I suspect Ill learn much more, er, vigorously via facebook than if I researched this myself, but time is in short supply at the moment. Can someone explain to me why the Donelle Woolford concept is so offensive? The Yam Collectives argument only makes it less clear to me: “We felt that the representation of an established academic white man posing as a privileged African-American woman is problematic, even if he tries to hide it in an avatar’s mystique,” Catbagan said. “It kind of negates our presence there, our collaborative identity as representing the African diaspora.” OK, so I get if youre seriously exploring your identity in your art it may appear to weaken its presence to have someone co-opt your identity for laughs (not that thats the only thing Scanlan’s project achieves, imo...its a much more complex project than that, even if it ultimately falls a bit flat) but I would think the serious identity work should stand up to anything, including a co-opting, if it were strong enough to actually change attitudes, and, more importantly if its authors believed in it enough. The notion this withdrawal conveys to me is the Yam Collectives contribution to the Biennial requires a rarefied environment in which to be understood or appreciated. Its too delicate to coexist with something that competes with its message. I think thats a huge mistake in their self-promotion. Its a big noisy world, and any real message of change will only succeed if it can compete within that big noisy world for attention. Its the freaking Whitney Biennial, for f*cks sake...look it up in the dictionary, under circus. And now, Im going to close my computer and not look at Facebook for several weeks. hyperallergic/126420/artist-collective-withdraws-from-whitney-biennial/
Posted on: Wed, 14 May 2014 21:01:47 +0000
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