What is the scale of war? What can we know of it? Seeking revelation in the ways that war is curtailed, hidden, biased, and unfinished, Frames of War, a rigorous group show at the small but dauntlessly ambitious Bushwick non-profit Momenta Art, approaches state violence through the edges of recognition.
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I was introduced to the work of Helene Kazan when I walked into Momenta Art during a discussion for the exhibition Frames of War — titled after the book by Judith Butlerand curated by Natasha Marie Llorens — and saw seated in front of me three women panelists. (I should point out that the exhibition has both female and male artists in it, and there was a later panel of all men.) I was immediately conscious of how unusual this was and reminded yet again of how little women’s voices are heard in discussions of war, how little impact they have had on the recorded history of war. In my own experience, having read extensively on the Holocaust in Europe, I have found that the history of it as both historical and personal recording is primarily written by Western white men. There are, of course, notable exceptions, but the elision of the female voice is so extreme that the history seems to me faulty and inaccurate even as it has been accepted for over half a century as the truth.
The centerpiece of Chitra Ganesh’s new exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum, a mural that depicts the Hindu goddess Kali, has provoked the ire of the president of the Universal Society of Hinduism (USH). What is the Universal Society of Hinduism, you ask? Hard to say, as its website is currently down, and no posts have ever been published on its blog, but its Nevada-based president, Rajan Zed, keeps a very active website that describes the USH as a “nondenominational religious-philosophical-cultural-educational organization [that] aims at reaching about one billion Hindus spread around the world.” One of the most recent press releases on Zed’s site is titled “Upset Hindus urge withdrawal of goddess Kali mural from Brooklyn Museum.”
(via A Race to the Finish Through Bushwick with Beat Nite)
Ah, Beat Nite. A time of magical madness, when we run frantically around Bushwick for four hours, trying to see all the art. Last Friday’s Beat Nite featured 16 galleries that kept their doors open late. All of them were participating in the first Exchange Rates expo, which brought a slew of artists from different states and countries to Bushwick. At some galleries, the work of those artists was mixed in with mainstays from the local rosters; at others, it was on view in a separate space or room, running alongside a regularly programmed show. Amid the amiable faces and free-flowing drinks, I quickly lost track of what was part of what, and by the time 9pm rolled around and we arrived at 56 Bogart Street — where other galleries not connected to Exchange Rates or Beat Nite were also having openings — I gave up and just let myself enjoy the art I could find. Herewith, a brief walkthrough.
If you’re in Bushwick, Brooklyn, or want to know what’s going on there. Check out bushwickdaily‘s new Bushwick Notebook! It is being distributed for free around Bushwick.
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The tenth edition of Bushwick Open Studios (BOS) is just a month away, and it’s hard to believe how much has changed in the Brooklyn neighborhood since 2006. The organization behind the massive art festival, Arts in Bushwick (AiB), is currently holding a benefit exhibition appropriately titled Making History at Storefront Ten Eyck, one of the dozens of galleries that have cropped up in the area over the last few years. Indeed, the enormous expansion of BOS — from 85 open studios featured in the inaugural edition to more than 600 spaces in 2014 — is a measure of the neighborhood’s transformation.
How Arts in Bushwick Has Stayed on Mission in a Rapidly Changing Neighborhood
In his studio, an artist stenciled unicorns to disco music, while upstairs a poetry reading was taking place in the same room as a makeshift tattoo parlor. At 56 Bogart, the largest single cluster of galleries and studios at Bushwick Open Studios, it’s as much about performing the artist as exhibiting art. Sometimes artists took creative license in how they exhibited their work: one had friends sporting his colorful, sparkly, and red leopard print t-shirts, which had phrases like “Forever Open” and “kick my face” sewed on the front; another chose to scatter her watercolors over her desk rather than hang them on the walls to simulate the experience of the artist at work.
This weekend, Blonde Art Books, the Brooklyn-based proponent of self-publishing communities and local arts initiatives, is holding their third installment of Bushwick Art Book and Zine Fair (BABZ) at SIGNAL gallery (260 Johnson Avenue). Bushwick’s own free art book fair returns this year with twice as many participants and even more diverse programming.
Mysticism was a recurring motif in several artists’ studios at Bushwick Open Studios. It was so prevalent that this article leaves some notable artists out. On the West Coast, a cliché circulates that New Yorkers are neurotically driven but spiritually empty creatures. No more. There was so much Hocus Pocus in Brooklyn one might be forgiven for assuming BOS was a reenactment of a Portlandia episode.
