexico to accompany the exhibition of the same title she curated at the Albuquerque Museum.

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By Manuel Montoya Co-Curator

Currency and Capital – The First Human Power Long ago, I learned the textbook definition of money. Its functions include the following: a) it must serve as a medium of exchange, b) it serves as a unit of account, c) it serves as a store of value, and d) it is a standard for deferred payment.

Since then, money has become a part of my Life-CareerVenn-Diagram that bounces between push pins and poetry. I study currency and how it shapes economic behavior, and I teach my students that money is the story you tell about an economy. Like any person, it infiltrates my private life and shapes some of my hopes and dreams. As an intellectual project, I see it in my work to prevent exploitation and human trafficking. It helps me portray the problem of value to young minds as they navigate their entrepreneurial and educational journeys. And like anyone who has ever seen things that defy language, anyone who has ever encountered a mystery or learned a secret, money is at the crux of a fundamental human problem – how we name the world around us. It is a method wherein we designate all the nouns of the world as worthless, priceless, and everything in between. The artists that have been selected for this special exhibition on currency prove that art is currency, as I will try to explain in review of their work.

Money is not just a medium of exchange. It is a witness to those exchanges. In her piece Your Name Here (see page 10), Jennifer Dalton exposes a year’s worth of credit card offers

in a custom acrylic briefcase. It reminds me how often we keep our biggest secrets in our wallets and bags. There is great power in knowing the potential of one’s buying power.

Dalton’s work challenges us to confront the vulnerability of exposing that potential. What happens to every wish or need that is contained by the offer of credit? Currency is as much an act of concealment as it is a unit of account, and beyond the debts we owe are the debts of what might have been and what they say about our human system of storing value.

Mel Chin’s work embodies the storytelling power of currency.

His “drawn currency” shows us what is sovereign about sovereign money. I’ve long argued that the key part of sovereignty, the ability for us to make choices collectively to determine our common destiny, is based largely on our ability to have a sense of awe and wonder in our institutions. It is through art that this possibility becomes fully realized. Mel Chin takes this to a compelling height in his Fundred project.

He proposes a currency valued on our commitment to create water that is free from lead poisoning. He uses currency as an ideological placeholder – for children and for generations of people who will inherit tainted water as our legacy without a shared vision for a healthy water supply. For him, the adage “money talks” is not merely a sign of our capacity to be manipulated by money, but the exploration of common discourse for social good.

Hernan Gomez Chavez builds structures that remind us of the omnipresence of industry. The human desire to build

Mel Chin, Fundred Project (detail) • Hernan Gomez Chavez, Abstract Model Series #5

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and to cultivate shines in the pieces of rolled steel that compose his abstract models. But in the presence of the steel to support all aspects of modern progress, there is also a profound absence – a shadow that follows all progress. Although we can account for all we have built, how can we measure its parallel image? For all the world produces, more than half of the world’s economic output is still unaccounted for. How can we measure the invisible? What is the story we tell about that economy if what it is composed of is mere shadow to us?

Walter Benjamin once noted that the angel of history is forced to bear witness to the “wreckage piled upon wreckage” of what we have built, always pushed forward by the winds of progress. It is in Scott Greene’s work that we see the awesome ends of this pile we have built. In Deluge we can see how all things can be buried by water, and the lessons of Atlantis have not changed the smallness of human wealth. There is no name for the ultimate storm, and currency, like so many sheep can only be counted and cloned to the point where the sky is awoken and our accumulations are contained by the smallest of numbers.

And after the deluge, we become dust and time captures all that we consume into this giant cocoon of a planet. Evan Yee’s Amber Series takes modern devices that have reached the end of their life cycle and commits them to amber. When a Fitbit is dipped into an ocean of eternity, what does it become? What happens as an object transitions to a relic and how does our world revolve around things whose function is their form?

Thinking about ethereal materials leads me to Nina Elder’s work. Her series of drawings utilize a combination of charcoal and meteorites on paper. These meteorites are the subject of each drawing – demonstrating their absence from landscapes to reveal the hidden value of rare and scarce objects. I find her piece Ahnigito Meteorite, in transit to the American Museum of Natural History teaching me not only the value of the void left by a scarce object, but also the means whereby it gains its value. The tools used to transport these celestial ghost objects will remain to carry something else to some other destination. What is the value of those tools?

Those meteoric voids thread directly into Ramiro Gomez’s and David Feldman’s work (see page 6). By integrating flattened versions of laborers into manicured landscapes of wealth and privilege, they point out the alterity of labor. It is those who make our spaces beautiful who are largely absent from the narrative of that beauty.

As our workers are expelled from Eden, only the memory of what was beautiful remains and memory is capable of erasing people and their contributions. Las Meninas, North Fairing Road, Bel Air (see page 6) exemplifies this most for me. If capital is the power to assign value to objects, and such value is in our naming, we are given two laborers, with no name, propping up Diego Velasquez’s impression of the Infanta Margaret Theresa. In history, there will only be the names painted upon the flattened canvas of the nameless.

Scott Greene, Deluge, courtesy of Catherine Clark Gallery, San Francisco • Evan Desmond Yee, Amber No. 5 • Nina Elder, Ahnighito Meteorite, in transit to the American Museum of Natural History

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And what is in a name? Why does the brand supersede the object?

Leonard Fresquez challenges us to look at replica objects. His installation, titled The New Bootleggers: Fabricating (Im)Propriety (see page 11), features knock-off goods by 19 artists. The work demonstrates the value of production and its relationship to reproduction. Were it not for the name brand itself, would an elegantly produced handbag or wristwatch not still be a marvel of human ingenuity?

What is the claim over tradition that some objects are able to retain and who benefits from these renderings when they speak in the name of “Intellectual Property”?

The flattening of people is one of many things that leads down the road to sensationalism. What is sensationalism if not the extreme desire for one name and one set of values to overtake all others? Steve Lambert reveals an aesthetic that captures that desire to be seen above all. His work Enduring Values issues that meta-message as though it was among the cacophony of lights in Times Square or Piccadilly Circus. Wealth or Happiness reminds me of the choices we make when we take too much for ourselves and how the world finds a way to repay us. Like Victor Frankenstein’s great monster, I wonder what will happen if I look in the mirror every time I stood upon a pile of my victories and claimed them for myself.

Christie Chow’s installation Come Run in Me 2 harkens to Gille Deleuze’s concept of the “desiring machine.” The use of a treadmill set within a complex of high-end fashion boutique, powered by the strategic lighting and chic dresses in turn powers the monitors that reproduce the desire for the objects being experienced. Chow meticulously proposes that we are parts of the machine that perpetuates the infinite scaffolding of desire, energy, and value – constantly reproducing and consummating each other. Currency itself is implied by the installation by experiencing all parts of our consumption as a form of circulation.

I often think of storms as the silencer of politics, how their ineffable power shrinks our monuments. One look at Keith Hale’s work (see back cover) and we are witness to the scale of nature in relation to our perceptions of power. On the other end of the scale, is the message that Lance Ryan McGoldrick conveys. His Absurdity of a Trillion Dollars (see page 9) is captured through the measurement of grains of salt. Money is a metric, and in a world that often relies on points of reference to keep us sane, we see the smallness of these metrics as they relate to the power of the system of measurement itself. It is not only in the value we accumulate, but the power we give to how we measure it that makes periodic tables, almanacs, and ledgers govern the many human exchanges that compose our shared belonging to the world. And that is how I encounter Yoshiko Shimano’s work – whose Black Rain, Black Tears requires me to think of our nebulous relationship to resources.

Like proteins to amino acids, the chains of life are first built by the way we consume, both elegant and capable of vicious and painful rituals. Shimano connects the tragedies of Pearl Harbor and Hiroshima with the evolution of geopolitics. The piece represents both the cloud of nuclear dust and oil that characterized both events. In this work, we are witness to a hopeful moment, that peace and reconciliation can be achieved through economic cooperation and through the currency of a shared economic destiny.

Not long after the devastation of World War II, the desire for shared governance manifest in the Bretton Woods system and

Ramiro Gomez & David Feldman, Las Meninas, North Fairing Road, Bel Air, courtesy of Charlie James Gallery, Los Angeles

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“[Currency] is a force that represents our capacity to assign value. In a world where values are heavily contested and placed in extremes, the future of our shared economic destiny may rely on our openness to art and its capacity for shared meaning.” the struggle for a common system of recovery. Erika Harrsch’s Inverted Sky (see front cover) poetically embraces that moment. For me, the chaos she so elegantly exposes the vulnerability of the Tower of Babel built upon the ruins of our arrogance. The ephemeral nature of her work (especially the powerfully rendered Foreign Aid, represented by preferred currencies as butterflies), confirms for me the belief that our institutions are fragile and that we long for the ability to create a buoy in the middle of a vast, frustrating ocean of exchanges. To be indebted is complicated. Some people find obligations to others a necessary social function. Others believe it is the pathway to bondage. Somewhere in between is our conception of collective debt. And this is how Debtfair (see page 8) by the collective Occupy Museums (which is elaborated upon in the following essay) takes us to a place where we must rethink our relationship to debt and its massive consequences.

I hope this show prompts questions about the relationship between art and economy, between sacred and profane, between value and alterity. Because currency is not merely an immutable object. It is a force that represents our capacity to assign value. In a world where values are heavily contested and placed in extremes, the future of our shared economic destiny may rely on our openness to art and its capacity for shared meaning.

Manuel Montoya, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Global Structures and International Management at the University of New Mexico’s Anderson School of Management. He was born and raised in Mora, New Mexico, and received his B.A. in English Literature and Economics from the University of New Mexico. He has Master’s degrees from Oxford University and NYU as a Truman Scholar and Rhodes Scholar. He received his PhD at Emory University in Foreign Relations and Comparative Literature as a George Woodruff Scholar and a UNM Center for Regional Studies Fellow. His research interests mainly focus on a concept he refers to as “global legibility,” the process whereby humans conceptualize the planet and make it a meaningful part of their realities.

Steve Lambert, Wealth or Happiness • Christy Chow, Come Run in Me 2 • Yohsiko Shimano, Black Tears and Black Rain (detail)

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By Claire Stasiewisc

Debt – The Common Currency We all know the story of the starving artist: the talented, hardworking individual who sacrifices material possession and personal well-being for his or her craft. Often, the concept has been romanticized, and tales of artists living in poverty and struggling with mental and physical illness have been relayed in an idealized light. Today, the hard work and sacrifice of artists looks less romantic than it might in writing or even pop culture.

To continue creating art, many work multiple part-time jobs, make personal and professional sacrifices, live in unstable situations, and take on debt.

According to Occupy Museums, the collective that created Debtfair, Debtfair originated one year after Occupy Wall Street as an attempt to locate and leverage solidarity in the precarious economic realities of artists in our community, highlighting the harvesting of the personal debt of the 99% as an asset traded on the stock market by the 1%. Over the years, Debtfair has evolved into a framework within which local communities across the country can align in new ways. The present iteration of the project was conceived in partnership with 516 ARTS

to frame the economic realities of New Mexico artists in the larger context of the state-by-state financialization of the public sector.

So how does the debt of New Mexican artists stack up to the debt of other Americans? And how does this debt affect the work of these artists? Occupy Museums surveyed New Mexican artists in order to determine the economic position of these individuals and their overall relationship with their debt.

Eight in ten Americans carry some form of debt, with an average American household debt of $138,000 (Currier et. al, 2015). The average New Mexican holds over $5,600 in credit card debt alone, making the state the second worst for credit card debt in the nation – after Alaska (Ortiz, 2016). Of all New Mexican college graduates, 58% hold debt, with an average of $20,193 in student-loan debt (DiGangi, 2017).

Debtfair surveyed 97 artists from New Mexico, and 75.7% of respondents hold some form of debt, with a total debt average of $105,295 per individual. For Debtfair respondents, 48% have credit card debt and 39% hold student loan debt. Most respondents are educated, with 85% of Debtfair artists holding a college degree of some sort, and 32% holding a Master’s degree. However, 75% of all college graduates in Debtfair went into debt to finance their education at some point. This is not surprising, considering that in total, Americans own $1.5 trillion in student loan debt. Lance Ryan McGoldrick’s The Absurdity of a Trillion Dollars highlights the incomprehensibility of the reality of a trillion dollars through grains of salt. Though the salt weighs next to nothing, the weight of a trillion dollars – and of any debt held by an individual – is far greater. What makes student loan debt more complex is that many individuals do not work in the field they studied. Of the Debtfair participants who attended college, only 24% are currently working in their field of study.

When asked whether their art would look different if they didn’t hold debt, 67% responded that it would. Debtfair artists were asked, “What emotions does thinking about your debt elicit?”

In the most positive of cases, individuals responded that debt gives them motivation and determination to work harder and do better. In the worst (and overwhelming majority of responses), people stated that thinking about their debt made them anxious, nervous, panicked, shame-filled, frustrated, Occupy Museums, Mock-up for Debtfair New Mexico

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and depressed. In one of the most interesting examples, a respondent stated that his debt made him Torschlusspanik, a German word that literally means “gate-shut-panic.” Debt made this individual fearful that he was running out of time before the gate shuts on life – before he can achieve life goals.

Debt elicits visceral negative feelings and shame, yet 80% of Americans hold debt.

The piece by Jennifer Dalton, entitled Your Name Here, reflects the number of credit card offers she received in a year. The transparency of the briefcase is a stark contrast to how we typically hide debt, avoid discussing it, and sometimes just pretend it doesn’t exist. The value of Your Name Here, at $10,000, is a curious thing as well. If Dalton were to open her briefcase and activate one of the cards in the briefcase, she could unlock that $10,000 quite easily.

“Debtfair surveyed 97 artists from New Mexico, and 75.7% of respondents hold some form of debt, with a total debt average of $105,295 per individual.”

For many surveyed artists, having debt impacted their ability to produce new work, larger-scale work, or purchase materials.

For others, debt was emotionally crippling, stifling creativity and preventing the production of work. One respondent stated, “I believe that all creative work is influenced by environment and practice. Debt limits access to some experiences and to better quality materials. It perpetuates a creative poverty loop in which artists create works using inexpensive materials that relegate their output to a low market value.” Indeed, accessibility and resources are at the crux of creativity for many individuals. Production is difficult when you must sell one piece to afford to create another.

Aside from the cost of materials, there is the cost of being a part of the “art world” itself. To involve oneself in art fairs and juried exhibitions, there is often a fee. For young musicians, many are faced with the option to “pay-to-play”, meaning those that have existing resources may have their voices heard while those without access to money must find different opportunities. If art is intrinsically about talent, creativity, and the production of innovative work, should there be a price to participate? One artist put it quite simply: “My economic reality makes it difficult for me to develop as an artist. This reality puts limits on how I convey my vision for my work.”

Debt, accessibility, and opportunity also draw lines based on race and ethnicity. The Albuquerque Metro diversity profile shows that the population of Albuquerque identifies as 39.8% white, 48.5% Hispanic/Latino, 5.2% American Indian or Alaskan Native, and 2.3% black or African American. 61% of New Mexican Debtfair respondents identified themselves as white/Caucasian. 12% of New Mexican Debtfair respondents identified themselves as Hispanic/Latino. .03% of New Mexican Debtfair respondents identified themselves as Native American. .01% of New Mexican Debtfair respondents identified themselves as black or African American. With these

numbers in mind, it is possible that there is a representation issue at hand, or an accessibility issue drawn along lines of race. Last year’s Arts and Cultural District Creative Survey had a similar demographic breakdown of race in its respondents as did Debtfair. In the Creative Survey, 63% of respondents were white, and only 18.5% and 11.5% were Hispanic/Latino and Native American respectively. Although this data focuses on the Albuquerque metro area as opposed to the state of

Lance Ryan McGoldrick, The Absurdity of a Trillion Dollars • Jennifer Dalton, Your Name Here

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New Mexico, 79% of Debtfair respondents are a part of the Albuquerque metro area. The data from these two creativefocused race profiles in Albuquerque speaks to questions of both class and race – and begs the question: who has agency to pursue creative careers? The Debtfair responses could also be skewed based on who feels a desire to share and talk about their debt compared to others.

Talking about debt is not comfortable or common, but it is a discussion we must have when 80% of our population faces debt. Artists are perhaps impacted in a unique way by their debts, as their creative work can be directly influenced by their situations. One artist summed up the economic reality of his debt and what he draws from it: “My economic reality limits my ability to experiment with particular materials and work in a larger scale, thereby limiting my creative freedom. It limits my ability to apply to juried exhibitions, thereby limiting my ability to expand the market for my work. It limits my ability to attend in-town, or visit out-of-town, performances and museum exhibitions, thereby limiting access to inspirational experiences. However, it forces me to develop skills with the materials at hand, to educate the local community in which I exhibit, and to draw inspiration from within myself.”

Works cited: Currier, E. et. Al. (2015) “The Complex Story of American Debt.” Pew Charitable Trusts Reports. https://www.pewtrusts.org/-/media/assets/2015/07/ reach-of-debt-report_artfinal.pdf Accessed October 27, 2018.

DiGangi, C. (2017) “The average student loan debt in every state.” USA Today. https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/personalfinance/2017/04/28/ average-student-loan-debt-every-state/100893668/ Accessed October 27, 2018.

Ortiz, C. (2016). “New Mexico ranked second-highest in nation for this kind of debt.” Albuquerque Business First. https://www.bizjournals.com/ albuquerque/news/2016/12/22/new-mexico-ranked-second-highest-in-the-nation-for.html Accessed October 28, 2018.

Stasiewicz, C. (2017). “The Creative Survey of Albuquerque.” Downtown Arts and Cultural District.

Claire Stasiewicz is an adjunct professor of International Management at the University of New Mexico. For the past year, she has worked with artisans at the International Folk Art Market in Santa Fe, developing educational tools, programming, and opportunities for entrepreneurs from emerging markets.

Claire’s research focuses on the creative economy, and her goal is to facilitate the growth and development of new artists. She is a member of the Advisory Board of 516 ARTS.

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By Manuel Montoya Co-Curator

The New Bootleggers: Fabricating (Im)Propriety separate, parallel peasant economy, but handicrafts persist in Mexico precisely because they are fully articulated with modern capitalist production”.1 Not only is imitation a means of making brands and objects accessible across economic boundaries, but it is an essential component of “apprenticeship” and the dissemination of the skills needed to sustain future generations of craft work.

Even among what is referred to as “fine art” replication and imitation is a necessary form of cultural reproduction.

In China, it is common for exceptionally talented artists to make a living reproducing famous pieces of art. In the words of contributor Jillian Stein [taking intellectual property]…“ is theft…including companies… copying artists and The New Bootleggers: Fabricating (Im)Propriety speaks to a

creatives without consent or reimbursement… the term ‘boot-

fundamental problem regarding value and property. Who

legging to me infers the opposite’. Many of the artists

benefits from the skills that make creative industries thrive?

recollected that part of the issue with bootlegging is that it

The artists represented in this installation are all unified by the

challenges the over-valuation or as Chase Witter notes “that

proposition that imitation has a complex and ambiguous role

already have a somewhat arbitrary value placed on” goods

in the evolution of craft work and craft economy.

or ideas. In their reproduction of anti-anxiety drugs, titled

As Max Farber noted, “…I met a young man who made the bootleg Supreme shirts I have on display near Central de Abastos in Oaxaca and he was schooling an apprentice on how to silkscreen and was essentially just making cheaper versions of these “renaissance garments”… that are actually obtainable to

Clonazepam / Alazopram (see page 12), Jaime Tillotson and Scott Daniel Williams “aim to reclaim and dis-empower a stigmatized subject with a simple playfulness, recreating it as a toy, an insignificant bright colorful object to be had cheaply, and possibly anywhere.”

the youth in that city.” In her book on Oaxaca and archeological

It is this tension and pervasiveness of products that are com-

replicas and cultural production, Dr. Ronda Brulotte notes that

modified and then revalued and resignified that their value lies

“folk art may be cast as a pre-capitalist survival or part of a

not in the rarity of these objects nor in their craft, but rather in

“Who benefits from the skills that make creative industries thrive? The artists represented in this installation are all unified by the proposition that imitation has a complex and ambiguous role in the evolution of craft work and craft economy.“ Leonard Frequez & 18 artists, Mock-up for The New Booleggers: Fabricating (Im)Propriety

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“Where does authenticity come from and why do certain objects inherit gatekeepers and the political assumptions they bring with them?” relation to their ability to manipulate their value by means of their popularity. Sven Barth’s combination of logos in his work reminds us that “the idea of limited editions made in a factory is… hysterical”. These ironies are not lost on Malcom Kenter whose reproduction of Versace products both embrace how classical designs (wrought from Architecture as well as Art) are also capable of the “clichés and themes of advertising” that permeate “Americana.”

And it is in America that Brendan Donnelly makes a connection between art and politics. His rebranding of bootlegged tees from English to Arabic which since 9/11 have caused him to receive “cease and desists and have caused anger from people” — which is why he chose to add them to the installation. This challenges us to think about language as it relates to provenance. Where does authenticity come from and why do certain objects inherit gatekeepers and the political assumptions they bring with them?

And finally, the installation’s caretaker and curator, Leonard Fresquez has added a Gucci microwave, complete with the Gucci design as part of the functionality of the appliance and its “overlooked commercial designs” to his bootleg bodega. Part of his inspiration is derived from the idea that low-quality made products can be infused with value “for a fraction of what it costs [him] to find, buy and restore the authentic items.” This calls to mind the “shadow” part of “shadow economy. Some forms of production, while legally ambiguous are also part of the critical process whereby value is determined. Everywhere in this installation is the implication of the prefix “re” (reproduce, recreate, rethink, re-appropriate, reduce, replicate, revise…) and its relation to ethics, value, and belonging. Inside of this installation are products, their ideas, and their consummate shadows, all carefully stitched together and presented to you as both art and the reminder that we may all be part of the same hypocrisy… and therein lies the possibility of (re)demption.

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from Brulotte, R. (2012). Between Art and Artifact: Archaelogical Replicas & Cultural Production in Oaxaca, Mexico.

Austin, University of Texas Press.

Jaime Tillotson & Scott Daniel Williams, Clonazepam / Alazopram

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516 ARTS GOVERNING BOARD Danny López, Chair Suzanne Sbarge, President Mark Rohde, Vice President Rebecca Black, Treasurer/Secretary Pamela Cheek, PhD Larry Gernon, MD Kathleen Metzger Tim Price Tonya Turner Carroll ADVISORY BOARD Michael Berman David Campbell Mark Chavez Andrew Connors Devendra Contractor Ray Dewey Debi Dodge Idris Goodwin Tom Guralnick Deborah Jojola Jane Kennedy Arif Khan Diana K. McDonald, PhD Brian McMath Jenny McMath Elsa Menéndez

Marla Painter Andrea Polli, PhD Henry Rael Mary Anne Redding Rick Rennie Augustine Romero Arturo Sandoval Sommer Smith

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Slow Roasted Bocadillos Starline Printing Stubblefield Print & Signs

Suzanne Sbarge, Executive Director Claude Smith, Exhibitions & Fulcrum Fund Manager Josie Lopez, PhD, Curator Mackensie Lewis, Development Coordinator Katie Doyle, Education Coordinator Joni Thompson, Bookkeeper Jane Kennedy, Development Associate Caroline Blaker, Petroglyph Creative Ian Jones, Preparator VOLUNTEERS Chelsea Darter Jenny Liang Roxanne Marquez Xantha Miller Magdalena Sterling Regina Torrez

THANK YOU! The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts

This project is made possible in part by a grant from The National Endowment for the Arts and by a grant from New Mexico Arts, a division of the Department of Cultural Affairs.

Catalog published by 516 ARTS • 516 Central Avenue SW ,Albuquerque, NM 87102 USA • 505-242-1445 • 516arts.org Printed by Don Mickey Designs