Public Art and Our Political Moment

[Image: Nalini Malani, Unity in Diversity, 2003. Single channel video installation with sound, furniture, and photographs (7:21 min.). Installation view, Nalini Malani: Splitting the Other, Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts, Lausanne, France, 2010. Courtesy the artist and Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts, Lausanne, France. © Nalini Malani]

On Tuesday, March 8th, the DHI hosted a conversation on the vital role of art today as a form of protest and political engagement. The event took as its inspiration the exhibition From Moment to Movement: Picturing Protest in the Kramlich Collection, curated by Susie Kantor, on view at the Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art. The panel included Susie Kantor, M.A., Associate Curator, Manetti Shrem Museum; Fiamma Montezemolo, Ph.D., artist, cultural anthropologist and Professor, Cinema and Digital Media, UC Davis; Marina Pugliese, Ph.D., Director of Public Art, City of Milan; and moderator Katharine Wallerstein, Associate Director, UC Davis Humanities Institute. 

Susie Kantor began the conversation with an overview of the From Moment to Movement exhibition, which focuses on new media art and video. As Kantor put the show together, she realized that this exhibit was expanding the definition of “protest.” Artists and ordinary citizens use art to push back against structures of power, whether through reclaiming histories or using art to highlight the ways that structures of power are normalized in our daily lives. The exhibit has artwork that focuses on moments like increased police surveillance in Johannesburg, South Africa, waves of refugees, and historical events like the Tiananmen Square protests. Included in the collection is a work by UC Davis Professor of Art Shiva Ahmadi focusing on the moment of President Trump’s “Muslim ban.” The piece is an allegory for the labor that it takes to migrate to a new country and how that labor is undermined by the forces that are supposed to be welcoming. Kantor notes how the exhibit is extremely relevant in the current moment—Ahmadi’s work recalls the plight of Ukrainian refugees.

Marina Pugliese and Fiamma Montezemolo then talked about their work on a public art project in Milan. Pugliese described how this project arose as an answer to a survey of Milanese residents. They indicated that they wanted more creativity in their city; for instance, they wanted to see graphic art in bike lanes and stages in small parks. Pugliese’s ethos is that public art should serve the public and address the public’s needs, but at the time, Milan’s public art was mostly focused on monuments to famous men—Pugliese recalls that until very recently, Milan actually had zero monuments that celebrated women—so Pugliese and Montezemolo decided to work on an “anti-monument” public art piece. Montezemolo’s piece, Foresia, which began as an anti-monument to celebrate women, is a box with an empty pedestal upon which you can stand, look into a peephole, and see projected images of significant women of history. Pugliese notes that this art work began to exceed its intentions—the public can use it as a real pedestal upon which to stage their own art. The art work can also be dissembled and reassembled elsewhere, making it able to become site-specific.

Montezemolo explained that the idea for the art work came partly from a class on art and cinema that played with the idea of the “White Cube and the Black Box.” In art, the “white cube” often refers to the gallery and the “black box” is another name for the theater. Foresia is a play on that as the “white cube” becomes the marble pedestal that other artists can build upon and showcase their work; the “black box” is that space for projections. In designing this piece, Montezemolo sought to de-center herself as an artist, which resulted in a work that anyone, artist or not, can interact with and transform. Montezemolo sees protest as a process of multiplication and this piece multiplies the possibilities for others to participate. 

The conversation then took off with questions on the material ways that art can be of service in our current moment, what kinds of key questions artists and curators should be thinking about today, and the difference between gallery art versus street art. For full remarks, please visit our Youtube page to watch our recording of the event.