Mirror Mirror
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
WE HAVE TO CONFRONT OURSELVES. DO WE LIKE WHAT WE SEE IN THE MIRROR? AND, ACCORDING TO OUR LIGHT, ACCORDING TO OUR UNDERSTANDING, ACCORDING TO OUR COURAGE, WE WILL HAVE TO SAY YEA OR NAY – AND RISE! MAYA ANGELOU AMERICAN WRITER & CIVIL RIGHTS ACTIVIST (1928-2014) 1 PAUL ROBESON GALLERIES MAIN GALLERY, EXPRESS NEWARK THIS PUBLICATION IS DEDICATED TO POLIXENI PAPAPETROU, A GREAT FRIEND AND ARTIST. RUTGERS UNIVERSITY – NEWARK FEBRUARY 19 – DECEMBER 20, 2018 2 3 MIRROR MIRROR: HOW DO WE SEE THROUGH OUR BIGOTRIES MIRROR MIRROR by Chancellor Nancy Cantor and Senior Vice Chancellor Peter Englot by Dorothy Santos 6 47 I SEE YOU INDUSTRIAL PORTRAITURE, MEMORY, AND POWER by Express Newark Co-Directors Victor Davson and Anne Englot by Jay Stanely 9 49 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS FEMINIST PORTRAITURE: TWO SIDES OF THE MIRROR by Director and Chief Curator Anonda Bell by Anne Swartz 13 51 PAST NOW FOREVER THE MANY AMBITIONS OF PORTRAITURE by Director and Chief Curator Anonda Bell by Jorge Daniel Veneciano 14 55 A PORTRAIT OF THE POSTFEMINIST PERFECT MOTHER THE REFLECTION OF A GENDERLESS SPIRIT by Susan Bright by Carla Christopher Waid 35 57 A REFLECTIVE PORTRAIT OF SHORT STATURE List of Artists by Amanda Cachia 63 43 Artist Pages RACE AND REPRESENTATION 64 by Nell Painter 45 Contents of the Exhibition 133 Sponsors and Copyright 138 Manuel Acevedo, Lawman’s Cigarette Break from the series The Wards of Newark 1982-87, 1986, gelatin silver print 4 5 MIRROR MIRROR: HOW DO WE SEE THIS IS WHERE ART, AS THE THE AS ART, WHERE IS THIS THROUGH OUR BIGOTRIES? THIS IS WHERE ART, AS THE Nancy Cantor, Chancellor of Rutgers University Newark, and AND OURSELVES ON MIRROR Peter Englot, Senior Vice Chancellor for Public Affairs and Chief of Staff to Chancellor MIRROR ON OURSELVES AND THE WORLD, ENTERS THE THE ENTERS WORLD, THE THE WORLD, ENTERS THE here could not be a moment that more urgently calls champion this new, more nuanced narrative of unity? T“for looking in a mirror—actually, in many mirrors—not Moreover, how can we each come to see others as who STARK, PROVIDE TO PICTURE only at ourselves, but at others, many others, even as we “they really are, and thus who we too can be? invariably look with all our hibernating bigotries aroused, as PICTURE TO PROVIDE STARK, Rupert Nacoste poetically labels the lenses that cloud our This is where art, as the mirror on ourselves and the world, views and threaten to distance us from each other.1 This is a enters the picture to provide stark, truthful, loving, humorous, HUMOROUS, LOVING, TRUTHFUL, moment for really looking in mirrors, for both moral (think the and tragic reflections. Because we live in a splintered human events of August 12, 2017 in Charlottesville, Virginia) and landscape, we need spaces (dare we call them “safe” TRUTHFUL, LOVING, HUMOROUS, more pragmatic reasons (think about the diversity explosion spaces?) in which we can bring to the surface for shared documented by demographer William Frey, which will turn examination what hibernates within us, destroying the clarity REFLECTIONS. TRAGIC AND this country into a majority nonwhite one by mid-century,2 of our view of humanity and obscuring its faces of possibility. and all the babies who now defy all-too-persistent categories We need voices, even those dismissed by some as merely AND TRAGIC REFLECTIONS. of divided identity). Think about bathroom laws, travel bans, “politically correct,” that grab our attention and shake us from and more. We could play with, enjoy, and expand upon our complacency, demanding that we center questions of racism richly fluid, intersectional social identity map if we were to and sexism, xenophobia and heteronormativity, inequality look in the many mirrors around us—and yet we persist in and disenfranchisement, and that we confront fears of caving to simple, reductionist dividing lines. These only displacement that breed bitter conflict. These necessary serve to intensify what Charles Tilly has called “durable questions are too often buried in the course of our more inequalities,”3 building upon centuries of subjugation of regular “work” even as they relentlessly tear the social fabric indigenous peoples and the long tail of the legacy of of our universities, communities, nation, and world. how we can use such spaces to amplify challenging, hauntingly like our own, as well as to those we must work slavery. This all-too-facile national racist narrative is now desperately needed voices in times like these. Art can be hard to parse or even imagine inhabiting. This challenge, expanded by a resurgence of religious nationalism, We need spaces and voices that question whether we are disruptive, compelling us to see others not as we expect after all, is what living in a diverse democracy is all about. given contemporary color by the equation of Islam with truly a land of opportunity and e pluribus unum—whether them to be, but as they might want to be seen. The Although this work can feel difficult and long, especially now, extremism and immigration more generally with the loss “we can tolerate when “one out of many” doesn’t look like breathtakingly diverse visual languages of the works it is the only way in which to forge more just and equitable of an “American” (white, Christian) identity, as Robert Jones Barbie and Ken holding hands. Such spaces and voices included in this exhibition call us to listen empathetically communities together. sums our current hysteria.4 “must have authenticity, must be grounded, embedded, and to voices that speak in familiar tones, telling us tales organically grown out of both history and culture. They must Though we urgently need to forge some kind of unity by occur within communities: not sheltered by the ivory tower Footnotes truly looking in those mirrors that we have refused to see but rather connecting that world, our world, to a social and honestly—mirrors of the real past, the evolving present, and physical geography beyond ourselves. 1. Rupert Nacoste, Taking on Diversity: How We Can Move from Anxiety to 3. Charles Tilly, Durable Inequality (Berkeley: University of California Press, Respect (Amherst: Prometheus Books, 2015), 160. 1998). the possible future—today’s unity will have to come without 2. William Frey, “The ‘Diversity Explosion’ is America’s Twenty-first-Century 4. Robert P. Jones, “The Collapse of American Identity,” The New York Times, the common refrain of a “melting-pot America,” and absent The Paul Robeson Galleries at Express Newark—indeed, Baby Boom,” in Our Compelling Interests: The Value of Diversity for May 2, 2017. calls for assimilation to whiteness, a dominant faith, culture, Express Newark itself—were created with precisely these Democracy and a Prosperous Society, eds. Nancy Cantor and Earl Lewis 5. Eboo Patel, “Religious Diversity and the American Promise,” in Our 5 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016), 16–35. language, or sexuality. Who will be the change-makers to aims in mind. Mirror, Mirror exemplifies this mission, showing Compelling Interests vol. 3, eds. Nancy Cantor and Earl Lewis (Princeton: Princeton University Press, forthcoming). 6 7 I SEE YOU Victor Davson and Anne Englot, co-directors, Express Newark irror Mirror is the first major exhibition of contemporary lived experiences and knowing each other’s authentic selves. Mart presented by the Paul Robeson Galleries at This is perhaps why the arts function so well as a mirror: Express Newark. This signal moment prompts two questions: training both eye and mind forces the visual artist to perceive What is the role of a contemporary art gallery in Express beyond cultural constructs. The creative act predisposes the Newark, a third-space collaboration between Rutgers artist to be open to new experiences and to empathize with University–Newark and the larger Newark arts community? that which is perceived as “other.” Often, such alterity is And, what does it mean to have a portraiture exhibition in embodied in the work itself. a space of engaged scholarship and social practice? And so, what does it mean to have a portraiture exhibition in Express Newark is a site for engagement between the such a space of engaged scholarship? Mirror Mirror curator diverse communities of Newark and faculty, staff, and Anonda Bell casts a generous and expansive net, gathering students at Rutgers University–Newark. Newark is artists who approach portraiture from diverse perspectives. characterized as a black and brown city (52 percent black “I see you” is a colloquialism that has come to mean “I and 36 percent Latino) and Rutgers University–Newark understand what you are saying,” and “I know where you are is perennially cited as having the most diverse student coming from.” Morrison finds this empathetic capacity in the population in the nation: a rich demographic that forecasts Africans portrayed in Camara Laye’s book The Radiance of the future of the United States. the King. The ability to see is contrasted with the worldview of the “other” in Laye’s story: a colonializing, white European. It is therefore critical that the work of the Paul Robeson Laye’s narrative is significant for Morrison because it flips the Galleries responds to the enriching and, in the words of familiar script that paints people of color as “other.” For Toni Morrison, “destabilizing pressures and forces of the Newark viewers, it may be easy to identify with Laye’s insight: transglobal,”1 diasporic histories relevant to Newark’s current in our city, white people are in fact the minority, the “other,” collective cultural moment. This moment raises questions and yet maintain a disproportionate amount of power and about the notion of race itself—about America’s continuous control.