Construction exhibition catalog

C ON s T R U C T ION ( s ) Identity as cultural construction has been analyzed extensively over the last fifty years. From the Black Power and feminist movements of the 60’s and 70’s to the postcolonial and ethnic studies of the 90’s and queer theory in the 2000’s, the issue of identity is at the center of our everviolent world. The artists in this exhibition focus on questions of identity as modes through which an understanding of lived experience is transformed.

By exploring their subjective visions, they mirror our perceptions and dismantle the named and mastered. By questioning their own assumptions, they show us a fluid, permeable and poetic exploration of difference, while simultaneously constructing, deconstructing and reconstructing the world.

“PBS Series AMERICAN MASTERS & FINDING YOUR ROOTS WITH HENRY LOUIS GATES, JR., Reaches Record Number of Viewers: Over 16 Million.”

1.

My artworks use the language of furniture to investigate ideas around identity and

Trinh T. Minh-ha, Woman, Native, Other: Writing Postcoloniality and Feminism

ABC developed and aired a sitcom based on

I rebel at the notion that I can't be part of other

Cho's stand-up routine. The show, All American

groups, that I can't construct identities through

Girl, was initially feted as the first show promi-

elective affinity, that race must be the most

nently featuring an East Asian family. The show

important thing about me. Is that what I want on

suffered criticism from within the U.S. East Asian

my gravestone: Here lies an African American?

community over its perception of stereotyping.

Henry Louis Gates

Producers told Cho at different times during production both that she was "too Asian" and that she was “not Asian enough.” At one point during

Fo Wilson

Despite all our desperate, eternal attempts to separate, contain and mend, categories always leak.

the course of the show, producers hired a coach to teach Cho how to “be more Asian.”

Margaret Cho: All American Girl (1994 TV series)

Dawoud Bey My two photographs from the series "Strangers/Community" 1.

that is community. I wanted to do that by

culture.

2.

They are made of found objects collected over a period of time.

3.

Some include sound or video.

4.

The elements are composed in small wooden boxes on metal stands.

5.

I focus on ideas of xenophobia, issues

community who did not know each other,

Overheard: “Asian employees are like

and having them sit together within a

a piece of furniture, highly functional

particular space within that community to

and quiet.”

jointly present themselves to the camera,

1.

And looking as a way of seeing and 2.

and by extension to the larger world.

As an Asian immigrant, I can’t argue well because of the language barrier, and

harmonic dualism; assimilating difference.

bringing together two people from a given

Tao Huang

of gender identification, theories of 6.

Are about visualizing the complex thing

2.

Part of the process of making the work is

my Eastern-Asian culture dictates that I

for the two people who have never met to

should be modest and humble.

figure out how to present themselves to the camera.

That means that I, as a Chinese person, am supposed to keep to myself.

3.

They are seated or standing quite close

Afro-Surrealists strive for Rococo: the beautiful,

3.

Am I furniture?

to one another . . . enough so that one

the sensuous, and the whimsical. We turn to Sun

4.

My functional sculpture is an

person may end up mimicking the pose of

Ra, Toni Morrison, and Ghostface Killah. We look

uncomfortable bench made of reclaimed

to Kehinde Wiley, whose observation about the

mismatched wood.

black male body applies to all art and culture:

5.

"There is no objective image. And there is no way to objectively view the image itself.”

A MANIFESTO OF AFRO-SURREAL, D. Scott Miller

6.

the other.

4.

It became a sort of momentary bonding

The base is transparent and resembles a

with another human being, and

traditional Chinese fishing boat.

channeling that person's behavior, often

Virtual fish are inside the boat. Am I

in a very uncanny kind of way.

the fish?

*Excerpts from Community Pictures: Q+A with Dawoud Bey by Lisa Dent, Art in America, 07/06/12

Melissa Potter Come into my office and: 1.

2.

FRANCHISE

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EPISODE TITLE

TOTAL AUDIENCE

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Sex Role Inventory text for my ongoing

1

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project “Gender Assignment.”

2

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Analyze the results of my test results

3

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Combine the results of my Sex Role

5

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Inventory Test

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with the pivotal scenarios in my

7

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essays and posters.

4.

by Total Viewers For Each Franchise RANK

Participate while I use Dr. Sandra Bem’s

through images and quasi- scientific 3.

Highest Rated Real Housewives Season

life: marriage, career, interpersonal relationships.

5.

It’s all about me.

I feel much better now I've let it all out He's got big biceps and a masculine shout I’m not trying to sound like I'm trying to be mean But he thinks he can be a girl better than me Excerpt from Le Tigre, I Wish I Was Him

There is no gender identity behind the expressions of gender... Identity is performatively constituted by the very 'expressions' that are said to be its results.

Gender Trouble, Judith Butler

A woman ought to have four qualifications: (1) womanly virtue; (2) womanly words; (3) womanly bearing; and (4) womanly work. Now what is called womanly virtue need not be brilliant ability, exceptionally different from others. Womanly words need be neither clever in debate nor keen in conversation. Womanly appearance requires neither a pretty nor a perfect face and form. Womanly work need not be work done more skillfully than that of others.

The Views of a Female Confucian: Lessons for Women by Ban Zhao Pan Chao (c. 80 CE)

Wenhwa Ts’ao My 3 films, my 3 explorations into

The notion of a universality of human experience is

Whiteness does not exist at the biological level.

a confidence trick and the notion of a universality

It is a cultural construct, yet whiteness defines

of female experience is a clever confidence trick.

us and limits us. ……The tenets of postmod-

Angela Carter

ernism apply to the study of whiteness. Jean Baudrillard’s concept of the simulacrum as

The Blind Black White Supremacist: The sketch,

a copy lacking an original (Simulacra) can be

“Blind Supremacy,” featured the life of Clayton

applied to whiteness. The failed search of white

Bigsby (created and played by Chappelle), a biogra-

supremacists and others for a “lost pure white

phy of a blind white supremacist who is not aware

race” proves this point. Whiteness lacks an

that he is actually a black man. The character

original, yet it is performed and reperformed in

Bigsby was raised at the Wexler Home of the Blind,

myriad ways, so much so that it seems “natural”

where he was the only Negro that lived there, so he

to most. It is taken for granted—the norm that is

was told that he was white because it was easier.

unmarked. To question white- ness is to question

He grew up to be an author of six books about

the air around us; it’s always there, but nobody

his distaste of the non-Caucasian man; four of

acknowledges it. But air is real, unlike whiteness,

those books were published. Never seen in public because he hasn't left his property in years, until one day, he went to a book signing in town, and when he was asked to show his face, he shocked his audience with his black skin. Bigsby accepted the fact that he is black, but divorced his wife Prudence because she was a “xxxxx lover.”

Dave Chappelle

Myra Greene

pate in whatever network of marginal zones is spawned from other disciplinary centers and which, together, constitute a multiple displaceGender Trouble, Judith Butler

My White Friends 1.

This series of images explores the challenges of describing whiteness and

3 subjects: mother, sister, father.

assumptions about social circles.

“FUNG TSAO THEORIES”—my mother’s

The point is not to stay marginal, but to partici-

ment of those authorities.

experimental documentary filmmaking, my 1.

which has no biological basis.

Performing Whiteness: Postmodern Re/ Constructions in the Cinema, Gwendolyn Audrey Foster, SUNY Series, In Post-Modern Culture, Chapter 1 Pg 2.

2.

For this body of photographs I ask those

philosophy of life.

close to me who identify as white about

2.

“PEI PEI’S WEDDING”—my sister’s wedding.

the qualities of their racial identity.

3.

“EXERCISE WITH CHING YUNG”—my

3.

Exhibition and text curated by Sabina Ott, an internationally exhibiting artist and Professor of Art in the Art + Design Department of Columbia College Chicago.

These color images are attempts to image a racial category that has an

struggle with my father.

intangible description.

4.

Some images are documents of my time with friends, others are performances of whiteness by the sitter, and then there are images in which I impose my own stereotypes of white­ness.

Cover: Fo Wilson, The Nappys Revenge Queen Anne, 2011, Reclaimed curio cabinet, synthetic Afro wigs, 60” x 33” x 13”

Dawoud Bey Dawoud Bey, Professor in the Photography Department of Columbia College Chicago, began his career as a photographer in 1975 photographing in the streets of Harlem, New York. This five year project was later exhibited in his first one-person exhibition, "Harlem, USA" at the Studio Museum in Harlem in 1979. A graduate of Yale University, his photographs are included in the permanent collections of numerous museums, both in the United States and abroad, including the Addison Gallery of American Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Brooklyn Museum, the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University, the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, the Museum of Modern Art, NY, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and other museums worldwide. He has been honored with numerous fellowships over the course of his long career, including the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship (2002) and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts (1991).

Paula Beigelsen and Shirley Sims, Oxford, Georgia, 2010, 2013, Archival inkjet photograph, 32” x 40”, Courtesy of Stephen Daiter Gallery

Fo wilson Fo Wilson, Assistant Professor of Art in the Art+ Design Department’s Foundation Program of Columbia College Chicago, graduated with an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design’s Furniture Design program in 2005 with a concentration in Art History, Theory and Criticism.

Prior to her graduate studies, she ran her graphic design consultancy with offices in New York and the San Francisco Bay area. She writes and lectures about art, design, and craft to international audiences. Her furniture-based work is exhibited nationally, and her design work is included in the collection of the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum.

Talking in Tongues, untitled (#1), 2013, Walnut, steel, antique doll head, bell jar, wooden cross, plastic babydoll, booklet, 34” x 14” x 15”

W e n hw a T s a o Born and raised in Taiwan, Republic of China, Wenhwa Ts’ao is an award-winning filmmaker whose work has received numerous grants and scholarships such as the Illinois Arts Council Fellowship, the Kodak Faculty Award, and the Chicago Community Arts Assistance Program Grant. She is Associate Professor and Graduate Program Director in the Film and Video Department of Columbia College Chicago.

Her films explore issues of gender and the Asian American experience and have been showcased in the United States of America, France, China, Romania, Mexico, Ecuador, Africa, and at the Netherlands International Film Festival. Professor Ts’ao is developing a feature script inspired by the historical looting of the Silk Road Buddhist Treasure from 1885 to 1925, and a sci-fi film about a coming-of-age thirteen-year-old cyborg girl.

Left: Video still from FUNG TSAO THEORIES, 1997 Right: Video still from EXERCISE WITH CHING YUNG, 2003

Tao Huang Tao Huang, Assistant Professor in the Product Design Program of the Art + Design Department of Columbia College Chicago earned her PhD in Architecture + Design Research from Virginia Tech. She holds a Bachelor's and a Master's degree in Industrial Design from Beijing Institute of Technology and Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts, respectively. Professor Huang has served as Associate Chair of the Art + Design Department at Columbia College Chicago and has recently cofounded the Resilient Design Studio of Chicago.

Quiet Conversations, 2013, Reclaimed wood, lamps, mirror, metal, 56” x 15” x 18”

M y r a Gr e e n e Myra Greene, Associate Professor and Associate Chair of the Photography Department of Columbia College Chicago, was born in New York City and received her BFA from Washington University in St. Louis and her MFA in photography from the University of New Mexico. Professor Greene's work has been featured nationally in galleries and museums including Williams College of Art, the Art Museum of the Americas in Washington, DC, Spelman College Museum of Fine Art in Atlanta, the Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco, the Wadsworth Museum in Hartford, CT, and the Sculpture Center in New York City. Her work is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC in the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, and the New York Public Library.

My White Friends, J.S., Albuquerque, NM, 2008, Inkjet print, 20” x 20”

M e l i s s a P o tt e r Melissa Potter, Director of the Book and Paper Program and Associate Professor in the Interdisciplinary Arts Department of Columbia College Chicago, is a multi-media artist whose work explores gender in its relationship to individual expression, social interaction, and power dynamics.

Her work is expressed in paper, print, sculpture, and video animation. She has exhibited at venues such as the Bronx Museum of the Arts, and White Columns, where she was featured in the exhibition Regarding Gloria, one of the first survey precursors to the 2007 “year of feminism.” Professor Potter is a two-time Fulbright recipient. In her first award, she founded a hand papermaking program at the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of Belgrade in Serbia.

Gender Assignment Performance, 2013, installation view

a+D ar t

+ design

AVERILL AND BERNARD LEVITON

GALLERY HOURS

A+D GALLERY

TUESDAY – SATURDAY

619 SOUTH WABASH AVENUE

11AM – 5PM

CHICAGO, ILLINOIS 60605 312 369 8687

THURSDAY

COLUM.EDU/ADGALLERY

11AM – 8PM

Sabina Ott, Professor of Art in the Art and Design Department of Columbia College Chicago, has exhibited her work internationally in exhibitions such as the first Auckland Triennial in New Zealand, the Australian Contemporary Arts Center in Melbourne, as well as the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati, the Contemporary Art Museum in St. Louis, the Cleveland Center for Contemporary Art, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Her work is in the collection of the Corcoran Museum of American Art in Washington DC, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, The Saint Louis Art Museum, the University Art Museum, University of California in Berkeley, and the Orange County Museum of Art in California among others. She has received a National Endowment for the Arts Individual Artists Grant and a Howard Foundation Grant from Brown University, and has curated numerous exhibitions. Professor Ott is the Founder and Director of Terrain Exhibitions, a front yard project space in Oak Park, IL.

This exhibition is sponsored by the Art + Design Department at Columbia College Chicago. This exhibition is partially sponsored by a grant from the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency.

Above: Fo Wilson, Talking in Tongues, untitled (#3), 2013, Walnut, steel, found French clarinet, Will Smith action figure, gaf anscochrome slide viewer, 35mm photo of Miles Davis (Francis Wolff, 1954), 44” x 12” x 13” In situ photography: by Jacob Boll (’12)