The Thin Line Between Art and Explotation
by Latoya Peterson
I watched yesterday’s thread with great interest – and not just because the racists came out to play behind the scenes. When I first got the tip on Gisele’s shoot, I pulled up the images in the company of my host in Houston. As we all looked at the images pop up, three words fell out of our mouths and into the air.
From our host: “Beautiful.”
From my boyfriend: “Striking.”
From me: “Mmmm.”
Some days, I think I’ve been doing this a bit too long. Where as a long time ago, I could debate the novelty of such themes, the artist’s intent, what have you, now I generally yawn. I get tips showing images like this all the time. There are a lot of photographers who happened upon the idea of using skin color as contrast. Hell, Johnson and Johnson did it in a lotion ad late last year. Yes, we know, dark skin is a contrast. So are many other things. Like using racism to provide lazy characterization and fill in personality in novels and screenplays, the contrast thing has been done, will be done, will continue to be done. I’m bored.
But my companions were not. And that is because art is something created by one person and consumed by others, with all kinds of experiences and ideas projected onto the resulting work. I, seeing this kind of study in racial contrast often, didn’t see anything too special about the photos. They, probably seeing the image as the artist intended, were caught up in the contrast and the arresting forwardness of the images. It is this dynamic – the idea that the viewer informs the interpretation – that makes critiquing and presenting art on Racialicious so difficult. You never really know what is informing the viewer and how they will interact with the piece. In writing the piece, I intentionally left my ideas about it vague, presenting just the images, a counter image, and the first comment on the thread.
So with that, imagine my reaction when clicking on my twitter feed and having reader Julian Obubo hit me with this image:
And I thought to myself, Oh, this is about to be some shit, isn’t it?
Over on Kanye West’s blog, he gives a shout out to artist Vanesssa Beecroft, who he has a collaborative relationship with. He copies and pastes more photos and the press release, which states:
The show is composed of two parts: a new performance ‘VB65′ created especially for this exhibition at the milan contemporary art gallery PAC and 4 video projections of performances and videos ‘VB48′, ‘VB54′, ‘VB61′ and ‘VB62′. ‘VB65′ is a performance of 20 african immigrants, only men, seated at a 12m long table, dining as if at a last supper, dressed formally, a few did not wear shoes, but all were wearing black dinner jackets, suits, eating chicken, brown bread, drinking water, without platters or silverware, in front of an audience of invited guests. the 20 hosts of the supper sat silently eating during the opening (for 3 hours).
known for her performances during which numerous models enact the ritual of being and appearing, vanessa beecroft (born in genoa in 1969) is one of the most internationally recognized italian artists. she lives and works in los angeles, usa.
everything in vanessa beecroft’s life revolves around food. beecroft has struggled to control an obsession with food since the age of 12. the spectre of anorexia haunted her teens and twenties, beecroft suffers from what psychiatrists call ‘exercise bulimia’, a compulsive need to burn off unwanted calories using excessive exercise. she is practising ashtanga yoga, ‘without it’,she says she ‘would go crazy’. vanessa beecroft announced herself boldly to the art world in 1993, after a professor at the accademia di belle arti di brera in milan, where she studied from 1988 to 1993, invited her to participate in a group show at the city’s inga pin gallery. she showed a performance of 30 girls, consisting of fellow brera students or girls found on the streets of milan, who were
instructed to move around the space, dressed in beecroft’s own clothes. many of the girls were chosen for their resemblance to beecroft, and were themselves struggling with eating disorders. this first performance set the blueprint for beecroft’s future as a conceptual artist. since then, she has staged many more performances around the world (all titled VB01, VB02, VB25, VB45, etc), and each was more elaborate than its predecessor.
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