Faig Ahmed, “DNA”, presentation transcript

This is “DNA”, by Faig Ahmed. It’s a handwoven wool carpet, that is 51x94 inches. Faig is interested in traditional craft and the visual language of carpets. He uses traditional methods of carpet weaving, with a loom, natural dyes and wool, all while deconstructing these traditions by juxtaposing contemporary themes and codes. Faig works in collaboration with local weavers in a village near his studio.

These women have used the same handweaving techniques to create carpets for hundreds of years. Faig was fascinated by the origin of language and linguistics before he became interested in carpets. He sees traditional carpet designs as a coded message, similar to ones’s inherent DNA. He replicates traditional designs and then alters them, so he is reconfiguring the carpets’ DNA code. For our committee, acquiring a Faig Ahmed carpet was unanimous decision.

We are fortunate to acquire one of his carpets early on in his art career, since he is only 35 years old. We believe that DNA does much to enhance the Student Union Art Collection, as it is an interesting dialogue with Robert Motherwell’s large tapestry, and also the coded text-based works of Do Ho Suh and Glenn Ligon.

Mona Hatoum, “Over My Dead Body”, presentation transcript

The work we purchased is “Over My Dead Body” by Mona Hatoum from 2005. The reason that we chose this work is, first of all, we find it historically meaningful and also relevant in today’s world and related to warfare and gender identity and a lot of other very important contemporary issues. It is in dialogue with a lot of postmodernist works from the 80s – for example, the works by Barbara Kruger and Sidney Sherman. I think by putting this work in context with a larger or historical background, people and our students especially on this campus, will get a better idea and a more educational takeaway from this piece.

This work is also meaningful because it is a work that plays with the idea of warfare and, people’s body. In this picture, you can see that we see Mona’s face in profile and there is a toy soldier that is perched on her nose. We find this piece interesting because by this juxtaposition of different scales, that it’s the artist’s choice to make the symbol of war very small and her head very big in this picture. We think that she plays with this idea of warfare very humorously and light heartedly – that is, by understating how cruel and gruesome the warfare is. That’s the humor that we find really interesting and attractive in this piece.

Richard Mosse, “Man-Size”, presentation transcript

The work you’re seeing is “Man-Size” by Richard Mosse. It’s a part of his Infra series, which is a series that uses this military reconnaissance technology called Kodak Aerochrome. It was originally used to take aerial photos of the underbrush. What it does is it renders the chlorophyll, the light that’s reflected from plants, as this bright hot pink or red or lavender, somewhere in that spectrum. How this technology was originally used was to locate people in the underbrush to target them. For instance, camo would not render in the hot pink color; it would be green. And so you could tell the difference between the hot pink foliage and the green camouflage.

What Richard Mosse here has done is subverted the use of this technology because it’s no longer being used to target people, but to create these portraits of conflict and the people who are caught up in it, the victims. In this case, he spent the better part of four years on the ground in the Congo documenting a conflict that received very little media attention from Western outlets. Since 1998, more than 4.5 million people have died as a part of this conflict, and I think this work gives a face to some of the victims caught up in that.

Man-Size, the title, speaks directly to the two young boys that you’re seeing in the image, child soldiers forced to grow up before their time and fighting in a conflict that they probably don’t understand. I think that’s part of the nature of modern warfare, and we really liked how this gives a face to that, gives a face to victims caught up in that. We really wanted that to be a part of the collection.

Shirin Neshat, “Marjan (Masses)”, presentation transcript

This photograph is part of the Masses series of photographs, which is part of the larger Book of Kings series of photographs by Shirin Neshat. It is a group of photos of Iranian Americans living in New York. What Shirin Neshat has done is write text over their faces, notably not covering their eyes and not covering their mouth. This text is from the Book of Kings, which is a work that established the Farsi language in Iran.

Something that captivated us about this piece was the way that Marjan is looking at you, and the way that her expression is so complex. She doesn’t look particularly angry, sad – it’s a complicated look. It’s a face, an expression, that kind of explores all the contradictory feelings of an Iranian American. When we entered the gallery, and saw these works, first we were taken aback by the way that the detail is so much different in real life, than it is in a photograph.

When you step up close to one of these works, you’re really able to see the intricacies of the handwriting on the work and on the face. The way that the text smooths itself onto the face, it doesn’t look as though it’s written on top of the face; it really is embedded within the skin. I think that was something that captivated us, both emotionally, technically, artistically.

Sun Xun, “The Time Vivarium – 81”, presentation transcript

Sun Xun is a fantastic Chinese animator. He works in stop-motion film and primarily uses some paint and ink as well as woodcuts in that process. We were very drawn to a number of his works from the “Time Vivarium,” which is a short film he completed a couple of years ago. The entire piece centers on cultural legacy and the way that we think about things in our society. We selected one work of Sun Xun’s when he visited Sean Kelly Gallery in New York and it is frame 81 of the film. It shows a goose flying at top speeds with its head covered by a moving cloud. In the film, you see these clouds jumbling all around the bird’s head.

In this one shot, it’s just a blind bird. We thought that that was particularly interesting as we think about today’s socio-political atmosphere. The idea of moving in a very fast pace, but not really knowing exactly where we’re going, or if we’re going in the right direction – if we’re just flying blind – is pretty significant. We were also very drawn to Sun Xun the more, as the secondary reason, for the fact that he is a representative of Chinese artists and we have a growing Chinese population at Wake Forest. We saw it as an opportunity to bring in Sun Xun’s masterful use of color and line and that sort of thing, a representative of the Chinese population at Wake Forest.