Kent Monkman: mistikôsiwak (Wooden Boat People)

By Ann C. Collins

FEB 2020 | ArtSeen

It may be that history, as Winston Churchill said, is written by the victors, but a deep satisfaction can be had for those who redraft it. Cree artist Kent Monkman does just that for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s inaugural Great Hall Commission. Monkman reverses the European gaze, presenting Indigenous people as heroes who welcome and rescue invading newcomers.

In the Field: Sharon Lockhart, James Benning, and People

By Steffanie Ling

APR 2018 | Film

In a conversation between filmmakers James Benning and and Sharon Lockhart after a screening of their films L. Cohen (2017) and Rudzienko (2014), Benning starts things off with a little joke. He sets it up. Two planets. The first planet says, “I have people,” and the second responds, “Don’t worry, that will pass.” The joke is over. The audience laughs. We can derive humor from the idea (the fact?) that the human race is a blight on any environment unfortunate enough to appear bountiful before us, but I suspect that Sharon Lockhart actually kind of likes people.

FERNANDO PALMA RODRÍGUEZ:
In Ixtli in Yollotl, We the People

By Jonelle Mannion

JUNE 2018 | ArtSeen

In Ixtli in Yollotl, We the People is an exhibition of work made over the past two decades by Mexican artist and mechanical engineer Fernando Palma Rodríguez. Each of the mechanical-alchemical sculptures in the exhibition is rigged with light or ultrasonic sensors to be activated by observing bodies, which thereby become interacting bodies.

Colored People Time: Quotidian Pasts

By Devin Malone

JUL-AUG 2019 | ArtSeen

A group of white sculptures sit atop glistening aluminum pedestals. To the right, two TV screens flash images of dancers, ritual objects, and footage from a post-war game show. An adjacent wall has been painted green to mimic the palette of a natural history museum and bears a single photograph.