THE DIARY 11: Art at a Time Like This - Shout for Impact
Yelaine Rodriguez, Project Director + Costume Design + Photographer:
Oshun Orisha of Fertility: Help us Birth Generations of Revolutionary Womxn, a multimedia project that incorporates fashion, handwoven panels, video, and photography.
Learn more about this piece HERE.
Art at a Time Like This is a non-profit organization founded in March 2020 by independent curators Barbara Pollack and Ann Verhallen. Art at a Time Like This supports artists and curators in the 21st century, presenting art in direct response to current events. “We perpetually address the question, ‘How can we think of Art at a Time Like This?’” This is a good question; a question most cultural institutions, from large museums to local libraries, are grappling with today. How art and culture in general should and could respond to the many challenges contemporary society is facing – how to lean in through the window of artistic expression and multi-cultural ethos to shed light into new corners and to create an impact?
Art at a Time Like This is doing it through a series of on-line exhibits showcasing both curators and artists that together address some of the most urgent social issues of the moment: gender equality, climate change, Black Lives Matter, human rights violations, systemic problems within the justice system, the farmer’s revolution in India and the fragility of Democracy in the United States, just to mention a few, all created by a deliberately diverse group of artists and curators. There’s nothing timid about this approach. The organization’s voice is loud and clear and it acts with urgency. With the approaching of the 2020 election, and in collaboration with SaveArtSpace, the organization helped to set 20 politically inspired billboards throughout the five boroughs of New York and on bus stops across London shortly afterwards heeding a, “Now – not later,” call to action to the climate crisis.
Of course, many institutions fall in the same category. The recent Whitney Biennial, presented under the mysterious name, “Quiet as it’s Kept,” tried hard to cover the chaos of the post-pandemic world - a, “strange and precarious time,” as the curators call it - through the vision of sixty-three artists and collectives. The Rubell Museum that we have written about in TCA recently celebrated the opening of its Washington D.C. location with, “What’s Going On,” (another good question!) where 37 artists, including Maurizio Cattelan, John Waters, Mickalene Thomas, Cecily Brown, and Kehinde Wiley present their personal and political responses to a changing world.
Jesse Krimes - Crossroads, 2019, hand-sewn fabric, image transfer, fabric paint, from: Building A Better Monument Exhibition curated by Seph Rodney
Learn more about this piece HERE.
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I trust artists to render these problems in greater clarity, to tease out the ramifications of the current calamities, and to articulate a vision of a place beyond these debacles. Artists do not frequently provide outright answers, but they can and do orient us to the proper questions to ask in a moment that might feel like most responses are ineffective. Artists can tell us that there is something beyond catastrophe and that it is actually possible to live through these times buoyed by the image of what we might bring into being tomorrow.
– Seph Rodney
Building A Better Monument
curated by Seph Rodney
for Art at a Time Like This
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‘Art is still very much about this elitist way of thinking and being…I’m interested in breaking some of those barriers down to allow the opportunity for different demographics to engage with my work…It’s about inclusivity—making everyday people feel comfortable coming through the door.’
- Mickalene Thomas interviewed by Carol Vogel for Town & Country, December 2019
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Afro Goddess Looking Forward, 2015, Rhinestones, acrylic, and oil on wood panel by Mickalene Thomas - participating Artist with Art at a Time Like This