COLUMBIA UNDERGRADUATE JOURNAL of ART HISTORY Winter 2021
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
COLUMBIA UNDERGRADUATE JOURNAL of ART HISTORY Winter 2021 COLUMBIA UNDERGRADUATE JOURNAL of ART HISTORY Winter 2021 The Columbia Undergraduate Journal of Art History January 2021 Volume 3, No. 1 A special thanks to Professor Barry Bergdoll and the Columbia Department of Art History and Archaeology for sponsoring this student publication. New York, New York Editorial Board Editor-in-Chief Noah Percy Yasemin Aykan Designers Elizabeth Mullaney Lead Editors Zehra Naqvi Noah Seeman Lilly Cao Editor Kaya Alim Michael Coiro Jackie Chu Drey Carr Yuxin Chen Olivia Doyle Millie Felder Kaleigh McCormick Sophia Fung Sam Needleman Bri Schmidt Claire Wilson Special thanks to visual arts student and lead editor Lilly Cao, CC’22, for cover art, Skin I, 2020. Oil on canvas. An Editor’s Note Dear Reader, In a way, this journal has been a product of the year’s cri- ses—our irst independent Spring Edition was nearly interrupted by the start of the COVID-19 Pandemic and this Winter Edition arrives amidst the irst round of vaccine distribution. he humanities are often characterized as cloistered within the ivory tower, but it seems this year has irreversibly punctured that insulation (or its illusion). As under- graduates, our staf has been displaced, and among our ranks are the frontline workers and economically disadvantaged students who have borne the brunt of this crisis. In this issue, we have decided to confront the moment’s signiicance rather than aspire for escapist normalcy. After months of lockdown and social distancing in New York, we decided for the irst time to include a theme in our call for papers: Art in Conine- ment. We asked a few questions: How are the arts afected by the medi- cal, social, and economic crises which give rise to coninement? How are the arts enlisted in periods of personal or collective coninement? What aspects of coninement—restrictions on mobility, social isolation, architectural barriers—manifest in art? he irst among four extraordinary responses, Laurie Roark turns the academic lens towards vlogs. After a year lived through Zoom, Youtube, and Tiktok, Roark’s reading of Ann Hirsh’s “Scandalicious” ofers an examination of the uploaded videos we have relied on to preserve socialization and entertainment during coninement, arguing that the medium itself conines the artist to a display of disingenuous narcissism. In Questioning the Useful Corpse Aubrienne Krysiewicz- Bell summons the AIDS crisis in the work of David Wojnarowicz to interrogate how the visualization of a pandemic’s human toll can resist lattening subjects to ‘victims’ and mobilize for action. It is a pertinent quest; this year images of overrun emergency rooms, stacked coins, and even mass graves seemed to fail to deliver a sense of urgency to much of the American public. hough COVID gave rise to our theme, we would be remiss to overlook the ongoing crises of injustice that appeared long before 2020, those of systemic racism and colonialism. Zoë Hopkins combines Black feminist and postcolonial theory to analyze an assemblage of Wangechi Mutu, demonstrating how categories of identity—gender, race, Self, Other—conine marginalized bodies, and how Mutu’s work imagines liberatory alternatives. he conining nature of colonial identity is explored again in the context of Southeast Asia by Ashleigh Chow. She examines Lee Wen’s hyper-racialized performance, Yellow Man in Jour- ney of a Yellow Man #1 (1992), to suggest that his ironic and paradoxi- cal self-presentation subverts the colonial gaze though it may appear to reproduce orientalist essentialization. In our varia section, Jennifer Yang assembles a collection of emerging contemporary artists—Wimo Ambala Bayang from Indone- sia, Yee I-Lann from Malaysia, Wawi Navarroza from the Philippines— to lay out how photography can challenge colonial legacies and fashion local post-colonial identities in a South-East Asia often overlooked by art historians. Finally, Calista Blanchard unsettles Christian and Pagan aesthetic divisions in the Caucuses, examining the pagan origins of 5th- century cross pillars in Georgian outdoor cathedrals. Her work contrib- utes to broader eforts to recover early Christianity’s continuity with the polytheistic past from later erasure. Together, this constellation of articles runs the gauntlet be- tween ponderance and provocation, delivering an array of truly exciting undergraduate work. We hope this small intellectual exchange can ofer readers insight into both the signiicance and continuity of our moment. Happy Reading, Noah And Yasemin Table of Contents Art in Confinement Scandalishious Narcissism 8 Laurie Roark he Boundaries of Intimacy in Internet Yale University ‘21 Video Performance Cyborg Assemblage 21 Zoe Hopkins Wangechi Mutu and the Harvard University ‘23 Politics of Hybridity Questioning the 32 Aubrienne Krysiewicz-Bell Useful Corpse Harvard University ‘23 Representing AIDS in the Work of David Wojnarowicz Of ‘Yellow’ 40 Ashleigh Chow Performing Orientalisms and Cultural he Courtauld Institute of Art ‘21 Hybridity in Lee Wen’s “Journey of a Yellow Man No. 1” Varia Reimagining Southeast 60 Jennifer Yang Asian Postcoloniality University of Sydney ‘22 Local strategies of photographic represen- tation in Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines Stone Trees and 77 Calista Blanchard Holy Forests Rutgers University—New Brunswick ‘21 An Investigation into the Pagan Origins of the Georgian Cross Pillar ART IN are o it? ow th se t c H e i ia a r r e l, t v s i a - n a g o f d s h e , c e c l i c t a o h e c d n i w o d b s e m e y s m t i i h e c r c al How s of con- on a ct o CONs re e r r p e t s c p h a o l f e t l e o a a c s r h t i t d v s o W e e i ? n r c t e o l n i p n e s t f e n i m n d e FINE ement— t? tio f n ar n, - re a a s in r l t c r t h o s s i i c i e t f t e i l i c MENTo a n t n i u a c s r o a m o s l n , y b — t m s a i r l r e i o i r b Among 2020’s remarkable images were the grids of painted circles that first lined New York City’s Domino Park. As unfor- gettable signs of social distancing, they provide one sense of confinement: the prohibition of interpersonal proximity. 8 Scandalishious Narcissism Scandalishious Narcissism h e Boundaries of Intimacy in Internet Video Performance Laurie Roark Figure 1. “Scandalishious” YouTube channel in 2008, reconstructed screen- shot via Net Art Anthology. Abstract In 2008, video performance artist Ann Hirsch—then a graduate student at Syracuse University—became interested in YouTube as a means to explore media and sexuality, and she began uploading videos on a channel called “Scandalishious,” in which she performed as a college freshman named Caroline. Hirsch’s performance took place entirely from her bedroom in Syracuse over an eighteen-month period, and in it, she adopted the conven- tions of young women’s internet videos, performing the intimacy of opening the girl’s bedroom to the public eye—exposing the interior. In the project, too, Hirsch relishes in the online attention she receives, and her performance of the vlog—the “camwhore”—is the natural development of video art’s Columbia Undergraduate Journal of Art History 9 “aesthetics of narcissism,” as discussed by Rosalind Krauss. his essay explores “Scandalishious” and the dualism of intimacy and narcissism in Hirsch’s internet-based performance. YouTube was never the non-hegemonic media utopia that Hirsch envisioned, but instead, a platform literally encoded with algorithmic restrictions. Hirsch’s adoption of tropes for young women on the internet, with her simultaneous refusal to let them go unchallenged, serves as a critique of online space—which at irst blush can seem liberating for young women, but that ultimately proves destructive. n 1931, Virginia Woolf relected At the time, the platform’s Ion her success as a writer and slogan was “Broadcast Yourself,” artist in the now famous speech and that is what its users did. he “Professions for Women.” She en- vast majority of videos were unpol- couraged the young women in the ished and low-i, many recorded on audience to write, to create, telling webcams and uploaded directly from them “the room is your own, but it laptops sitting on desks in bedrooms. is still bare.”1 Since the advent of the Hirsch saw the site as a potential nuclear family, the girl’s bedroom means to explore media and sexual- has become an object of cultural ity, and she began uploading videos fascination. he bedroom is a site of on a channel called “Scandalishious,” privacy and play, a site of budding in which she performed as a college intellect and sexuality. he bedroom freshman named Caroline. Hirsch’s is where young girls make friends at performance took place entirely sleepovers, cover walls with drawings, from her bedroom in Syracuse over pen diaries, and, more recently, make an eighteen-month period, and in vlogs. Since the launch of YouTube it, she adopted the conventions of in 2005, teenage girls have locked young women’s internet videos, to the platform and uploaded book performing the intimacy of open- recommendations, dances, makeup ing the girl’s bedroom to the public tips, “story times,” and confession- eye—exposing the interior. In the als. Filmed in their bedrooms, these project, too, Hirsch relishes in the videos have made their private spaces online attention she receives, and public.