Talking politics 2008: six artists who have taken on controversial public issues in their work assess the current status of political art

Art in America, June-July, 2008 by Eleanor Heartney

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In the midst of a particularly bruising political year, and as the ever more unpopular Iraq war competes for public attention with signs of impending economic disaster at home, it seems an appropriate moment to reassess the relationship between art and politics. For this purpose we gathered six artists whose work has often delved into this contentious realm. Representing a diverse swath of contemporary experience, they cut across generations, mediums and approaches. Here, in a roundtable conducted by e-mail, they reflect on the possibilities for political art today.

Participants:

Adel Abidin (b. 1973), creator of Abidin Travels--Welcome to Baghdad, a faux travel agency enthusiastically hawking tourist travel to Iraq, which was one of the noteworthy works of the 2007 Venice Biennale. Abidin is a young Iraqi native who left Baghdad for Helsinki in 2000. In his videos and installations he turns a similarly ironic eye on issues like fundamentalism, terrorism, identity, nationalism and religion.

Laylah Ali (b. 1968, Buffalo), whose clean, graphic paintings are populated by highly abstracted figures inspired by folk art and hieroglyphics. The figures play out stylized rituals of violence and destruction with a thoughtless inhumanity that is underscored by the dispassionate nature of their presentation. Her most recent series, "the kiss and other warriors," fuses recognizable cultural types in a disturbing intimacy.

Mel Chin (b. 1951, Houston), who works across mediums and genres, and is well known for his witty, conceptual commentaries on political and social issues. Among his leading works are the 1990 Revival Field, an environmental projects designed to restore contaminated land, the Gala Committee (1997), which inserted politically provocative objects into the set of the television show Melrose Place, and KNOWMAD (2000), an interactive computer game involving rug patterns of persecuted nomadic peoples.

Enrique Chagoya (b. 1953), who was born in Mexico and came to the U.S. in 1977. Chagoya uses his insider/outsider status to take aim at the complexities and absurdities of colonialism, globalism and the relationship between the U.S. and the rest of the Americas. His satirical drawings, paintings and graphics appropriate imagery from American mass media, Mexican folk art, Western art and pre-Columbian codices.

Daniel Joseph Martinez (b. 1957, Los Angeles), whose recent works include The House America Built (2004), a collision between the worlds of "Unabomber" Ted Kaczynski and Martha Stewart, and Divine Violence, on view at the 2008 Whitney Biennial, an arrangement of gold-painted panels, each emblazoned with the name of an organization devoted to political change through violent means.

Martha Rosier (b. 1943, Brooklyn), who, since the mid 1970s, has employed videos, photo essays, installations, performances and texts to tackle issues such as war, sexism, globalization, homelessness and the insidious reach of the mass media. Among her most celebrated recent works is a Middle East revision of her 1970s Vietnam-era series "Bringing the War Home." Widely exhibited, the new work offers trenchant commentary on the American public's failure, once again, to fully acknowlege its responsibility for a disastrous foreign war.

Is art better suited to bearing witness or to fomenting change?

Chin: Ordinarily it is suited to neither one. However, when the going gets tough, historically, art has been an avenue to both.

Ali: I'm not sure I can say what art is best suited for, but right now, there seems to be a respectable amount of art that is bearing witness, and not so much progressive change occurring. There is also a great deal of fomenting--just heating things up for the sake of it.

Chagoya: I am not sure how much art may foment social change, although there is a connection. It is more clear to me how art is affected by changes in society (political, technological, economic, etc.). It is harder to measure things the other way around, but I have the impression that it is very minimal.

Rosler: I don't think art is particularly "suited" to anything. The production of an iconic or symbolic language or marking system serves different purposes in different circumstances. Today we depend on images in a central way in everyday life, since images are embedded in public and private ruling narratives whose semantic burden is so ubiquitous as to need only to be sketched in highly reduced forms rather than spelled out. So art can play the roles you mention, or others.

How do you conceive your role in relationship to politics?

Rosler: My own work changes with what strikes me as the exigencies of the day. Some of my work focuses on things like the shape of daily life and public spaces; other projects are essentially antiwar agitation.

Ali: Though in person I can be quite opinionated and clear about my beliefs, I have often thought of my work as where my questions go. It does not produce answers or directives. It has been more interesting for me to explore in my work the things I wasn't so clear about. So in my case, can a political work be a work of vacillation and unclear motives? How artists live our lives and live out our supposed beliefs might be the bigger reality of being a 'political artist."