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Artist Joana Vasconcelos Created the Psychedelic Backdrop for Dior’s Paris Fashion Week Show. See the Dazzling Images Here


During last month’s Paris Fashion Week, Dior’s creative director Maria Grazia Chiuri chicly reinterpreted the house’s 1950s codes. The scenography, however, tapped into another dimension entirely thanks to the creative vision of Portuguese artist Joana Vasconcelos. Vasconcelos installed a hallucinatory, stalactite–like sculpture that served as the undeniably bombastic backdrop for the Fall 2023 collection.

Ornamental, globular, and behemoth, Valkyrie Miss Dior towered 23 feet high and about 78 feet long, permeating the temporary Jardin des Tuileries space. Was it an alien landscape or the interior of some otherworldly organism? Maybe some some pan-national arts-and-crafts beast? Interpretation all depended on the viewer. But one thing was for sure: Vasconcelos has hands-down stomped all other contenders for “set of the season.”

Joana Vasconcelos's immersive sculpture and fashion show set . Photo: Adrien Dirand.

Joana Vasconcelos’s immersive sculpture and fashion show set . Photo: Adrien Dirand.

The suspended piece was composed of steel cables, crochet, LED lights, fans, inflatables, and fabrics in 20 different Dior floral patterns. Vasconcelos is prone to super-size her work.

“I don’t do scale for scale’s sake,” the artist said, “ but to convey a message through a chosen object. My work is very much based in the decontextualization of everyday objects. Monumental scale is usually seen as male territory and there are some barriers to be broken.”

SCENOGRAPHY RWT AUTUMN-WINTER 2023 ©Adrien Dirand 5

Joana Vasconcelos’s ornamental alien landscape for Dior. Photo: Adrien Dirand.

Valkyrie Miss Dior joins a pantheon of over 30 of the towering female warrior goddesses Vasconcelos has created for installations as far-flung as Macau to Bilbao (where she had a 2018 retrospective “I’m Your Mirror” at the Guggenheim). “They all have different themes, honoring women who made a difference in the world,” Vasconcelos explains, “just like the female figures from Nordic mythology would lift the brave warriors killed in the battlefield, bringing them to join the deities in Valhalla.” Valkyrie Miss Dior is an homage to the house founder’s sister, Catherine Dior, a florist and World War II French resistance fighter who was awarded the Ordre national de la Légion d’honneur. Vasconcelos’s 2005 Venice Biennale entry The Bride, a baroque chandelier composed of 25,000 tampons, garnered her international attention.

Looks from the Fall 2023 collection stand out in-front of the installations dangling, tonsil-like ornamental globs. Courtesy of Dior.

Looks from the Fall 2023 collection stand out in-front of the installation’s dangling, tonsil-like ornamental globs. Courtesy of Dior.

The artist has found a true ally in Chiuri who has made explicit feminist overtures in all of her collections since becoming Dior’s first female creative director in 2018. A key tenet of her tenure has been to collaborate with female artists and allow them to realize their respective visions.

The Dior Valkyrie is just one highpoint for Vasconcelos this year. In April, she will have a solo show at Beijing’s Tang Contemporary Art followed by her Tree of Life installation in Paris’s Sainte-Chapelle de Vincennes. Her gargantuan Wedding Cake will rise at Waddesdon Manor, England in June, and then her next solo show opens in October at Uffizi Galleries in Florence, Italy. She took a moment to speak with us about Dior and explain her vibe.

The artist Joana Vasconcelos. Photo: Arlindo Camacho.

The artist Joana Vasconcelos. Photo: Arlindo Camacho.

Your work combines disciplines that overlap with fashion (sewing, knitting, working with textiles). Do you follow fashion and does it inform your work?

Fashion is a very important part of my life. I actually started showing my work at Lisbon’s Manobras de Maio in 1994, a catwalk for young creators, with a very counter-current, avant-garde and interventionist spirit. At the time I produced a series of wearable sculptural pieces in Styrofoam called the Bunis. A kind of colorful, organic, bulbous headwear, they represented a crossover between jewelry—which I studied—and sculpture.

Nowadays, a lot of my work is connected to the world of textiles and therefore it’s only natural that some clear affinities with fashion come across. The textile element is a common thread here, and plays a very important role, alongside the handcrafts that are also associated with the couture houses. As a matter of a fact, I question the male definition of noble materials in art. To me, textiles are as noble as iron, stone or wood – maybe even more so.

The fabulous couches can't compete with the massive artwork. Photo: Adrien Dirand.

Besides the otherworldly artwork, the set also included fabulous custom seating. Photo: Adrien Dirand.

What really struck me about the Dior set was this dichotomy between handmade/ornamental and organic. I got the sense that this structure mimicked a life form. It was like a fashion show was happening within a body.

It’s interesting that you saw it that way. Many people asked if Valkyrie Miss Dior represented a plant, an animal or a part of the human anatomy, but they all saw it as a living organism. I have never really conceived it as a static installation, what really interested me from the very beginning was the interaction between the installation, the models and the audience, all coming together as a moving body, a sculptural choreography almost.

The grand Dior finale through the alien landscape. Photo: Adrien Dirand.

The grand Dior finale through the alien landscape. Photo: Adrien Dirand.

The fashion show added a facet to your art, this swirling performative fashion experience. Tell me about experiencing this firsthand?

This was not the first time I employed dance for an artwork. I did so last year with Valkyrie Martha at lille3000, presented with purposefully created choreography. This stems from my firm belief that art should be interactive, inviting audiences and/or other artists to join the process, touching it, feeling it and creating a dialogue with movement, music or other art expressions in a performative way.

The set heightened the collection because it also really contrasted it. Interstellar versus down-to-earth. What was it like working with Ms. Chiuri? Did your designs inform each other?

No, they were different processes altogether. Maria Grazia came to my studio in Lisbon last summer and we had a wonderful exchange of ideas. Maria Grazia is a major inspiration not only for her feminist stance but also for her valorization of artisanship, two causes which are also very close to my heart. So, when the invitation came, I showed her my Valkyries body of work and suggested that, first and foremost, we should pay tribute to a woman. Then I got carte blanche to create as I saw fit.

I was sent 20 fabrics from the collection and started to create the Valkyrie from there. They were all very floral and fluid, the colors ranging from red, blue, green, orange to yellow. I decided to choose a color, texture and different identity for each branch of the artwork. To enhance the colors of the fabrics, I added a little sparkle through sequins and embroidery.

Joana Vasconcelos, Coração Independente (2016). Photo: Luís Vasconcelos

Joana Vasconcelos, Coração Independente (2016). Photo: Luís Vasconcelos

Crochet is a technique which is also very present in haute couture, accentuating the concept of the contemporary revisiting of the past, bringing back memories which are present in each of us and carrying them into the future. It was a dialogue with absolute freedom, a great way to collaborate, creating the bridge between fashion and the visual arts.

Joana Vasconcelos, Golden Valkyrie (2012) at Versailles. Photo: Luís Vasconcelos

Joana Vasconcelos, Golden Valkyrie (2012) at Versailles. Photo: Luís Vasconcelos

There seemed to be a Wizard of Oz dramatic reveal, when this vague pre-show black and white constellation turned into this multi-hued organism. You’ve done large-scale projects before but this seems to have been a very Hollywood-style mega production. What was it like working with Dior on this?

It was amazing. They are very professional and overall it was a very respectful approach, where the creative process is honored every step of the way. The energy created throughout the different stages really shone through in the show, as everything and everyone came together.

I am very proud of this piece. It stands as a testimony of an amazing collaboration, of the great things that can happen when people get together and join efforts to create something bigger than the sum of their parts.

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Desert X Arrives in Coachella Valley, Bringing Art That Reflects on Ecology. See Images of the Show Here


The newest iteration of Desert X is all about water—which might come as a surprise, seeing as how there’s not much liquid of any kind to be found along the dusty stretch of land in south-central California where the biennial exhibition is installed through May 7.

But, for Neville Wakefield and Diana Campbell, the show’s two curators, “a desert is not defined by the absence of water.” To them, “the desert landscape is formed by the memory of water.”

As suggested by that quote, this year’s Desert X—the fourth mounted in the Coachella Valley since the program was founded in 2017—zooms out for a holistic, ecological perspective on the land and art’s place in it. This edition spreads out across the land and features the work of 10 artists and collectives, including Tschabalala Self, Torkwase Dyson, and Tyre Nichols, among others. 

“How do we connect the specificities of the Coachella Valley to the wider biosphere, where resources and energy… flow across borders and impact parts of the world we may never see?” Campbell asked in a recent interview. 

That’s a lofty prompt, as much of the curators’ ideas are. But navigate from one individual site-specific commission to the next, and it becomes clearer what the duo means.

Rana Begum, No.1225 Chainlink (2023). Photo: Lance Gerber. Courtesy of the artist and Desert X.

A sculpture by the Bangladesh-born, London-based artist Rana Begum, for instance, is made almost entirely from chainlink fencing—a ubiquitous industrial material used to demarcate natural land as human property. The maze-like quality of Begum’s piece also suggests that it’s not just acreage these fences tend to divide.

In a funny way, Matt Johnson’s contribution to the show—a tenuous arrangement of stacked shipping containers—shares similar themes. On one hand, the L.A. artist’s gigantic installation situates the region in a globalist context and suggests connection across cultures, countries, and oceans; on the other, it points out that that sense of connection is mediated through commerce and comes with a devastating environmental toll.

Elsewhere in the valley is a larger-than-life game board, conceived by Gerald Clarke; an assemblage of reflective squares mounted atop the same electric motors used for mechanical bulls, made by Mario García Torres; and a readymade car sculpture from which a pair of giant animal arms emerges from its trunk, courtesy of Paloma Contreras Lomas. 

Together, these makers’ contributions “make visible, as instruments of self-awareness and devices of wonder, the forces that we exert on the world,” according to a catalog text from Wakefield. 

See more images from Desert X 2023 below. 

Lauren Bon, <i>The Smallest Sea with the Largest Heart</i> (2023). Photo: Lance Gerber. Courtesy of the artist and Desert X.

Lauren Bon, The Smallest Sea with the Largest Heart (2023). Photo: Lance Gerber. Courtesy of the artist and Desert X.

Torkwase Dyson, <i>Liquid A Place</i> (2023). Photo: Lance Gerber. Courtesy of the artist and Desert X.

Torkwase Dyson, Liquid A Place (2023). Photo: Lance Gerber. Courtesy of the artist and Desert X.

Gerald Clarke, <i>Immersion</i> (2023). Photo: Lance Gerber. Courtesy of the artist and Desert X.

Gerald Clarke, Immersion (2023). Photo: Lance Gerber. Courtesy of the artist and Desert X.

Mario García Torres, Searching for the Sky (While Maintaining Equilibrium) (2023). Photo: Lance Gerber. Courtesy of the artist and Desert X.

Tyre Nichols, <i>Originals</i> (2023). Photo: Lance Gerber. Courtesy of the artist and Desert X.

Tyre Nichols, Originals (2023). Photo: Lance Gerber. Courtesy of the artist and Desert X.

Hylozoic/Desires, Namak Nazar (2023). Photo: Lance Gerber. Courtesy of the artist and Desert X.

Paloma Contreras Lomas, Amar a Dios en Tierra de Indios, Es Oficio Maternal (2023). Photo: Lance Gerber. Courtesy of the artist and Desert X.

Tschabalala Self, Pioneer (2023). Photo: Lance Gerber. Courtesy of the artist and Desert X.

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Generative Art Sensation Tyler Hobbs Has Filled His Debut London Show With Old-Fashioned Paintings—Painted by a Robot, That Is


Inside a Mayfair gallery earlier this week, a gathering of London’s cognoscenti raised colorful textured glasses along a well-appointed table stretching the length of the room. Glamorous as it was, the scene was a typical enough art world gallery dinner, except for the fact that the usual attendees, who included magazine critics and an art historian from the Courtauld gallery, were toasting an artist whose star ascended during NFT mania, and they were clinking glasses across the table with people named things like “blockbird” and “shamrock.”

It was at Unit London, where generative artist Tyler Hobbs was inaugurating his first solo exhibition in the U.K. On view through April 6, “Mechanical Hand” includes three paintings on canvas, and 17 works on paper. Real canvas and real paper, that is. 

Hobbs became a sensation during the NFT bubble in 2021, best known for his highly sought-after “Fidenza” NFTs—a series of 999 algorithmically produced and randomized grids of color. In 2023, he remains a breakout as his market is one of few that appears to have survived the crypto crash. One of these pieces hammered down at Christie’s evening sale in London last week at £290,000 ($348,667). 

But the focus of the evening was definitely on IRL art. The artist, who studied computer science at university, made the works on view using algorithms, codes, and plotters—a sort of robotic arm directed by a computer—to create aesthetic compositions, which he then embellished by hand, either painting or drawing on the surface. 

Tyler Hobbs, Delicate Futures (2022). Courtesy the artist and Unit London.

Tyler Hobbs, Delicate Futures (2022). Courtesy the artist and Unit London.

Hobbs relates his work to the system-based practices of artists like Sol LeWitt and Agnes Martin, who took similarly methodical approaches to mark-making. Speaking to the room, Hobbs said that this type of work “can only be experienced in person.” And while sales of these physical works were indeed encoded on the blockchain, and there were two NFTs also displayed in the gallery on screens, there was little to no mention of the now-poisoned word “NFT.”

This detail didn’t deter the OG NFT collectors from feting Hobbs’s success. “I loved the work, and Tyler’s explanations for each piece made it all the richer,” Hobbs fan and NFT collector, blockbird, told me of the work. “I think this venture into the physical is a great move as it really helps explain and bridge the qualities of his algorithmic work to a new audience. For me as a digital-first collector, it still holds great appeal. I would love one of these in my home.”

And if celebrating, even in a whisper, an NFT artist was unusual for many of the esteemed art world guests, the state of affairs was new to the artist, too, who professed that he had never sat around a dinner table “in the middle of a gallery like this.”

Describing the exhibition, Hobbs said it aims to ask questions about the “adolescent relationship between humans and machines.”

“Computers and machines deeply influence our aesthetics, and I want to observe how that happens,” Hobbs said in a statement. “What implicit skew does the computer have, and what tell-tale signs does the hand leave?” 

The questions lend conceptual depth to the work, as they certainly feel very relevant as algorithm-assisted text and image generators increasingly take over many of our daily tasks, and we collectively ask how we can move forward using a combination of both physical and digital tools. 

Tyler Hobbs, Return One [Red] (2022). Courtesy the artist and Unit London.

Tyler Hobbs, Return One [Red] (2021–2022). Courtesy the artist and Unit London.

Of the works on view, the works on paper shone the most. The earthen-toned gouache of Aligned Movement recall an ancient Roman mosaic or an Aboriginal dot painting. The pastel-smeared paper grids appear as if generative art pioneer Vera Molnár had a baby with a Rothko color field. The pale pink and purple hued watercolor of Delicate Futures has something in it of Helen Frankenthaler’s soak-stained paintings. The larger works on canvas, such as the primely hung at the back of the room, Return One [Red], are markedly less successful. That one, in particular, I thought looked like a D-version Kusama painting. Like much machine-generated art, it was all very good at looking like something else, and not very good at looking like nothing else. 

But what do I know? Unit London director and cofounder Joe Kennedy told me the following day that the show had “pretty much sold out.” The show at Unit London is the beginning of a landmark season for the artist who will open another solo exhibition later this month at Pace Gallery in New York, coinciding with NFT.NYC. Prices for the works in the show start at £25,000 (around $30,000), going up to £300,000 ($360,000) for the red painting at the back of the room, which had sold to a Hong Kong-based collector by the end of the evening.

“Tyler Hobbs: Mechanical Hand” is on view through April 6 at Unit London. See more of the works below.

Detail. Tyler Hobbs, Fulfilling System 1 (2020). Courtesy the artist and Unit London.

Detail. Tyler Hobbs, Fulfilling System 1 (2020). Courtesy the artist and Unit London.

Installation view, "Tyler Hobbs: Mechanical Hand" at Unit London. Photo by Marcus Peel courtesy the artist and Unit London.

Installation view, “Tyler Hobbs: Mechanical Hand” at Unit London. Photo: Marcus Peel, courtesy the artist and Unit London.

Installation view, "Tyler Hobbs: Mechanical Hand" at Unit London. Photo by Marcus Peel courtesy the artist and Unit London.

Installation view, “Tyler Hobbs: Mechanical Hand” at Unit London. Photo: Marcus Peel, courtesy the artist and Unit London.

Tyler Hobbs, user_space, 36 (2022). Courtesy the artist and Unit London.

Tyler Hobbs, user_space (2022). Courtesy the artist and Unit London.

Installation view, "Tyler Hobbs: Mechanical Hand" at Unit London. Photo by Marcus Peel courtesy the artist and Unit London.

Installation view, “Tyler Hobbs: Mechanical Hand” at Unit London. Photo: Marcus Peel, courtesy the artist and Unit London.

Installation view, "Tyler Hobbs: Mechanical Hand" at Unit London. Photo by Marcus Peel courtesy the artist and Unit London.

Installation view, “Tyler Hobbs: Mechanical Hand” at Unit London. Photo: Marcus Peel, courtesy the artist and Unit London.

Tyler Hobbs, Aligned Movement (2020). Courtesy the artist and Unit London.

Tyler Hobbs, Aligned Movement (2020). Courtesy the artist and Unit London.

Installation view, "Tyler Hobbs: Mechanical Hand" at Unit London. Photo by Marcus Peel courtesy the artist and Unit London.

Installation view, “Tyler Hobbs: Mechanical Hand” at Unit London. Photo: Marcus Peel, courtesy the artist and Unit London.

Installation view, "Tyler Hobbs: Mechanical Hand" at Unit London. Photo by Marcus Peel courtesy the artist and Unit London.

Installation view, “Tyler Hobbs: Mechanical Hand” at Unit London. Photo: Marcus Peel, courtesy the artist and Unit London.

Tyler Hobbs, By Proxy Yellow 1 (2021). Courtesy the artist and Unit London.

Tyler Hobbs, By Proxy Yellow 1 (2021). Courtesy the artist and Unit London.

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Gagosian Invites Gary Garrels, Who Left SFMOMA Amid a Staff Revolt, to Curate a Major Show of Abstract Art + Other Stories


Art Industry News is a daily digest of the most consequential developments coming out of the art world and art market. Here’s what you need to know on this Wednesday, March 8.

NEED-TO-READ

Is This Picasso Painting Looted Art? – Madame Soler, the painting from Picasso’s Blue Period housed in the Bavarian State Painting Collections, is at the center of an ownership dispute as the heirs of Jewish banker and art collector Paul von Mendelssohn-Bartholdy claim that they are the rightful owners. The case remains unresolved as it could not be determined whether the painting was sold under duress amid Nazi Germany’s persecution of Jewish people. (DW)

Otobong Nkanga Joins Lisson – The Nigerian-born Antwerp-based artist has left Mendes Wood DM to join the roster at Lisson Gallery, attributing the move as a “question of growing with another team” and with “a gallery that I’ve always had great admiration for.” The artist’s multidisciplinary works, spanning painting, textiles, sculpture, and film, reference the history and legacy of colonialism, will go on view in a show at the gallery’s London outpost in May. Nkanga will continue to be represented by Lumen Travo in Amsterdam and Galerie In Situ-Fabienne Leclerc in Paris. (The Art Newspaper)

Gagosian to Mount Major Abstraction Show – The gallery will be staging “To Bend the Ear from the Outer World: Conversations on contemporary abstract painting,” an expansive show featuring more than 40 artists curated by Gary Garrels, the former senior curator at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art who resigned in 2020 amid a row with staff about systemic inequality. It will be mounted across two of its London locations, at Grosvenor Hill and Davies Street. (Press release)

Police Seize Banksy Works in Criminal Investigation – Three works by the elusive artist—his sculpture Grappling Hook, a work titled White Tower, and Monkey Queen, a satirical portrait of the late monarch—have been in the custody of Gwent police in Wales since March 2021 as part of an investigation into a 35-year-old man, court documents revealed. The works are suspected proceeds from a crime. (Evening Standard)

MOVERS & SHAKERS

Jaune Quick-to-See Smith to Curate National Gallery Show – The Native American painter is the first artist to curate a show at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.. The show will feature around 50 living Indigenous artists. (The Art Newspaper)

Andy Warhol’s Watch Sells for $101,600 – A Rare Patek Philippe Ref. 2526 pink gold wristwatch with a first-series enamel dial exceeded its presale estimate of $80,000 at Sotheby’s Fine Watches sale, fetching more than $100,000 on Tuesday. The timepiece was first auctioned at Sotheby’s in 1988 after a secret compartment in the late artist’s bedroom cabinet was discovered holding a veritable treasure trove of watches, gemstones, and designer jewels. (Sotheby’s)

LACMA Building Campaign Nears Completion – The fundraising campaign for the controversial new building designed by starchitect Peter Zumthor is 98 percent complete with more than $735 million raised for the project. (LA Times)

Robert Indiana’s Foundation Adds Bold Names to Board – The Star of Hope Foundation, created by the late artist to support the visual arts in his home state of Maine, has finalized its Board of Directors. Appointees include art-world heavyweights Paul Bird, director of the Portland Museum of Art; Sharon Corwin, President & CEO of Chicago’s Terra Foundation for American Art; and Adam Weinberg, director of Manhattan’s Whitney Museum of American Art. (Press release)

FOR ARTS SAKE

Madame Tussauds Creates Wax Figure of Emmeline Pankhurst – More than a century after co-founding the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), Pankhurst has been immortalized as a new wax statue in London’s Madame Tussauds to mark International Women’s Day. Pankhurst was a leading member of the suffragettes who fought for women’s right to vote in the early 20th century in the U.K. A panel discussion about Pankhurst’s impact was held at London wax museum. (Evening Standard)

Suffragette and feminist trailblazer Emmeline Pankhurst’s new waxwork unveiled at Madame Tussauds to mark International Women's Day. Courtesy Madame Tussauds London.

Madame Tussauds London’s artist, Luisa Compobassi, puts the finishing touches to Suffragette and feminist trailblazer Emmeline Pankhurst’s new figure ahead of its arrival at the attraction to mark International Women’s Day. Courtesy Madame Tussauds.

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Artists Decry an Idaho College’s ‘Alarming’ Removal of Artworks Centered on Reproductive Rights From a Group Show on Healthcare


School officials removed half a dozen artworks from a show at Lewis-Clark State College Center for Arts and History, a public college in Idaho, because of references to abortion and related reproductive health issues. The show, titled “Unconditional Care,” opened just days ago, on March 3, and is intended as an exploration of “today’s biggest health issues and… stories and concerns of those directly impacted by those issues,” according to an earlier show statement on the school’s website.

It examines topics such as chronic illness, disability, pregnancy, sexual assault, and gun violence including related deaths. A mix of local and international artists are featured in the exhibition, many of whom share their personal experiences through film, audio, mixed media, paintings, and photography.

The works that have been removed from the show include a series of four documentary videos from artist Lydia Nobles, in which individual women share diverse experiences around reproductive rights and pregnancy; a 2023 piece by Michelle Hartney, which is a handwritten copy of one of the 250,000 letters addressed to Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, and received in the 1920s mostly from mothers who were begging for information about birth control; and a 2015 embroidery work from artist Katrina Majkut titled Medical Abortion that depicts Mifepristone and Misoprostol, two prescriptions taken together in sequence to end an early pregnancy.

The college did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but in a statement released to other publications, a spokesperson said of the censorship of the show: “After obtaining legal advice, per Idaho Code Section 18-8705, some of the proposed exhibits could not be included in the exhibition.”

Section 18-8705 is part of the No Public Funds for Abortion Act (NPFAA) that was passed by Idaho’s Republican legislature in 2021, months after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the right to an abortion.

Majkut is not only a participating artist, but also a guest curator of the show. She told Midnight Publishing Group News that in her 10 years of extensive work with colleges, in particular, she always strives to be bipartisan and objective, while encouraging dialogue and educating viewers. “It’s always been a positive experience. I’ve never heard one peep about discontent. And I’ve never been censored,” she said in a phone interview.

As she and a gallery staffer were developing ideas around the show last fall she was invited to be a curator. “I decided I would do it about the most topical health issues in the United States, as it’s on everyones mind. My goal was to approach these hot topic issues in a very level-headed, factual way,” she said. “I was avoiding protest art. I wanted art that got to the heart of the issue either medically or through personal stories, especially by people directly affected by those health issues.”

Medical Abortion (2015), an embroidery by Katrina Majkut was removed from the show titled "Unconditional Care" at the Lewis-Clark State College Center for Arts & History, in Idago. Image courtesy Katrina Majkut.

Medical Abortion (2015), an embroidery by Katrina Majkut was removed from the show titled “Unconditional Care” at the Lewis-Clark State College Center for Arts & History, in Idago. Image courtesy Katrina Majkut.

Majkut said her work was removed on March 2, a day before the exhibition opened and after giving administrators a tour of the entire show. When informed of their decision to remove the work, Majkut suggested several alternatives including “some sort of presence, even if it just [a statement that reads] ‘this artwork was removed in accordance with the law.’ I said that I wanted the wall text up even if I can’t have the artwork because it literally reiterates Idaho’s own law to the students. That was a no-go. It’s an educational setting, but I was told directly in person that the wall text wasn’t okay.” Majkut said she has dozens of other artworks that remain in the show.

Meanwhile, representatives from the ACLU penned a detailed letter to college president Cynthia Pemberton objecting to the removal of Nobles’s works and asking that they be reinstated.

The letter is signed by Elizabeth Larison, director of the arts and culture advocacy program of the National Coalition Against Censorship; by Scarlet Kim, senior staff attorney for speech, privacy and technology project of the ACLU, and Leo Morales, executive director of the ACLU of Idaho.

Stills from Lydia Noble's documentary series “As I Sit Waiting,” that were removed from the show 'Unconditional Care' at Lewis-Clark State College Center for Arts & History in Idaho. Image courtesy Lydia Noble.

Stills from Lydia Nobles’s documentary series “As I Sit Waiting,” which was removed from the show “Unconditional Care” at Lewis-Clark State College Center for Arts & History in Idaho. Image courtesy Lydia Nobles.

They expressed “alarm” at the removal of Nobles’s videos.

“The College’s interpretation of the NPFAA—that it applies to works of art depicting the discussion of abortion—demonstrates the potential abuses of the Act,” the letter read. “As the Supreme Court recognized 80 years ago, ‘[i]f there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion…’ The College’s decision threatens this bedrock First Amendment principle by censoring Nobles’s important work and denying visitors of the center the opportunity to view, consider, and discuss it.”

“Institutions of higher education are responsible for presenting students with an array of viewpoints and fostering among them a sense of academic curiosity and intellectual engagement,” it continued. “We urge the College to reconsider this censorship and permit these works to be shown as part of ‘Unconditional Care.’”

Additionally, Kirsten Shahverdian, senior manager of free expression and education at PEN America, has likewise condemned the decision as “a slap in the face to academic and artistic freedom.” In a statement, she added: “Banning these artworks signals to people—especially women—that they must silence themselves and their experiences when it comes to any aspect of reproductive or sexual health, stripping them of their fundamental rights to free expression.”

Nobles said after Majkut invited her to exhibit work from her series, “As I Sit Waiting,” they worked together between mid December 2022 and January 2023 to select four accounts that share diverse experiences around reproductive rights and pregnancy.

“The selected documentaries are that of DeZ’ah, Blair, Cat, and Claudia,” said Nobles. “The gallerist and I were working together to figure out installation, and they even painted the wall a light purple to coincide with my ideal installation. All seemed to being going well—that is, until I received an email from the school.”

According to Nobles, the email stated: “Upon review of submitted work for the upcoming Center for Arts and History exhibit ‘Unconditional Care,’ after consulting with legal counsel and based on current Idaho Law (Idaho Code 18-8705), your proposed exhibit cannot be included.”

Nobles said she asked for further clarification about what exactly in her documentaries violated the law, but she did not receive a response.

“It was also alarming that the language in the email shifted, suggesting that these were just proposed works, when in fact they were installed already; besides slight remaining details,” she said. “The email from the school was particularly odd because I went to great efforts to frame these films as unbiased as I could. I didn’t want to know too much about the participant’s story beforehand. I also wanted the interviews to be memory-based and without an agenda. So to hear that the school thinks that these stories are violating this law, I was pretty confused.”

Artwork by Michelle Hartney that was removed from "Unconditional Care" at Lewis-Clark State College Center for Arts & History, in Idaho. Image courtesy Michelle Hartney.

Artwork by Michelle Hartney that was removed from “Unconditional Care” at Lewis-Clark State College Center for Arts & History, in Idaho. Image courtesy Michelle Hartney.

“The censorship of my piece is extra alarming because it comes from a letter that was written 100 years ago by a desperate mom,” Hartney told Midnight Publishing Group News of the removal her letter-based work.

“I feel compelled, through this project, to make sure the stories and pleas from these mothers from the past are not forgotten, so folks can see where we were 100 years ago when there was no access to birth control, and so they can read firsthand accounts from over 250,000 people, what happens to a person when their right to control their own destiny is taken away.”

 

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A Wall Street Billionaire Shot Himself in His Family Office. His Death Is Reverberating in the Museum World, and the Art Market

Researchers in Vietnam Discovered That Two Deer Antlers Languishing in Museum Storage Are Actually 2,000-Year-Old Musical Instruments

Ontario Police Have Arrested Eight People Suspected of Forging Thousands of Artworks Attributed to Indigenous Artist Norval Morrisseau

A Pair of Climate Activists in Scotland Smashed and Spray-Painted a Glass Case Housing ‘Braveheart’ Knight William Wallace’s Sword

We Asked ChatGPT About Art Theory. It Led Us Down a Rabbit Hole So Perplexing We Had to Ask Hal Foster for a Reality Check

Dutch Police Are Closing In on the So-Called ‘Pink Panther Gang’ Behind the Astonishing Daytime Diamond Heist at TEFAF Maastricht

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