SANTA FE ART INSTITUTE RESIDENCY
SANTA FE ART INSTITUTE RESIDENCY
SANTA FE ART INSTITUTE RESIDENCY
by Leah Triplett Harrington
Installation view of "The Whiteness House - Tarred and Feathered" by Jay Critchley, 2017.
Image courtesy of the Santa Fe Art Institute.
Installation view of "The Whiteness House - Tarred and Feathered" by Jay Critchley, 2017. Image courtesy of the Santa Fe Art Institute.
Almost concurrently down in Santa Fe, on November 19, 2017, Jay Critchley presented The Whiteness House – Tarred and Feathered. A walk-in model of The White House comprised of tarpaper and white feathers, the installation is inspired by “tarring and feathering,” the vigilante form of justice common in feudal Europe and Colonial America. Traditionally, tarred and feathered person would be covered into the sticky, viscous black fluid before being dipped into a light, fluffy white down in order to shame or humiliate them. In Critchley’s implementation, the nation’s Presidential home is similarly covered in strata of black and white. Using the most charged colors in the United States today, Critchley formally and conceptually alludes to our state of racial injustice.
Almost concurrently down in Santa Fe, on November 19, 2017, Jay Critchley presented The Whiteness House – Tarred and Feathered. A walk-in model of The White House comprised of tarpaper and white feathers, the installation is inspired by “tarring and feathering,” the vigilante form of justice common in feudal Europe and Colonial America. Traditionally, tarred and feathered person would be covered into the sticky, viscous black fluid before being dipped into a light, fluffy white down in order to shame or humiliate them. In Critchley’s implementation, the nation’s Presidential home is similarly covered in strata of black and white. Using the most charged colors in the United States today, Critchley formally and conceptually alludes to our state of racial injustice.
Almost concurrently down in Santa Fe, on November 19, 2017, Jay Critchley presented The Whiteness House – Tarred and Feathered. A walk-in model of The White House comprised of tarpaper and white feathers, the installation is inspired by “tarring and feathering,” the vigilante form of justice common in feudal Europe and Colonial America. Traditionally, tarred and feathered person would be covered into the sticky, viscous black fluid before being dipped into a light, fluffy white down in order to shame or humiliate them. In Critchley’s implementation, the nation’s Presidential home is similarly covered in strata of black and white. Using the most charged colors in the United States today, Critchley formally and conceptually alludes to our state of racial injustice.
“Our nation’s home takes on an ominous presence with a white President who has defined much of his Presidency based on color – following a black President,” says Critchley about his inspiration for The Whiteness House. “I am white and I’m exploring my ethnicity and bringing visibility to what it means to be white.” Through the project, he asks, “how does a white house express its whiteness? Is white the binary of black? Can white exist without black?”
Certainly whiteness’ privilege is often displayed through the US Courts system. Gabriel Sosa, who is a March SFAI resident, works within the Courts as a Spanish-language interpreter by day. After hours, he distills his working experience in drawing, installation, and videos that explore the use and power of language. For last September’s Please interrupt if you don’t understand at A R E A, Sosa dissected and diluted court documents from cases he’s translated into undecipherable images or words. Sosa’s black and white palette evokes how easy it is for the courts to see only color, alluding to the system’s obstinate insistence or aloof sterility when dealing with human emotion and lives.
Works by Gabriel Sosa. Images courtesy of the artist.
Sosa is currently finishing his month-long residency at SFAI. Before he arrived, we corresponded about his plans for the residency and what he was particularly eager to explore in Santa Fe. “I am especially interested in how so much of New Mexico's Hispanic population traces their Latin roots to Nueva España, and what role language has played in the preservation of cultural heritage,” Sosa told me via email. Though he planned to continue working on language and power, Sosa hoped to focus more on the nuance of translation, how that shapes place, and in turn, affects culture.
By constructing and presenting distillations of language and processes, Sosa abstracts those systems, thereby introducing new ways to understand them. And though Sosa believes that abstraction can enact social change through dialogue, its ability to do so is a question of access and audience. “A common obstacle becomes finding a space, both intellectually and literally, where this dialogue can take place,” wrote Sosa. “How can artists invite people who wouldn’t normally engage with art into a meaningful dialogue?”
I agree; art depends on implementation as much as aesthetics. Both Critchley and Sosa use color (or lack thereof) and material to accentuate the possibility of social change. Nurtured in a residency, these projects abstract tropes of public culture, and are activated by an audience. These audiences could be in Santa Fe or elsewhere. With this in mind, I asked SFAI how the Equal Justice residency impacts a broad range of publics. “Our hope is that this democratic enrichment of creative social change makers will foster a global ripple effect of understanding and engagement on an essential humanistic level,” Toni Gentilli, SFAI residency program manager, told me. Offering connection between artists, the Equal Justice residency implements a network of relationships between artists, and hopefully, their broader communities. As Gentilli writes, SFAI seeks to “connect a plurality of people with one another in the hopes that the positive impact of their experience at SFAI will empower them to continue to do their much-needed work in their hometowns.” This work--dialogue, and its implementation--may take years to ferment. But with space to incubate aesthetics as well as apparatus for engagement, I’m hopeful SFAI residents will evolve art activism to create lasting change.
Top Image: Raheleh Minoosh Zomorodinia, an upcoming resident at the Santa Fe Art Institute. Still image of her performance A Week Living Art, courtesy of the Santa Fe Art Institute.
ABOUT LEAH TRIPLETT HARRINGTON
Leah Triplett Harrington is the Editor at The Rib and Senior Editor at Big Red and Shiny, an arts publication in Boston, Massachusetts. Leah has contributed catalogue essays to CUE Art Foundation (New York) and Hashimoto Contemporary (San Francisco), as well as articles to a number of publications, most recently The Brooklyn Rail, Harper's Bazaar Art, Burnaway, and Hyperallergic. She has lectured on art criticism and various topics in art history at Montserrat College of Art, Stonehill College, and Tufts University Art Gallery. She works as Director of Programs & Exhibitions for Fort Point Arts Community.
REGION
A comprehensive feature on any state, area, or city that lacks mainstream coverage. Region considers the various factors that influence a particular art scene or art-making community, and how it sustains itself. Region also includes profiles of individuals influencing the area (be they curators, writers, artists, professors, etc.), and is always written by people familiar with the topography of the region’s art community. It can include interviews, op-eds, or dialogue in man other forms. Region aims to demystify specific art scenes for interested artists, educators, dealers, curators, advocates, and everything in-between.