The artist I have chosen to research is the fabulous Yayoi Kusama. I have always really admired her work and I find it super interesting, so I thought she would be a great installation artist to post on my blog.
Since 1977 Kusama has lived voluntarily in a psychiatric institution, and much of her work has been marked with obsessiveness and a desire to escape from psychological trauma. In an attempt to share her experiences, she creates installations that immerse the viewer in her obsessive vision of endless dots and nets or infinitely mirrored space.
Thinking about our theme of Maps and Networks, I think Kusama's work is quite appropriate when thinking about our minds as a map of our personalities and our lives. Yayoi Kusama has created artwork to escape her thoughts and her minds, meaning her art can be quite relatable in this project. One of the pieces I really liked was her Obliteration Roominstallation, which started as a blank canvas but invited people to completely cover the room in colourful dots, bringing everyone together to help create the final art piece. It's interesting how the piece finally came together with the input of others, taking the control out of her hands entirely.
I also looked at one of Kusama's most recent pieces, The Infinity Mirrors, which all display her seemingly endless artwork due to the use of mirrors. There are several different Infinity Mirror displays, the video below shows the use of LED lights to continue into eternity. Over the course of her career, Kusama has produced more than twenty distinct Infinity Mirror Rooms.
More examples of The Infinity Mirrors installations:
Sam Taylor-Johnson (formally known as Sam Taylor-Wood) makes photographs and films that examine, through highly charged scenarios, our shared social and psyschological conditions.
Taylor-Johnson’s work examines the split between being and appearance, often placing her human subjects – either singly or in groups – in situations where the line between interior and external sense of self is in conflict.
When I looked at Sam Taylor Johnson's website, I realised that she's accomplished many different things, through many different mediums of art; film, photography, publications and exhibitions. The first work I looked at were her self portrait images, titled Suspended.
Suspended (2004)
Suspended (2004)
The series is quite stunning, really bringing a new idea to self portraiture and what it can mean to the artist personally. Taylor Johnson explained how her ideas behind the series were to capture the ideas behind being stuck between heaven and earth, between life and death, being free but not entirely.
I also really liked her series titled Deep South. After being invited by Elton John to take a photograph for the cover of his album, Peachtree Road, Taylor Johnson found herself a gateway into the Deep South of America, taking some beautiful photographs.
Gate - Deep South (2004)
Sonny Moody Back - Deep South (2004)
Stars and Stripes - Deep South (2004)
This is probably the series I would identify as having a connection with the theme of Maps and Networks, purely for the simple fact that the task took the artist to a new location, networking with the locals and gaining a better understanding of the area. I think the pictures are really personal to the town, and you get a feel for what the area was like and how Taylor Johnson spent her time there.
Some examples of her moving image work are the film Fifty Shades of Grey (2015) which was obviously widely spoken about upon it's release, and A Little Death (2002) which we looked at last year as part of our Experimental Media unit.
In relation to our theme of Maps and Networks, I didn't really find much connection within this artist's work. Although I really admire some of her photography and moving image work, there wasn't particularly anything that stood out to me, or made me think about the theme. Although her work is really engaging it didn't seem to help me that much with regards to our theme.
When I first looked at the brief for the summer project, I was completely stuck with how to approach the project. I couldn't really think of many artists that dealt with issues I hadn't already looked at in the past.
Eventually, after looking at a lot of artist work I was drawn to a piece by Keith Haring. Haring is an artist I've admired before, but I'd never seen his piece 'Crack Is Wack'.
'Crack is Wack' by Keith Haring (1986)
This piece stood out to me, as it was something that Haring decided to create based on his own worries about drugs being used by young people, and he wanted to create an anti-drugs mural somewhere where it would be seen and noticed. Haring created the mural without city permission, however after it was seen and the message was deemed to be of importance, it was protected and is still there today.
I really admire Haring as an artist as he basically started out just creating graffiti in local places so people would see his message. Although he got into trouble a lot originally for producing his art illegally, it never stopped him from creating art for the things he believed in.
This lead me to think about things I am passionate about, but also something I would want to spread a message to people about. I thought I could channel my art from something that I stand for and adopt into my lifestyle, and that's being a vegetarian and standing against animal cruelty. Although, as a vegetarian, it doesn't bother me if people eat meat or their reasoning for wanting to eat meat as I would never force anyone to change their lifestyle, this differs from my passion regarding animal cruelty, as I think that is something everyone should know about and be involved in trying to change the way animals are controlled for human testing.
Animal Testing
Thinking about all these ideas made me remember that a widespread store, Lush, runs an animal testing campaign. This is good publicity for these issues as there are loads of Lush stores scattered around the country and they raise awareness by printing all their bags with their fighting animal testing logo. This is a really good way to raise awareness as people will see this campaign on bags and adverts for the store.
I also found an article discussing a campaign promotion that Lush did in their Trafalgar Square store, where they subject a woman, who completely consented, to the sort of tests they would do on animals in front of shoppers, to show the horror that these animals would go through for our cosmetic testing.
The photos above shows Jacqueline Traide, a performance artist, sitting on a plinth in the shop window, wired up to electrodes and another photo of her being restrained and has her mouth clamped open while being subjected to brutal animal testing practices at the Lush store. This was to bring awareness to what we allow animals to be subjected to on behalf of cosmetic tests. If we think its horrific to see it happening to a human, why should we allow it to be done to small animals.
My Idea
Similarly to the performance art above, I thought about having several performance artists crammed into one cage, left in a dark corner of the road or at the opening of an alleyway, similar to how they cram animals into cages to be left in dark warehouses until they are used for testing. Using human beings seems to shock the public more and would make them think about whats actually going on behind closed doors, so to speak.
I also thought about having the public take part in the art itself, maybe creating something similar to a petting zoo, allowing people to cuddle and pet the small animals before giving them placebo tools that would be thought to be used on animals, and encouraging them to test on the animals themselves. Obviously it wouldn't be allowed to go that far and like I said, they would be purely a placebo, there wouldn't actually be anything that could harm the animals, but my thoughts behind it were that people probably would be able to test on animals themselves, so why are they still allowing others to do so?
The final idea I had would be to create a stand in a public place that looks to be selling makeup, but brand all the products with photos of the animal that was tested on to make that product. With people seeing the cruelty on the product it would hopefully discourage them to buy it and support the evil that happened to make the product. This would bring attention to the fact that a lot of commercial cosmetic brands use animal testing and then sell their products so they look entirely glamorous, not making the public aware of what happened in order for them to be able to sell the products.
