A Visual Voice

The President embodies the spirit of American patriotism; however, this portrait portrays our late president John F. Kennedy not as a dominant leader but as a vulnerable being. Commissioned by The White House, John Fitzgerald Kennedy by Aaron Shikler incorporates variations in color. The dark complexion dampens adds to the remorse surrounding John F. Kennedy’s early encounter with death. Shikler sombers the piece through his portrayal of Kennedy with crossed arms, downward head, and slouching stature. This depiction characterizes Kennedy as a powerless individual who can no longer defend himself and the greater American electorate. This piece contains a gradient brown background which changes from light brown to dark brown, foreshadowing the impending dark times without the guidance of John F. Kennedy. With similar effect, Shikler’s use of differing brushstrokes draw focus to the most human part of John F. Kennedy: his face. Shikler utilizes harmonious brushstrokes, effective color combinations, and a centered subject to aid in the humanized tribute to the late hero, John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

A state of conflict divides those who share intrinsic beliefs, cultures, and customs. The nations of China and Taiwan have been in a quarrel since the rise of Communist Party on mainland China. Love, by artist He Jianping, conveys the strained relation between the two similar nations. The two-dimensional form and lines that make up the piece illustrate the shallow relationship between China and Taiwan. Lines are finite, having a set beginning and end. In a similar vein, Jianping incorporates the contrasted shades of white and black to parallel the disunion of the two polar countries. Further, the lines that construct the face of Mao Zedong, Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, and the President of Taiwan blend the two figures together at the mouth, forming the Chinese symbol for love. The uniting symbol of love voices the commonality between the two distraught nations: language.

Made from a cast, two hands grasp together in Harriet Hosmer’s plaster sculpture Clasping Hands of Elizabeth and Robert Browning. The sculpture is made from an actual cast of famous poets Elizabeth and Robert Browning’s hands in the 1850’s. Meticulous, realistic detail exposes the wrinkles in the finger, the texture of the skin and the definition of the veins. Every detail creates a humanistic piece that projects a simple, soundless and universal statement. The gesture represents unity, the connection between two people communicating through actions rather than words. Viewers not only identify this gesture, they experience it by inserting their own identity into the anonymous hands. By only revealing hands, gender, race, ethnicity and socioeconomic status are indistinguishable and insignificant in the gesture. Clasping hands are a soundless symbol of equality between two people because the gesture is a symbol of trust, respect and togetherness.

Steve Eason’s photograph Berlin Wall shows two men, a gay couple, with their backs toward the camera and their arms around each other. As they walk away from the camera, to their right is a painting of two men kissing. This black and white photograph juxtaposes the mural My God, Help Me to Survive This Deadly Love by Dimitri Vrubel with the image of a gay couple walking through Berlin. The two major political figures, Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev and German leader Erich Honecker, depicted in the mural are engaged in a fraternal embrace that was typical of leaders from Communist countries at the time. This mural is a reproduction of the iconic photograph of the same scene from 1979 during the 30th anniversary celebration of the foundation of the German Democratic Republic.

The nude figure occupying the foreground of George Clausen’s Youth Mourning is believed to be a representation of the artist’s daughter mourning her fiance who died in WWI. She is collapsed on her knees at the foot of a wooden cross. The dark colors and barren landscape emphasize her loneliness and sorrow. She has survived this violent war, but the one she loved did not. Her posture suggests the silent suffering she is going through. This work shows the indirect effects of political unrest and upheaval. Her silent suffering and pain is a universal experience that all those who have been affected by war, either directly or indirectly, can recognize.

Children’s faces are blended into pink and red watercolor flowers in Chihiro Iwasaki’s work Children among Cyclamen Flowers. The piece is accompanied with a poem that the artist wrote to memorialize the children lost in bomb raids during the Vietnam War. Four clusters of flower encompass subtle faces of children blended into the petals. The flowers’ red hues and opaque colors create harmony.The harmony aesthetically created is not serene, but a powerful integration of life and death through delicate subjects. Flowers blooming with life are juxtaposed against the memories of deceased children. Only ever experiencing war, chaos and turmoil in their life, the art illustrates the vulnerable children’s silenced voices that will never be heard. Their soundless screams fade into the flowers as the flowers bloom in to life, a life the children will never experience.

Banksy is known for making his pieces in public places where many people have access to his ideas and the conventions he wants to challenge. This piece Crayon for Closure is no different, located in Los Angeles, California at the corner of Compton and Washington. This work, like most of Bansky’s art showed up one morning with no explanation until the artist’s website Pest Control posted it as an official Banksy on the site. This work shows a little girl in black in white, crayon still in her hand, standing next to a brightly colored crayon house. In front of the house facing away from the viewer is a man who is hammering boards to the door. This piece makes a statement about housing in America and America's homeless, especially the children. Children raised in homeless shelters and on the streets have do not have the opportunity for growth and education that those who grow up in traditional homes have.

Long, thin wooden pieces are robotically assembled onto on a wall that spells out “NO AL” in Jose Carlos Martinat’s installation Stereo Graffiti Writing. “NO AL” in Portuguese means “no to the.” This sentence fragment enables the viewer to complete the phrase, an opportunity to reject and protest against any social injustice issue. Stereo Graffiti Writing, similarly to graffiti, proclaims a rebellious voice for all those who are silenced, anonymously engaging the public to stand against the disparities and injustices in the world. Martinat mobilizes the wooden pieces to move in different directions throughout the day and distort the “NO AL” phrase. The chaos in the distorted phrase represents the turbulent world people who are silenced live in, striving to find order and stability in disarray. Wires and wooden pieces stoically rest below the installation. Immobile, these pieces depict the silenced voices lost, the voices that will never be heard.

Korean artist Yongsun Suh highlights the racial stereotypes ingrained in popular American culture in his piece The Arrested Man. Through color, Suh distinguishes the race of the subjects: Caucasian and African American. The two caucasians in the piece are portrayed to be authoritarian police officers while the imprisoned individual is an African American. Suh abstains from detailing the African American’s face by turning his back to the viewer. The lack of detail denotes a commonality between all African Americans in denying them a respective voice and leaves skin color to be the only distinguishable attribute between the figures in the piece.

Deann Grant is an artist of Aboriginal descent who grew up in Australia and experienced the racism and negative feelings people had towards native Australians. This racism was especially prevalent in the Australian school system, where Aboriginal children were often segregated from European children. Grant cleverly plays off of this reality with his artwork titled i bin learn. The piece is a collection of twenty old school chalkboard slates each with a different statement that reflects the experience of Aboriginal children in schools. The statements all start with the three words “i bin learn” and finishes off with a stereotype or a striking remark about the Aboriginal experience. The messages range from “i bin learn that im a dumb blackfella” to “i bin learn nothing about my culture”. Through systematic racism and oppression the Aboriginal people have been silenced. They have been forced to forget their old ways of life and live in a society that treats them as second class citizens.

Six figures kneel before a larger figure standing over them in Suh Yongsun’s installation Surveillance. The figures are placed in an empty room with white walls and fluorescent lighting that resembles a jail cell. They are separated from the viewer by a black gate. This gate creates a distinct fourth wall feeling because the viewer is physically separated from what they see before them. The viewer can see the oppressor and his anonymous victims, but the separation leaves the viewer looking in without the ability to stop anything that's happening within the room.

Nine static figures made from hardened and laminated burlap embody Magdalena Abakanowicz’s sculptures entitled Figures. Motionless, the figures are arranged in an unorganized manner facing directly towards the viewer with arms strictly down by their sides. Their homogenous, uniformed bodies all lack a head. These featureless figures allude to the silence of the masses because they all lack the ability to verbally express themselves. Their gender, race, ethnicity and any other information about them is indistinguishable, therefore these figures can represent people silenced in any culture, time or place in society.Without an individualized voice, the figures visually symbolize a loss of a personal identity.

A man in shabby garb is hung by a rope from a tree in Goya’s etching Not [in this case] either’ (Tampoco) while another man watches. The elaborately dressed man casually leans back and smirks at the man dying before him. His sly gestures exhibit his enjoyment from witnessing and inflicting a nefarious death upon the other man. As one of the etching in his Disasters of War series, Goya confronts the realities of war between the French and the Spaniards. The French Army dehumanized the Spaniards through inhuman degradation. Vividly depicting death, aggressive lines and the absence of color delineate the vicious and brutal tone of the narrative. The rope visually synthesizes oppression by not only cutting of the man’s life, but cutting off his voice. Death is the ultimate form of silence.

Draped against a museum wall is manipulated cloth dyed blue, white and red in Masimenos’s Allons immigrants de la partie, le jour de glorie est arrive. Masimenos shapes the cloth to recreate the French flag through the colors and their order. Red is the dominant color of the work, descending onto the floor with burn marks towards the bottom of the cloth. Printed on the flag in French is “Allons immigrants de la partie, le jour de glorie est arrive,” meaning “Come on immigrants of the fatherland, the day of glory has arrived!” The text is the first line in the French National Anthem, but instead of “children” is “immigrants.” Between text and the color red, the piece implies a voice for French immigrants who are suppressed as a minority of the native population. Gloriously, the immigrants who were once silenced fought for their freedoms because their voice has finally been heard, their plight for justice has ended, their day of glory has arrived.

Jaques-Louis David painted numerous propaganda pieces for the French Revolution including The Death of Marat, which depicts radical journalist Jean-Paul Marat murdered in his bathtub. David, who was good friends with Marat, had just been to visit Marat the day before his murder and is said to have painted the scene as he remembered it, the bathtub, the sheet, the green rug, the wooden packing case, and above all, the pen of the journalist. Marat’s naked body is idealized in death, with no trace of the skin problems he was known for. His body is draped over the side of the tub in a manner similar to Michelangelo's Pieta. This imagery evokes the sense of martyrdom. The Caravaggesque lighting in the painting places dramatic focus on the body and the letter, while the background is cast in shadows. David was a Neoclassical painter known for painting scenes from the Roman Republic, however this scene is a contemporary subject in a contemporary setting. The writing utensils and letter symbolize Marat’s revolutionary spirit. The bath and bloody knife are reminiscent of his suffering and heroic death. This painting became a symbol of sacrifice in the name of the republic and Marat was considered a martyr for the cause.

The act of self-immolation of Ryszard Siwiec in protest against the State, a black and white photograph housed in the Polish History Museum, illustrates eastern Europeans abhorrence of being coerced into communism. By framing the subject in the center, the photographer creates a balanced composition. The immediate space surrounding protestee Ryszard Siwiec is devoid of people, reflecting the individuality of his protest. Communism unifies its people through conformity; however, the visual immolation of Ryszard Siwiec breaks the expected norm of docility. By putting his personal beliefs before those of the state, Siwiec’s bravery exemplifies variation. This photograph reflects a polar spectrum with two distinct ends: one side persists of those who conform to the the docile standards authoritarian government and ignore the immolation of Siwiec, while the opposing end reflects dissenters such as Siwiec. Black and white are antagonistic shades. By capturing this photograph in black and white, rather than color, the photographer further differentiates between the two conflicting factions.

In Vivek Vilasini’s photograph Last Supper - Gaza, Gaza women model Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper. The women are wearing hijabs, grouped in threes and positioned to focus on “Christ” in the middle through their body positions, gaze and central lighting. Their religious attire covers their face and only expose their eyes which is one vehicle in which their emotions are conveyed. Vilasini narrates the image through the women’s eyes by sensually connecting each women through gazes towards one another to communicate their ideas and emotions. Gestures and hand positions are strategically placed to further express their emotions and thoughts at their dinner conversation. Similarly to the disorder and confusion the apostles experienced in Leonardo’s Last Supper, Vilasini dramatically engaged the women to question the disorder in Gaza while still creating order within the composition of the photograph. Oppressed by a subordinate female ideology, these women live amongst the violence of religious hostility, seemingly insignificant and vulnerable to the brutality between men. However, these women evoke a powerful stance of their own strength by controversially inserting themselves into a male dominate Christian image. The image projects the voices of the passionate Gaza women, powerfully claiming their significance through their silent display of rebellion and defiance.

December 7th, 1941: a date which will live in infamy. Displayed in the LIFE Photo Collection, photographer Bob Landry’s Pearl Harbor Naval Disaster captures the implicit dismay of those afflicted by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The mangled ruins of the once potent battleship U.S.S. Arizona are absent of life. The pain and suffering of those afflicted by the disaster is not visually shown but is concealed beneath the ocean’s surface. The quelled aftermath evokes thought into the cause of the desolate scene; however, silence shrouds the cause of the destruction in the piece much like how the photograph’s black and white complexion conceals the colorful intricacies of the damage.

Made with neon letters and spray paint Kader Attia’s Demo(n)cracy sends a striking message. The white-blue glow of the letters spelling out Democracy, intersected by the painted black N evoke the feeling of something evil invading what is supposed to be a fair form of government. Attia created this piece from the view of the government in the Arab world, particularly in Algeria. However, this work can be looked at in both a Western and Non-Western viewpoint. The idea of Democracy is that the voice of the people is being heard, however recently this has not been true. With laws in place that restrict voters from getting to the polls and a growing sense of political apathy, the voice of the people has been silenced. In many countries the people in charge seem out of touch with the growing and changing populations they govern.