Black President: The Art and Legacy of Fela Anikulapo-Kuti

Arts & Photography

Trevor Schoonmaker

History & Criticism

New Museum of Contemporary Art

Strange Attractors: Signs of Chaos

Trippi, Laura

Photography & Video

Book by Tucker, Marcia, Pollock, Griselda, Foster, Hal

Mary Kelly: Interim

Tucker, Marcia

A Labor of Love uses over one hundred often intricate and labor-intensive works of art and installations by Pier Consagra, Dianna Frid, Liza Lou and forty-seven other artists to explore the definitions and categorizations which have separated decorative and hobby arts, craft, outsider and folk art from the fine arts. Supported by brief artists statements, an in-depth essay by director Marcia Tucker examines the distinctions between "amateur" and "professional" artists; the impact of feminist theory and practice in ideas of domestic labor and art making; the different values assigned to work made in the public and private realms; the place of handiwork in American culture today; and the traditional separation of high art from the quotidian. "I'm not trying to say that there is no difference at all between art and life, aesthetics and politics. Now do I believe that folk and fine, high and popular art are the same; there are differences in relation of making to community; differences in intent and value; in function and in form, purpose, training, context; opportunity, reception, etc., that are neither simple nor singular. But when works of art elude and thus destabilize accepted categories, they encourage us to think about how, when, and for what purpose the categories were created." -Marcia Tucker, "A Labor of Love," p.72. Artists: Chelo Amezcua, Imogene Jessie Goodshot Arquero, Alan Belcher, Robert Brady, Darren Brown Bette Burgoyne, Larry Calkins, Rene David Chamizo, Dale Chihuly, Pier Consagra, William Copley (Cply), and more. Exhibition catalogue.

Labor of Love: An Exhibition

New Museum of Contemporary Art (New York, N. Y.)

Linton, Meg

Co-published by SITE Santa Fe and New Museum of Contemporary Art – 79 pages, 28 color plates, softback, 12 x 9 inches – Introduction by Louis Grachos, Essays by Dan Cameron and Charles Merewether -1998.

Doris Salcedo

Merewether, Charles

Cameron, Dan

Collections, Catalogs & Exhibitions

A grid is an abstract, simple mathematical structure ordered by ninety-degree angles and regularly spaced columns and rows. A grid is also the cities we live and work in, the buildings that tower over us, the electricity and fiber-optic networks that sustain our energy and information needs. We do, as the title of this thematic catalogue suggests, "live inside the grid." The pervasive grid-based visual and information systems that have come to increasingly define contemporary life are explored here by 24 international artists, for whom the grid is something very different than the motif it was for 20th century artists. Artists include Absalon, Jennifer Bolande, José Damasceno, Do-Ho Su, Luisa Lambri, Langlands &amp; Bell, Mark Lombardi, Rita McBride, N55 and Danica Phelps. Organized around three critical positions, Living Inside the Grid considers the grid in architecture and urban space; interlocking cultural, linguistic and economic grids; and soft grids. Includes work by Uri Tzaig, Roland Boden, Luisa Lambri, Rogellio Lopez Cuenca, , Camille Utterback, Egbert Trogemann, Tomoko Takahashi, Douglas Blau, Ana Maria Tavares, Sean Snyder, Mark Lombardi, Rico Gatson, Marco Peljhan, Rita McBride, Paul Noble,Langlands &amp; Bell, amongst others. Edited by Dan Cameron.~Foreword by Lisa Phillips. Paperback, 6.75 x 9.5 in./168 pgs / 91 color 47 BW0 duotone 0 ~ Item D20030

Living Inside the Grid

Phillips, LIsa

Crowned the king of Afrobeat and dubbed the Black President, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti was a master performer, composer and voice of the oppressed. The Nigerian musician and activist invented an infectious new musical genre called Afrobeat, combining American funk and jazz with traditional Yoruba and highlife music to end up with a sound that doubled as a weapon for justice. Troubled by the state of Nigerian society, he assembled and built his Kalakuta Republic and created his own political party, actions which saw him arrested, imprisoned and beaten by the police and military--but Fela was so influential in Nigerian cultural and political life that even they flocked to his funeral to pay respect to their fallen hero. This book features a diverse range of artists who continue to be inspired by Fela's artistic genius and dedication to justice and equality: from visual practitioners like Sanford Biggers, Barkley L. Hendricks, Alfredo Jaar, Wangechi Mutu, Odili Odita, Olu Oguibe, Senam Okudzeto, Yinka Shonibare, Kara Walker and Fred Wilson to musicians, rappers and DJs. Accompanying essays consider Fela's influence on his musical contemporaries and on an international array of visual artists, Fela as African Blaxploitation hero, and Fela's music in the context of the Nigerian political situation and contemporary activist art. Also included are an updated version of a seminal 1980s article on Fela, a fiction-driven story that reconstructs the last six months of Fela's life, and a poem that deals with Fela's influence on the poet's conception of Africa. Edited by Trevor Schoonmaker.~Essays by Trevor Schoonmaker, Yomi Durotoye, Vivien Goldman, Olu Oguibe, Moyo Okediji and Michael E. Veal. ~Creative writing by Biyi Bandele and Sharon Strange. Paperback, 10.5 x 10.5 in./192 pgs / 64 color 40 BW0 duotone 0 ~ Item D20046

East Village USA revisits the sprawling, renegade art scene that flourished in the East Village during the 1980s. Many prominent artists, including Jeff Koons, Kiki Smith, Peter Halley, and Philip Taaffe began their careers in the occasionally makeshift storefront galleries that prospered for several years as low-priced alternatives to Soho's rapid gentrification. Representing traditional media such as painting, sculpture, and photography, while emphasizing the film, music, and performance art of the period, this lavishly illustrated exhibition catalogue contains works by more than 75 artists, as well as documentary photographs of people, galleries, performance spaces, and clubs. It provides a striking contribution to the resurgence of interest in a brief but little documented and even less understood period of art history. Covering the stylistic gamut from graffiti and punk expressionism to Neo-Geo and appropriation through some 200 images, East Village USA examines the key exhibition sites and events that shaped the neighborhood and includes work by Jean-Michel Basquiat, Sarah Charlesworth, Keith Haring, Jenny Holzer, Lady Pink, Tom Otterness, Kenny Scharf, Fiona Templeton, Tseng Kwong Chi, David Wojnarowicz, and many others. The catalogue accompanies an exhibition at the New Museum of Contemporary Art.

East Village USA

MOORE, Alan

Lunch, Lydia

Russell, Mark

Kirwin, Liza

Astor, Patti

Corber, Mitch

Penny Arcade

Rodney, Sur

Reid, Calvin

Aernout Mik's work forcefully combines video and architecture to transform exhibition spaces into vivid, unsettling tableaux of irrational human behavior. In Refraction, the viewer comes upon an accident the moment after it has occurred: An overturned bus fills a screen, rescue workers are scrambling, and traffic appears backed up for miles. No victims of the accident are depicted, although their absence does not seem to strike anyone as peculiar. As the camera shifts its perspective from the inside of the bus to the backup of cars to the ditch in front of the bus, an unspoken antagonistic energy slowly builds between various players in the scene. Refraction is presented as a rear-screen projection on a slightly bent wall, the shape of which visually echoes the jackknifed carriage of the bus.

Aernout Mik: Refraction

Double Album brings together two artists--Daniel Guzmán, born in 1964 in Mexico, and Steven Shearer, born in 1968 in Canada--who use an array of visual mediums to explore the overwhelmingly male world of rock 'n' roll and other popular subcultures. Looking at Guzmán and Shearer's work, one immediately sees a parallel adoption of 1970s and 1980s pop icons and bands as individual surrogates and avatars of two divergent oeuvres that each act as extended self-portraits. This beautifully produced and lavishly illustrated volume, with separate covers and sections dedicated to each artist, includes texts by New Museum Chief Curator Richard Flood, Jim Lewis and Gullermo Fadanelli and interviews with Guzmán and Shearer by Abraham Cruzvillegas and Flood, respectively.

Daniel Guzmán & Steven Shearer: Double Album

Cruzvillegas, Abraham

Individual Artists

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