Venezuela, Revolution and Public Art in Melbourne, Australia

Boa noite/Bom dia my readers,

Earlier in my stay here in Australia, I had the honor of sitting down with Victor Holder, Venezuela-born, Australia-based public artist and creative director of socially engaged artistic hub, 4 Dverse Studios.

On March 23, 2014, 4Dverse showcased Propaganda for Peace at Melbourne's Viva Victoria Multicultural Festival, an event dedicated to "the ultimate celebration of Victoria's awesome cultural diversity."

4Dverse Studios responded to the call. Initially, the plan was to bring Venezuela's Dancing Devils to Melbourne. The Dancing Devils, having recently been declared by the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) as one of a select few intangible cultural human heritages, are a performance group that reflects both Spanish and African influences, syncretized in a performance that has come to represent one distinct aspect of Venezuela.

However, as many of you global and, particular, hemispheric readers may know, Venezuela has been in a state of duress for months now, and as a result any possibilities of bringing the Dancing Devils or any such group no longer became a possibility.

When thinking back at the moment where he and his Venezuelan collaborator, Ramon Martinez, had to quickly come up with an alternative project for their booth at the festival, he remarks, "We were so upset, so hurt, and so angry...to see all these videos of students being killed in the street that we were so emotional, we couldn’t talk about art. We could only talk about politics and the situation, and we said “Let’s do...let’s just be honest. Let’s do something that relates to this, and helps somehow.”

And that's how Propaganda for Peace began. In a festival dedicated to exploring multiculturalism, they wanted to represent the Venezuela that they were experiencing alongside the flat, cultural lens in which so many countries, Venezuela included, are presented through the lens of a multicultural experience to the rest of the world.


Propaganda For Peace from Balangara Films on Vimeo.

This blog post emerged not simply because this is an example of visceral public, socially engaged art speaking on an important reality of the Americas, but also because this work was subsequently shut down by the Viva Victoria Multicultural Festival team.

That begs the question as to what are the limits of a multicultural experience? Is it when we become uncomfortable by reality? What is the goal of a multicultural festival if the definition of multiculturalism is limited to what is pleasant and comfortable, and not what is?

Victor, while serving as Creative Director of 4Dverse, is also pursuing a Masters degree in Public Art at RMIT. In our brief interview reflecting on the multicultural installation Propoganda for Peace, and its subsequent shut down by the staff of a multicultural festival, Victor had these remarks to say about Propaganda for Peace:

[Propaganda for Peace] was a subversive art work. It was activism. And it was more a reminder to, for one hand, for Venezuelan people, it was a reminder of our essence, of our origin, our happy culture, of our vibrant culture, that has been lost lately under this war, this violence. Well, not lately, like fifteen years. We lost a bit the values of who we are as a culture. I’m surprised that even these days...even in the revolution of Venezuela, you can still see the happiness. But the happiness is being lost slowly...too much violence, too many people have been dying. So the painting is a reminder, the colors of the painting and all of the articles I put on there, was kind of iconographic of Venezuela. There is a famous singer, Simon Diaz, internationally famous for his poetry and his traditional songs, Miss Venezuela...They are always winning Miss Universe, the most beautiful women in the world, the famous baseball players are from Venezuela in America, and so on. You know?  And the technique I used in my painting is dripping painting, inspired by Jackson Pollack, but I created a new technique controlling the paint...I use hatching. I love hatching as a material because it reminds me of Latin America, because of its exportation of cafe and cocoa and all of that stuff...So I paint that material. Because the purpose of the artwork is to see through the painting, so if you get closer, you can kind of touch it as well. So the thickness of the painting and the texture of the textile will already make you [have] a relationship with the country...a kind of tactile thing, you know?

And, more generally, the role of public art:

The thing is, I have been kind of studying a bit of history and anthropology. To actually be able to do the public art, you know a lot of history. You learn a lot to see things deeply in history... I do public art for community, it’s just takes further investigation about that community, what’s happening there, what is the story of this place, what is this wall telling me about.


It's time we let the walls speak. That might be a faster way to peace than propaganda.

Public Artists Letting the Walls Speak,

T*

Thoughts behind Fall 2014 "Bricolage": Wangechi Mutu + The End of eating Everything

If you happened to catch the wonderful Black Star News article on my upcoming show, then you would have already been introduced to the theme of the collection.

If not, then let me share it with you.

Contemporary artist Wangechi Mutu has created hybrid bodies through her mixed media art that has spoken to me for years. They speak to my body, a physical and social body that I see represented in her work, they speak to my intellectual body, a body that mixes academic theory with spirituality, poetic mysticism with craftsmanship, and the moral body that seeks to create a more unified, peaceful world.

(Wangechi Mutu, "The Bride who Married a Camel's Head, 2009)

(Wangechi Mutu, "Misguided Little Unforgivable Hierarchies, 2005)

(Wangechi Mutu, "Riding Death in My Sleep," 2002)

(Wangechi Mutu, "Root of All Eves, 2010)

(Wangechi Mutu, "A Shady Promise," 2006)

In her most recent exhibition, A Fantastic Journey, originally commissioned by the Nasser Museum at Duke University, and now at the Brooklyn Museum, Mutu features her first animation project. The animation, entitled "The End of eating Everything" displays an amorphous, planetary, and violent body, embodied by performance artist, Santigold, as it navigates grey matter terrain and eats the last of what is left in the universe until it implodes.

(A brief clip of the 8 minute animation)

This animation did many things for many people and artists. But for me, it provoked me to explore what my solution is to the state of dire over-consumption in which we find our world. (According to Patagonia-founder, Yvon Chouinard, the United States alone uses the energy of seven planets! Now what do I do to not feel paralyzed and horrible but actively do SOMETHING about it?)

Bricolage is my solution. While the philosophy of ReciclaGEM or recycling materially and socially has been my primary focus since I began this project in 2010, "Bricolage" is a new approach which provides more room and space for creative and authentic solutions.

In my dire attempt to fit into the "activist" community, I have found myself growing into a consciously minded but moderately self-loathing artist. Creating to the point of dire exhaustion, becoming overwhelmed with guilt every time I turned on my sewing machine and let alone used a down jacket in the dead of winter.

However, I realized that in the same way that I do not judge or shame others for the complexity of their ethics, neither should I do the same to myself.

Bricolage is an attempt to fuse together the complexity of YOUR narrative in a way that fits your unique story, your unique purpose, and in essence creating a collage of your contributions to this planet in a way that mixes informed-reality with aspiration, resulting in inspiration.

Bricolage in French literally means "DIY," but has come to represent a whole school of thought on cultural syncretism, post colonial identity and an aesthetic of multi-chromatic, multi-textured and multi-historicized object art.

My collection will include original fashion design looks of amorphous silhouettes and textile palettes artfully woven together with textile scraps inspired by the colors and visual patterns of the animations. The textile scraps, quilted together into kinetic tapestries, will be molded into dynamic and assymetrical silhouettes, reflecting much of the asymmetry and dynamic body of the protagonist. The collection will also feature fabric made from renewable fibers such as recycled polyester, hemp embroidered and hand dyed with natural dyes and textures inspired by the animation and Mutu’s earlier work.

One day I hope "ReciclaGEM" is a term that comes to encompass the breadth of meaning which Bricolage does. But in the meantime, I shall begin this journey of hybrid artivism, where I feel more authentic, more human, and more equipped to carry the cause of exploring ethics in fashion for the long haul in a way that is sustainable for other people, animals, the planet, AND myself.

Thank you Wangechi for creating work that inspires me to be more human(e) with myself.

The Afro-Futurist Dietary Vegan who Hand Dyes Silk, Recycled Hemp, and Found Materials with Natural Dyes, inspired by Political and Social Realities and who Believes in Fashion as more an Experiential Joy than a Commercial Practice, who loves to Travel while being Conscious of Material Usage, doesn't sign Petitions but Loves to Spread Love the best Way She Can,

T*

I would love to be in dialogue with you about this idea of hybrid activism. Feel free to comment below, or speak with me in person next Friday February 28 7-10pm at 1 Washington Square Place, NYC (RSVP here: http://gallatin.nyu.edu/utilities/events/2014/02/gallatinfashionshow.html)

Playing Dress-Up! Fashion, Gender Play, and the Politics of Embodiment: Workshop One

Bom Dia!

Last weekend, ReciclaGEM in partnership with the oh-so-fabulous, PhD candidate and gender play aficianado, Kelly McKay, facilitated our first fashion-think tank at UCLA. As part of the Hemispheric Institute's Graduate Student  Initiative's Convergence (GSI), we facilitated a set of digital and in-person dialogic spaces, where we engaged in discussion, academic presentations, dress-up, and conversation on the ways in which our garments facilitate political, social, and hegemonic spaces.


Lots of big fancy academic words, right?


Well, let me break it down this way.

We fly into the city of Los Angeles, California, USA, the home of Hollywood, the city of bright lights, big dreams, and gendered spaces. We, alongside hundreds of other PhD students, performance artists, professors, activists, and anti-imperialist visionaries from throughout the Americas, entered a series of audoritorum spaces where presenters discussed everything from Guahan's (Guam's) fight for sovreignty from the U.S. imperialism to artists serving as witnesses to the social climate of their times, and to ways that we can shake down the hegemonic walls of academia to create truly democratic, just, experimental spaces for thinking. Revisit some of these spaces here.

(Screenshot of panel "(T)racing the Archive" at USC. Full video here)

In between all of these panels, performances, and presentations, Kelly and I gathered a limited selection but nonetheless experimental set of highly gendered garments on a table with pieces of paper, and asked our brilliant four participants (who you shall here about in future posts very soon) and two wonderful faculty mentors to respond with their initial reactions.

Before participants were given any prior information on the garments, simply asked to respond viscerally, emotionally, intellectually, from the gut, these were some of the reactions.

Garment: Six 8,  iridescent sequined pants finished with elastic at waist and hem
Reaction: Looks like it belongs in a drag queen's wardrobe closet. The falling sequins and roughly sewn elastic are reminiscent of well-loved use.

Garment: Recycled button down shirt with train of ruffles
Reaction: "There were so many shades of white that I began to forget what 'white' looked like"

Garment: "Safe Darfur" Black and green message t-shirt
Reaction: Message t-shirts are offensive. The reportrayal of the women and children by the tree is a common trope of poverty porn. Message t-shirts only serve to brand the ideals of the person wearing.

The conversation, which traversed discussion on colorism, memory, and the classicism, among others, provided an effective icebreaker for participants to talk about their research. Without revealing too much of their evolving research, some of the topics, artists, and images discussed, shown and reacted to were the following:

(Zanele Muholi, "Miss Divine," 2007)

(Tommy Ton, Style.com"Street Style" Photographer, Spring 2014 Season)

(Chilean designer, Juana Diaz, Collection: Potencial Pandemia)

(1880 vs. 2012. How much has changed?)

*What are all of these images saying about gender, race, class, and the politics of embodiment?

 Feel free to comment below.*

Much of the discussion was open ended as an effort to following the guidelines of the conference's theme, "Experimental Collectivities."

The goal was not necessarily to assert a certain knowledge claim over fashion, gender play, and the politics of embodiment, but rather to introduce unseen or niche but highly provocative images, subjects, and garments to elicit the reactions that will create the connections of how garments work to create political, social and gendered spaces.

While our time in Los Angeles was brief, the conversation will continue in our ever-evolving digital workbook in preparation for the second workshop, set to take place October 2014 in New York City.

Join us in this experimental collectivity of bodies and minds invested in de-mechanizing the political, social, gendered, racial, classist, colorist nuances of our garments so that we can build new, balance, and just worlds.

Peace, love, and image activism,

T*

Sin Maiz No Hay Vida | Without Corn There is No Life-Protest + Action + Fashion Collection

If you are connected with me on instagram (@reciclagem), you would have traveled with me to the  Fall 2013 Haute Couture Fashion Week halls and atelier interiors in Paris, where I learned couture pleating techniques, embroidery, and draping in Paris, France.

You would have also traveled with me as I flew from the apple trees of Sablé-sur-Sarthe, to the cobblestone of San Cristóbal de las Casas, where I, alongside 40 other activists, artivists, scholars, and revolutionaries debated, protested, and marched in the name of social visibility, land rights, and the right to live without GM.

When we arrived to San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico, we were presented with a problem. Monsanto, the creators of the genocidal machine Agent Orange and the company responsible for the  bulk of genetically modified foods in the U.S. food supply chain, is looking at Mexico as its next market, and in particular, Mexican corn.

Why is this bad (well, if you're reading this blog, then I'm sure you have your own ideas)? But in my humble and newly informed opinion, this is bad for a gamut of reasons from GM's being proven to cause cancer to destroying local economies, to taking over a crop that is, from its very origins within the Mayan creation story, the ORIGINS OF LIFE!

So, led by artist and activist Jesusa Rodriquez, and digital activist/prankster Jacques Servin of the Yes Men, and alongside the actors/activists of Fortaleza de la Mujer Maya and actors/activists of Yuyachkani, we explore how to use our bodies, and the refasioning of our bodies to raise awareness in San Cristóbal, and Mexico worldwide, of Monsanto's impending next move.

We took on the streets, in naturally dyed pigments, fabric, food scraps, as two theatrical sides: HUMANITY/ People of the Corn and a re-fashioned interpretation of the corporate beast, Monsanto.

(Photo Credits: Marlène Ramírez-Cancio, Lorie Novak, Lisandra Ramos-Grullón, Silvia Serrano, and Diana Taylor)

 

 

 

 

 We succeeded in drawing a great crowd in the Plaza de la paz y la resistencia, a plaza at the center of the city where such actions often take place, and sought to settle this Humanity vs. Monsanto debate in the most fair way as possible: a dodge ball game. Each side enlisted help from the crowd, with only the side of Humanity achieving, and in the end...fairly and squarely, Humanity/The People of the Corn won, and most importantly, the very person who won the game was a young woman from the area who just happened to join in. In this act, we brought hypervisibility to an all too pressing issue, but most critically we succeeded in dialoguing with quite a number of children who may not know the politics of GM, but knew that "Monsanto is bad because they are trying to take the corn." 

 

 

 

This visual / aesthetic /refashioned action was accompanied by a digital one, where members of the collective, Sin Maíz No Hay Vida, created a false website impersonating Monsanto and declaring pre-emptively what they were seeking to keep hidden within their boardrooms. And the company responded accordingly---> What does this mean? We as the people are letting them know we are watching.

In this overly chemicalized world, what can we do? Where do we stand? Continuing the conversation from an transnational to a hemispheric to a GLOBAL level so that Humanity DOES win in the end? How? By electing organic, staying active in our food and FABRIC consumption, making our governments and the multinational corporations listen while making sure that everyone in our lives is informed, conscious, and equipped to make the best nourishment and consumer decisions they can through  various platforms, whether it be blogs or fashion collection presentations to spread the awareness.

And so, on September 10th, 2013, I will be presenting ReciclaGEM by Tamara Leacock's Spring 2014 collection, Sin Maiz No Hay Vida, inspired by the aesthetic act that took place at the Plaza de la Resistencia, inspired by the questions of culture, appropriation, identity, and visibility that we wrestled with in the creation of the act, inspired by the visual couture that overwhelmed the city of San Cristóbal through the huipiles extravagently embroidered with Mayan iconography, and inspired by the need to use the visually arresting power of fashion to platform activist causes in an effort to lead to social change.

If you are in NYC, I would love to see you. If you are not, I would love to see you digitally through: sinmaiznohayvida.org and through the connections with the activists organizations based in Mexico that have and are continuing to fight transgénicos nationally and beyond.

In the name of non-genetically modified ethical embodiment and fashion,
T*

Back from Sao Paulo to Harlem to...BROOKLYN!

Oi minha gente! Desculpa por faltar de escrever! Excuse the delay! It’s been a whirlwind of a year already, and if you’re connected through our Facebook, you know why!

***************************

So to update you, last month, I had the incredible honor of being accepted as one of the new designers of the Brooklyn Fashion League, a shared designer studio based in South Brooklyn dedicated to supporting local manufacturing and community.

One aspect of sustainability that I have not had an opportunity to speak about was the importance of supporting local production and local economies, or what Kate Fletcher, in her seminal ethical fashion text, Sustainable Fashion & Textiles: Design Journeys, refers to as localism.

Some of you may be familiar with the locavore culture, the movement of locally grown food that has come in the form of street farmer’s market’s such as the Union Square Farmer’s market and “Made Locally” sections in our Whole Foods and other wellness-conscious supermarkets. For some of you reading outside of this New York context, locavore culture may be the farmer’s markets that you’ve had in your community for ages. For some of us here in the bedrock of New York’s more urbanized areas, we have had to make a conscious effort to set of entities from which we can buy our vegetables from say, Jane, the local farmer from Upstate New York instead of the super posh, internationally certified food company from several miles…and continents away.

 

Well, food that is grown and consumed is not unlike the fibers, fabrics, and clothing grown, created and consumed. How often do we seek to replicate these locavore practices within our…fashion….consumption?

Well, that’s where localism, the Made in New York movement, and the Brooklyn Fashion League come in.

(Photos Source: Brooklynfashionleague.com)

(Photo source: manufactureny.org)

(Photo Source: jackyblue.com | More info: savethegarmentcenter.org)

Localism, as described in Kate Fletcher’s book and in the practices of those designers who have taken this aspect of sustainability under their wing, is the conscious decision that designers make to bring as many aspects as possible of their production processes of their clothing manufacturing to their local environment. This may include designers manufacturing themselves or utilizing seamstresses/sewing  contractors within the local garment district, purchasing cast-off fabrics from locally based fabric stores and suppliers, or utilizing specialized fabric treatment techniques that were developed and culturally sustained within the community (like that pleating company that’s been pleating for AGES).

(Photo source: savethegarmentcenter.org)

The sustainability benefits of this are many-fold. They include ensuring that that fashion item you just purchased was not created unethically through sweatshop labor practices, that that amazing t-shirt was not using enough petroleum gas in its transport from cotton field to fiber fabric to textile mill to clothing factory to start a small war, as and through your locally created garment, you are helping us as humanity get back in touch with our natural way of living that supports local economies and the sustenance of the local environment.

“…it’s really important for me as a designer to have my clothing made in a socially responsible way. And having it made here, we can assure that that is the case. [If] it is made in Brooklyn or in Manhattan…you can go and visit the factory and you can see the conditions that the workers are in. And you can see who’s making your clothes. It ‘s a direct relationship between the person that makes the garment and the person that wears it at the end,” reflects Nathalie Kraynina, fellow designer of the Brooklyn Fashion League.

“By supporting local retailers and local designers, you are also supporting the local manufacturers and the local fabric suppliers, the local tool fabricators, machine makers and it’s a giant process. But if every step along the way is made locally and made within the United States with proper working conditions, we’re making a much larger step than just that one garment that you’ve purchased,” asserts Kaci Head, founder of the Brooklyn Fashion League.

(Brooklyn Fashion League designers themselves,

hard at work during New York Fashion Week. 

Photo source: BFL's Facebook)

But more than supporting the local economy, this brings us back to nature. Kate Fletcher, in also quoting biomimicry maverick Janine Benyus, posits, “If we look to parallels in the natural world we see that most biological systems operate locally, or as Benyus puts it, ‘nature doesn’t commute to work’. Nature- with the exception of migrant species- ‘shops’ locally, using local expertise to produce the resources it needs and process its waste.” (Fletcher, 140).

But in addition to sustaining local economies and local environments, the Brooklyn Fashion League is also deeply invested in sustaining that local community sense. That soul-nourishing type of fashion that “sustain[s] communities- providing people with meaningful work and a sense of connection with the place and the people with whom they live” (Fletcher, 140).

Beyond that feeling of community you intuitively understand, that community sense also has a place in academia.  “Community as a moral phenomenon seems to involve a sense of identity and unity with one’s group and a feeling of involvement and wholeness, on the part of the individual. In short, community has been used to refer to a condition in which human beings find themselves enmeshed in a tight-knit web of meaningful relationships with their human beings. In contrast to this ‘sense of community’ are the conditions that supposedly prevail in modern society,” writes Dr. Dennis E. Poplin in his 1979 text Communities: A Survey of Theories and Methods in Research  (Poplin, 5)

Thus it has been an honor to call the Brooklyn Fashion League ReciclaGEM’s new home. We are amongst a League of designers dedicated to the sustainability practice of economic and environmental localism while also working towards creating that community space that is supportive, fulfilling, and culturally nourishing. Nonetheless, while fashion in itself can be quite an insular system, we are members of a fashion organization that seeks to extend that membership to the community…and to you.

 As David W. McMillan and David M. Chavis reflect on this essay, “Sense of Community: A Definition and Theory,” “Membership is a feeling that one has invested part of oneself to become a member and therefore has a right to belong.”

What has the Brooklyn Fashion League meant to me? A league of talented fashion designers who have given me a place to belong, given the community a fashion partner dedicating to sustaining and extending this feeling of belonging, and has become an activist vehicle for supporting sustainable, locally created fashion. Locally based but internationally inspired, that’s what dreams are made of.

We are in the midst of a fundraising campaign, because, as ironic as our current world order is the most unsustainable fashion institutions are, ironically enough the most economically supported while those institutions which seek to promote sustainability need the support of the community in our current world order to sustain itself. If you are able, we would love to have you join our localist fashion movement creatively as well as economically.

BFL indigogo from Lindsay Newcomb on Vimeo.

Nature, Community and let’s build this alternative economic and community together,

T*