What's Up - Your guide to what's happening in Fayetteville, AR this week!
Issue link: http://www.epageflip.net/i/1287620
SEPTEMBER 13-19, 2020 WHAT'S UP! 9 "It's about, how can we pay attention to what's going on?" adds Lauren Haynes, director of artist initiatives and curator, contemporary art, at Crystal Bridges and the Momentary. "Things that may be easier for some people to push out of their minds, for many people, they're very present and things that you can't not think about. So by having bright colors, by having beautiful, intricate materials all present, you're drawn in, but you also are looking and thinking and trying to hopefully spend time contemplating everything that's going on and what the exhibition is really trying to do — which is make a space for difficult conversations that some people have never really had to have or think about, and others have on a regular basis." "Until" refers to the phrase "innocent until proven guilty" — or in this case, as the MASS MoCA points out, "guilty until proven innocent." Cave's legacy of creating work responding to police brutality committed against other human beings, particularly Black bodies, began with his very first "Soundsuit" in 1992 as a reaction to Rodney King's beating by police the previous year. No "Soundsuits" will be found in "Until," but the exhibition continues in the themes Cave has built a career exploring: race, gender and gun violence in America. "This has always been our culture," Haynes says. "For so many people, they have either been doing this work, trying to do this work, or living their lives, frankly, in fear and in terror. So I think this is just the work that we at the Momentary want to do: making space for artwork, performances, experiences that are really bringing to light what's happening now and allowing for the artist's voice to take center stage in these conversations. "And also, allowing for a platform and a space for our community and our visitors to come and see and reflect, and not necessarily have to come away with answers, or come away with everyone thinking the same thing. Come away with having a different experience and hopefully seeing something in a different light or realizing something that you hadn't realized before." "I think that we're seeing that it is a collective issue; we are all coming together, unifying in support of change," Cave says of continuing to push forward. "It's what we want, it's what we need, it's what we want for the future of our children. So I think that we have to, again, stand up for what is right, stand up for humanity, and fight. That's what we have to do in order to establish change and the vitality of saving this world." "In spite of all the injust, in spite of all the repression and the suppression, and the fatigue, I still have to find a way to be of service. I still have to find a way to be counterproductive in this ongoing crisis," Nick Cave reflects. "I am fortunate to be able to put these emotions in this medium called art. It has been my savior." (Courtesy Photo/MASS MoCA) "He was excited about making a very ambitious project and something that was meant to be very immersive and be something that you couldn't not think about when you are experiencing it," Lauren Haynes shares. "Nick is very much posing a question, and not necessarily telling people what to think or what they need to experience when they come out of it or are in 'Until,' but [he is] very much setting up this space" for conversation. (Courtesy Photo/MASS MoCA) Artist Nick Cave (Courtesy Photo/Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Photo by Ironside Photography)