If there was a mass shooting happening near you, would you 1-run, 2-hide, or 3- fight?
Featured image: Angela Ea
By Angela Ea
A few weeks back, I was lucky enough to hear Bren Ahearn’s artist talk at BAM on an exhibition called “Strategies for Survival.” The exhibition is on view at BAM until January 15, and includes works that range from instructions on how to react in mass shootings, HIV scares, near-death experiences, questionable career choices, and unlucky circumstances that may be experienced by unorthodoxically feminine men.
Background
Photo: Miles Mattison
You can follow Bren on Instagram at @brenahearn!
San Francisco-based needlework artist, Bren Ahearn, comes from a family of makers. His grandmother crocheted Afghans; his mother made quilts, and his siblings work in puppeteering, graphic design, and fashion. From his youth, Bren was a creative kid who was fond of things “atypical” to society’s preconceptions about masculinity. As he grew older, he gradually stopped being creative in order to fit in his peers. Now as an adult, Bren uses his free time to work with embroidery, challenging society’s preconceptions on masculinity.
Bren Ahearn’s artist statement: “I use textile crafts to explore masculinity’s conflicting messages, and I typically use the cross stitch ABC sampler form to document how I’ve been educated to be a man in US society.”
Historically, ABC samplers, like the one shown below were created as demonstrations of needlework that portrayed the alphabet, motifs, border patterns, and other imagery. They were used to prepare girls for basic needlework skills in the household. All along, embroidery has been accounted as a feminine pastime.
Bren Ahearn takes these associations head-on and humorously appropriates them into his works by following the similar pattern of ABC samplers, but he blows them up in size and inserts provoking remarks, alluding to current events and his own personal experiences.
Four of Bren Ahearn’s Amazing Works
“Sampler #14” alludes to the HIV scare that was especially rampant in the 80’s. In 1989, Bren Ahearn had a moment when he was stuck with a possibly unclean needle and became worried about getting HIV. Luckily, he did not contract the disease. A common theme in his works is rhyming that sounds humorous at first but show a darker alternative meaning in personal stories that end with death. During the artist talk, Bren flipped this sampler over to show how much messier the cross-stitches look in the back of his works. But with the “messiness,” the viewer can see the direction in which he is making his stitches.“Sampler #13” The list under the heading, “Pussy Chronicles,” includes instances where Bren acted unmanly (or to be more direct, like a pussy) according to society’s standards. He questions acts of violence and sports and also shows his sensitive side. As Bren outlines how people will mock others for not displaying masculine traits, he reveals how society has ingrained the idea that emotions and feminine traits are unacceptable and should be suppressed within men.“Sampler #2” From the moment we are babies, we are gendered according to our sex. The moment family and friends find out a baby is a boy or girl, often they will adjust their gifts: giving a girl dolls and a boy cars. By aligning to gender stereotypes Bren becomes the “true man” according to societal norms. But then a gain, the blue uniform is only on the surface…“Sampler #4” During the artist talk, Bren mentioned that when he was a child, he carried a lunchbox with a flower design to school one day but was humiliated because of the girlish pattern. I found this last sampler the most interesting because of how he used balls to create flowers. By turning something that is violently charged like contact sports to create something delicate like a flower, Bren Ahearn brings two worlds together and shows they can coexist.
Images: brenahearn.com
Here is a picture of the lovely faces of other teens who had the opportunity to hear from Bren.
The moment I stepped into the teal-colored exhibition of Divine Ammunition, I felt a sort of tension. It might be the various sculptures of religious buildings, symbols, and figures; but it’s the material of these works that probably cause this discomfort. The closer you look the easier it is to see that everything in the exhibition seems to be made of a weapon. Buttresses are made with barrels of guns, walls are constructed of bullet casings and C4 bomb casings. Those are just a few of the ways this motif is exemplified. Al Farrow portrays the interesting relationship between violence and religion in a simple and well-crafted exhibition.
The craftsmanship of the pieces in this show are undeniable. Farrow experimented with different ways to chemically create the perfect patina on the metal, making the perfect teal color. Pieces of ammunition fit perfectly where they are supposed to and they are not placed in such a way that make them obviously look like guns or weapons. One can spend the whole day just admiring the variety of pieces made, but the biggest standout by far is the big Gothic church. Pointed arches and flying buttresses are obvious allusions to the Gothic style but the materials used give it a jaw-dropping presence. Inside a real human spine is placed along the nave, suggesting that these pieces always have surprises or new sights to offer.
Some of the themes and messages in this show may be self-evident, but I think each viewer will take away something a little different. . For me, I found it as a dichotomy of violence for and against major religions like Judaism, Christianity, and Islam the church. I think Farrow is trying to draw our attention to the radical elements of these religions, and how religious differences have been used throughout history as an excuse for violence.. No matter what kind of meaning you take out of it, this show is thought-provoking and an absolute must-see – it’s simply divine.
Members of the TAC had a chance to explore the exhibition during a recent meeting, and it was really interesting to hear everyone’s perspectives on the meanings and themes of the show. As a group, we discussed how each viewer’s personal interpretation would be different based on their beliefs and experiences with religion. For me, I was interested in the connection Farrow makes between religion and violence. It seems like all three religions represented (Judaism, Islam, and Christianity) have radical elements that use their beliefs as an excuse for violence.
We were given the chance to ask some follow up questions of the artist via email, and I suggested: Are you religious? Why or why not? Mr. Farrow wrote us back with this answer: “I am not religious although I consider myself a spiritual person. There is a great difference between spirituality and religiousness. I could write several pages on this but I will not, preferring each person to define for themselves their relationship with beliefs.” As such, Mr. Farrow strongly believes that all interpretations of his work is valuable and that no correct answer exists. Rather than dividing people based on their faiths, he hopes to bring together different religions through the acceptance and openness of art interpretation, at the least. I hope it has a healing effect on our communities.
Part of The Emancipation Approximation at the Castellani Art Museum
By Jasmine Sun
This past summer, I had the privilege of viewing Kara Walker’s exhibit Emancipating the Past at the Bellevue Arts Museum. Walker is well-known in the art world for her jarring depictions of slavery, which often involves images so graphic that her work has summoned widespread controversy. In fact, when Walker herself was asked by a Mississippi museum to display her work but “not with the sex and violence”, she rebuffed them, claiming “I can’t censor it for you-it’s all in there.”
Her series The Emancipation Approximation-comprised of twenty-six large prints featuring silhouette images of racial and sexual violence in the postbellum South-is no exception in terms of its explicit visuals, which range from swans wearing the decapitated heads of slaves to sexual intercourse involving celestial beings. These scenes undoubtedly intend to shock viewers and engage in politics of discomfort to incite difficult conversations about race. However, what piqued my interest most was “Scene #18” precisely because of its unassuming nature.
“Scene #18” from The Emancipation Approximation
This is a deceptively simple work. In fact, displayed amid the other scenes, it is almost too easy for viewers to overlook, given its relative lack of shock value. Like the rest of the pieces in this series, the scene is populated by silhouetted figures in white and black, sharply contrasting against a solid background. However, “Scene #18” also stands out among the rest because neither graphic violence nor explicit symbols of domination are depicted. Instead, it merely portrays a black woman standing hunched over as she balances a white woman atop her head.
The series title, The Emancipation Approximation, is a play on words alluding to Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation which “freed the slaves” in 1863 during the Civil War. Notably, with the substitution of the word “approximation,” Walker insinuates that black Americans were not truly liberated, as they continued to face the gratuitous violence at the hands of white elites that her silhouettes depict. Therefore, Scene #18 is representative of the way that slavery morphed into different yet similarly violent structures that reproduced white-black power dynamics in more insidious forms.
Aside from the obvious notion that the white woman is literally and figuratively supported by black slave labor, this power relation remains evident in the subtleties of Scene #18. For instance, while the black woman faces leftward, as if looking back toward the past, the white woman gazes rightward with her head held high-oblivious to the violence that historically propped up and continues to sustain her position of dominance. Furthermore, the white woman stands with her back straight and shoulders back in a poised and elegant figure that contrasts sharply with the hunched ex-slave woman below her. Gender also plays a crucial role, as the female representations in this scene are associated with more “passive” and feminine forms of domination. Indeed, plantation wives “rewarded” well-behaved slaves by making them house slaves, or domestic servants.
The clean cutouts, black-and-white color scheme, and lack of detail in the scene also contribute to Walker’s message. In particular, the identity of the two women is reduced to their respective races, suggesting that race was-and arguably remains-the primary determinant of social status. After all, this binary paradigm is likely drawn from Walker’s own childhood experience moving from diverse California to Atlanta, Georgia, where “things were very locked down into black and white.” Recent instances of police brutality further highlight how racial markers of criminality are scripted onto black folks regardless of their individual actions and identities.
Interestingly, the near clinical precision with which Walker outlines her figures has drawn criticism from some who consider the lack of apparent emotion as an indication that she creates from the perspective of a white universal subject. After all, it is easy for viewers to notice primarily the beauty of her technique and secondarily its grotesque content. However, such criticism fails to take into account Walker’s transgressive re-appropriation of a traditionally bourgeois medium. By depicting violence in such a delicate and refined art form, she challenges audiences to consider the ways in which white society gains enjoyment from spectacles of black suffering.
Although I, like many others, found myself initially unsettled by Walker’s graphic imagery, particularly in a formal and restrained gallery environment, I left the museum with a heightened awareness of the subtle operations of domination that remain in our modern society.
BAM TAC Blog 