I was absorbed by Charo's presentation. Particularly because we had talked about
ready-mades, which she defined as "an opportunity to share," "an experience" (which reminded me of
Arte Povera). As if the more difficult the task, the bigger the empowerment. And how about seducing the gods with antennas? Charo is definitely a character. Tell me your thoughts and be frank. This is not a place for edulcoration.
13 comments:
You know I absolutely loved her work and everything it stood for!! She seem to have a very interesting life, I'm sure she's seen so much around the world. All of her pieces seem to be well thought out and there is meaning behind all of it. It is really wonderful and bold of her to make pieces about religion and voodoo. I come from a Cuban family where voodoo/santeria is always hush hush. (What's with the elephant facing backwards by the entrance of my grapndparents house) They say it brings luck/fortune? Does it have to do with Santeria?
It seems like people who know very little about the subject matter give it a negative connotation, and I think thats wrong. She definitely made me interested in exploring others parts of my culture as well.
Excellent presentation.
I really enjoyed the talk Charo gave on Thursday. I had no idea about how much I did not know about some of the events in other cultures and found her explanations intriguing! She left me very curious and wanting to look up more info on witch doctors and voodoo and why it is so taboo in America. The pieces I found most interesting of hers dealt with racism/equality (The twins painting and the red/black babies with beads). I am glad to know of another powerful woman/artist in this world - hope to meet more!
I thoroughly enjoyed the talk. Some of the art I enjoyed more than others. The altars, fabric pieces, and paintings influenced in New Zealand I enjoyed the most. I love the shot of her tied to the Haitian man as part of street performance. The glitter pieces and the towers were wasted on me.
I was impressed with her challenge to approach an art project empty handed and use local placement and materials to make a short term project happen. That has given me some momentum for something I've been wanting to try for a while myself.
Also, as I ponder my senior show in ceramics, her example of embracing and rediscovering the who I am and where I came from mixed with my religious background and mystecism really spoke to me. I guess up until now I saw my art work as a separate part of me because I was so focused on gaining skills but incorporating my personal themes into it will take it up a notch or two as part of the planning and execution of the works I will do next.
Also, while I have also performed on stage off and on I never thought about combining that with my art somehow. That would be a big thing to ponder - perhaps as part of my senior show as well. Hmmmmm. Charo gives good nourishment for artistic thought.
Charo is a dynamic storyteller. I was captivated the whole time. I loved both hearing and seeing her progression as an artist. Her self-exploration seemed sincere and well documented in her work. She is a cool lady, who doesn’t hesitate to jump into new experiences, no matter where they lead. Her zest for life is loud and clear in her art. It’s refreshing to meet an artist who owns her self and has a symbiotic relationship with art. It must be nice to have the ability to transition so smoothly between media. I love how strongly her spirit shines through her work. I wish we’d had more time. Also awesome, is Edgezones, and what they’re doing for local artists and experimental art. Definitely going to their next opening.
Charo is a most interesting artist on so many levels. She works in so many medias and oeuvres. She has traveled and explored her art in distant places with contrasting cultures. She has created a personal symbolic language built on existing Afro-Caribbean spiritual systems. She has created her own venue to display, install and perform her art locally. This space also is intended to cultivate the local art scene. I was impressed by the presentation of her paintings, sculptures and installations, although the quantity of work shown disallowed a focus on any one piece, but did allow a retrospective of many years of her work in brief flashes. I found her oils charmingly primitive and rich in symbolism, her installations complex, intricate and impressively grand. I was disappointed there were few images of her performance work. I was happy to hear her practicality of using textiles and portable items for distant installations. This shows good planning and sensibility in creating her work. Her use of found objects reinforces the idea that an artist can instill a new meaning in common-place objects with their intention to create object d’art. I wish to thank her for presenting her life to we denizens of ART 106. Cheers!
Thank you for all your responses, I see that you all took in the information and images and gave it some thoughts, which is what as an artists, one hopes to accomplish with ones work. I am incredibly busy at the moment with Edge Zones' upcoming 10 exhibitions, but I wish we had had more time to go deeper into some of the concepts which I introduced, because they are vast. I would like for you to look up the relationship between Elegua and Chaos. I also want to add that the only reason I was surprised at that time to find out that many of my family where actually believers to a certain degree was because of my lack of knowledge. One can think of these religions as primitive, but their respect and knowledge of nature on a personal level is greater than our own. They do not have this hierarchy that we have where the humans are on top and the rest of nature is there to serve us, and therefore for us to abuse it.
As far as the street festival which by the way was not a "street festival" but it went from village to village through sugarcane fields, and it would occasionally take the road. It was spiritual in nature and hard for me to describe in such short period, but even though today we try to replace these rituals with soccer matches, they are no way similar, only in that they are cathartic experiences. This is a very complex ritual which I did not go into detail. Even the magic potions they make have so many particulars such as that the waters are from different places - sea, river, etc. and the earth is also from different specific places and so are the leaves. Before one can simplify these rituals, one most get close up and at least find out more details before you write them off. Again, thank you for your thoughts.
I heard about this exhibit in my figure sculpting class today in case anyone is interested.
Artist reception - 9/28 at 7:30 at the Cox Science Center at UM. The display is called Manimalism.
"An exhibition of descriptive, thought provoking, and absurd sculptures using animal/human hybrids to reveal inner truths about society, personal relationships, and self-awareness."
CORRECTION - THE OPENING IS ON 9/8!
I really enjoyed Charo’s presentation. I felt especially close to the issues she discussed, since I am half Dominican myself. Infact my mother’s life story is quite similar to Charo’s. My mother also fled with her family out of the Dominican Republic during the mid sixties. She was also in and out of boarding schools, and lost much of her heritage in coming to the United States. Being on of the first and only Dominicans in Washington Heights, NY, now of course you go there and it’s become a second Dominican Republic.
Being now second generation in the United States, I have lost even more of my own Dominican culture. I had traveled back to my mother’s home town in Bonao, a small town which built up around a sugarcane factory. While I was there I really got the best feel for where my mother came from, and what my culture is. I heard stories of Chango parties where an old woman would take on the spirit of Chango, and speak in a mans voice with a cigar in her mouth.
The stories are very interesting and important to my heritage. Although I’m not as connected to the Dominican Republic, having not been born there, I do feel myself that I am missing a piece of who I am, by not exploring my own heritage more.
Charo’s works were extremely engaging. The color and the concepts where quite amazing once she began to delve into the underlying issues of her art. I did live a couple years in the north coast of the Dominican Republic, and while I was there I was exposed to beautiful Haitian Art. Though she didn’t touch too much on it, many of her works of seemed very reminiscent of Haitian Art, the ways she dealt with depth, color, and symbols. Haitian Art has actually been very inspirational to me as well, even though I mostly deal in the graphic arts these days.
It was also very ironic that we had Charo as a presenter the same day we explored symbolism. My mother would always tell me that the image of teeth falling out of a mouth, symbolizes death, and oddly enough, I have had many reoccurring dreams where my teeth are very loose and start to fall out. I haven’t yet really had to deal with death in my life, so I’m not sure what these dreams mean. However this symbol seems to be so strong, that I recall it often. I’m not sure where it comes from, I have to ask my mother, however I believe it is born out of Dominican, Voodoo folklore. Being raised on a mix of superstition and Roman Catholicism, my interpretation of symbols and elements may be quite strange to some. This also goes to show you how broad the spectrum of symbolism can be, and how you culture can shape you to see different connections in objects that may have no significance to others.
I definetely think Charo is an artist, I loved her work a lot and it was really interesting how she explained every piece of her work in detail. I come from Ecuador and moved here a year ago, so I really know how it is for a person to feel like a totally stranger when you are not home!!.
All her work is colorful and full of life, she mostly used tropical colors that in fact are seen in her country. She reminded me to Frida Kahlo, who's my favorite painter, because they both had work in which represented their lifes and what they were going through.
I also believe that Charo is someone we all have to admire because she never gave up her background behind and turned all her thoughts and feelings into a real pice of art!!.
Also she caught my attention so much that am looking forward to see all of her work and I definitely hope to be at her work exhibition some day!.
Out of all the work the Charo exhibited for the class the most prolific would have to be her large-scale sculptures of towers. The entire world can relate to her subject matter. Her towers are like physical actualizations of the healing process the US had to go through after the decimation of 9/11. I especially liked her concentration of the voodoo goddess Yemaya. After going to Haiti, I have seen first hand the special relationship the people have to their religious traditions. These practices are a rich and wonderful facet in the Haitian and Dominican culture. I really loved her work and I look forward to visiting Edgezones Gallery!
And what IS the difference, then, between the "spiritual" and the merely intensely psychological/cathartic? Is it just complexity--if so, what level is needed for it to "ascend" to the spiritual realm? Or is it simply that is practitioners label it as such?
I found Charo to be an engaging speaker and a dynamic person who had interesting ideas and a passion for what she did. I was impressed by her abilities to use a limited pallet of materials and resources, and to work in a very immediate way.
Overall, I had a hard time seeing past the lack of craft in her artwork. I felt that the work lacked the time and care that comes with making something meaningful. The art looked sloppy. The glitter pieces in particular showed no concern for craft.
The pieces, lacking craft, seem to then move into the realm of content. And Charo certainly had a lot to say about her work. She spoke of the content of each pieces, giving background, history, and personal context, yet some of the pieces didn’t fully connect with what she was saying. She spoke a lot about her work, but most of her work did not show the same amount of content as stand alone works. As a viewer I certainly would not have understood the meaning of most of her works had she not explained them in great detail, and even with the details given, I did not connect with the pieces and see them as finished works of art.
I felt that the works with the greatest impact were actually her earlier works, the paintings, and the pieces from New Zealand. They were more carefully rendered and seemed to be about her life she knew, rather than an identity she only wished to connect to.
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