11.29.07 kulturnatib

Artist talk

When the Lunâ Art Collective was still active and not quite as occupied as we are now with different concerns -- though still largely connected with art and design -- one of the things we tried to cultivate was the artist talk.

This we tried to do as a matter of course and habit with exhibits that we organized and participated in at our exhibit space. Usually, this was set a week or a few days after the opening of the exhibit.

We believed that the days of “the works speaks for itself” is long gone if it that ever was the case at all. We believed that the artists now have an equally important responsibility of explaining or expounding on their works in order that the audience or their public are able to have a better understanding of the same.

It is not necessary that the artists are able to hold forth on art history, theory or aesthetics though it doesn't normally hurt either if they are able to. Only, we believed that the artists should be able to expound on their art or art piece as if explaining to five year olds though not necessarily with the limited vocabulary of children that age nor with the mistaken idea that five year olds, like their typical audience, are not 'bright' enough.

Convinced that there is much to learn from discussion with the artists, I take whatever opportunity I can to attend such sessions myself.

My most recent attendance in an artists talk was last week at the Ottawa Art Gallery that featured the Iraqi born, Canadian educated artist, Farouk Kaspaules in an exhibited entitled, “Be/Longing.”

The talk was divided into two settings. The first was at the exhibit rooms in the presence of the art works that was referred to by the artist one by one and tied together through the process of the work, the techniques which were mostly mix-media on paper, and most important, through the common subject.

After an hour of that walking and standing tour this was followed by another hour of a slide showing and more discussion of earlier works at a conference room – sitting this time -- that also established the artists long engagement with his homeland, particularly with the present difficulties there and especially with the prospects of disintegration that he says the artists have an important role in seeing that it is prevented from happening.

The discussions were enlightening with Kaspaules returning many times to his insistence that as an artist all that he really asks for from his audience is to give time to his works, and not to rush through the works with predetermined or half-considered judgments, whether to agree or not, about it.

He also maintained that if his art is able to encourage or spark further interest in the audience by their picking up a book about Iraq, for example, then he would consider his art a success and his being an artist worth his time.

These, he said, were two things -- giving time and picking up a book -- that most people no longer afford and consider an extravagant luxury, which, he further said that if they only afforded to do then they would probably have less time for more damaging activities like waging war.

Since, I suspected, many of those in the audience were academics or cultural workers many of the questions were sharply political as well as broadly cultural that often encompassed the works or practice of Iraqi artists living outside Iraq compared with those living inside Iraq.

The answers to most of these questions reflect on many common issues experienced by other artists of other nationalities who find themselves either out of their homelands or are within their homelands who, exposed to different influences from everywhere, will have to, sooner or later, deal with issues of identity.

Here is where the artist has another important role; that of the public intellectual. More and more artists now recognize that to be serious about their art is to consider and address the public nature of art, to realize that not only it is beyond private communication – even if the language can be intensely personal -- but also that art does have something to say about what's happening outside the canvas.

This is the path for artists in Cebu to develop if art in Cebu is to go beyond just being pretty distractions.