Panel 2: Addressing Social Dilemmas (image by Marlene Dumas)
This panel included three art historians talking about the work of Marlene Dumas (white South African), Charles Alston (Harlem Renaissance), and the Congo/Women exhibit, as well as a photographer, Shane Welch, talking about his own work with a 'family' group living on Lower Wacker Dr.
Charles Alston was a painter, sculptor, and muralist of the Harlem Renaissance who began his work under the Works Progress Administration during the FDR years, and continued working for many years after, through the Harlem Renaissance, and into the New Negro Movement. His work is distinguished by use of geometric shapes, and disproportionate bodies and body parts within a work. His work was influenced by Locke, W.E.B. DuBois, and Booker T. Washington. One piece of significance that he created was "Crucifix", which portrayed a Black Jesus, rather than a white one. Alston recognized that Jesus had, in fact, not been white, and that he was only made that way so that his audiences would better relate; in creating a piece for a Black audience, Alston saw it as appropriate to paint Jesus as Black.
Marlene Dumas was a white South African woman, raised in privilege, who worked to gather the pieces of her country fragmented by apartheid through art. In 1975 Dumas left South Africa for Amsterdam so that she could more freely engage the ideas that she desired to in her art, without being too criticized for stirring the pot and raising questions that white South Africans did not want to address. Consequently, most of her work used Afrikaaner models, and centered on the themes of race, identity, and longing for her homeland.
Welch's work required him to get involved with a 'family' group on Lower Wacker, earn their trust, get permission to photograph them, and occasionally, spend the night with them. While I only caught the second half of this panel speech, I thought the stories he spun in with the pictures about the different things that these people did to survive were sometimes more interesting than the actual images. While I was aware that there are people living on Lower Wacker, I knew essentially nothing about it other than the obvious: that they are all homeless. As a privileged white college woman, I hadn't thought about them much past that. Obviously there must have been some reason they weren't trying to gain entry to a homeless shelter (answer: drugs), but I was startled by how this was just how life was to these people; I was startled by their complete lack of interest in getting clean or even creating a better life for themselves. I hadn't thought about how these people coalesce into 'family' groups, complete with a pet cat.
Nicolette Caldwell discussed the work of the 'Congo/Women' photographic series and exhibit, which she had seen when it was opened in Chicago last year. She discussed, in conjunction with the photographs, the lifestyles that the Congo People, specifically women, must live in the shadow of a Civil War that is over officially, but never really ended, as well as struggles over the copper, cobalt, diamond, and coal resources to be found in the country. The thing that really struck me about this piece was her discussion of a quote, by Susan Sontag, about how 'images of ward are uneffective due to oversaturation' and that 'those who are affected are so overwhelmed by their inability to do anything' individually, that they end up doing nothing. Personally, I think this is a big issue- I know that I have personally felt like this before, where I'm so overwhelmed by the problems of the world, that I don't know how to pick and choose, or even how to affect change in one tiny part of the world. Unfortunately, I don't think that she really addressed the problems that this quote created, she was obviously moved by this exhibition, enough that she wrote her thesis paper about it, but raising awareness can only do so much without any solid ideas for how people are to change this problem, or how to act on their feelings about what is happening.
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