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FRIDAY, DECEMBER 3, 2010
galleries Demonstrators gather to protest removal of Wojnarowicz art from NPG
BY JESSICA DAWSON Despite Thursday evening’s
chill, about 100 demonstrators — many of them artists — gathered outside Transformer Gallery to protest Tuesday’s removal of Da- vid Wojnarowicz’s “A Fire in My Belly” artwork from the National Portrait Gallery’s “Hide/Seek” show. “This is a sign of solidarity and
a call to our lawmakers that si- lence equals death,” said Trans- former Executive Director Victo- riaReis, invoking the name of the late-’80s “Silence=Death” cam- paign by the New York City activ- ist groupACTUP. Protesters watchedWojnarow-
icz’s four-minute banned video— whichthegallerybeganscreening in its front window Wednesday afternoon — and volunteers dis- tributed paper masks embla- zoned with the faces ofWojnaro- wicz and poet Arthur Rimbaud (the pink-huedmasks referred to the artist’sRimbaud-themedpho- to series fromthe late ’70s). Demonstrators had sharp
words for the Smithsonian Insti- tution’sportrait gallery andmem- bers of Congress. “It’s an attack on the American
people,” said Chicago-based pho- tographer Dawoud Bey, 57, a na- tionally recognized artistwhohas had solo shows at theWalker Art Center, the Queens Museum of Art and the Detroit Institute of Arts. “Lawmakers are saying that we’re not smart enough to make our owndecisions onwhat to see.” “This could have been a teach-
ingmoment, but the Smithsonian didn’t have enough backbone to allow that,” said Bey, who was visitingWashington thisweek for meetings with the National En- dowment for the Arts. “It sets a very bad precedent.” “I came out because I feel out-
rage against the intimidation of our lawmakers, many of whom haven’t seen the entire exhibi- tion,” saidAndrewKorfhage, 36, a Washington area writer and per- former who had heard about the protest online. At 6 p.m., the group made its
way east on P Street, turned right atNinth Street and stopped at the top of the National Portrait Gal- lery’s G Street steps. The masked demonstrators stood in silent vig- il as passers-by gawked. “I hope there will be a reason-
able outcome,” said protesterDon Russell, 56, who was executive
and-death brawn here. Perhaps the artist shouldinsteadfocusher efforts on jewelry design: Too few examples of her bronze knuckle rings and skull are on view in a gallery hallway here. As for thetattoo, it’s inmyoffice if anyonewants it.
‘Foto Baroque’ If JulieWolfe’s lightweight im-
ages denote a certain type of art- ist, then Cecilia Paredes and Vic- toria F. Gaitan are less dainty souls. Readers of this column know Gaitan’s work by now; here she resuscitates a trio of images from the “Sweet-Meat” series of gorgeous women preening sexily amid fake blood and cupcake ic-
ing.TheMaxim-meets-the-bulim- ic-set pictures should be read as in-your-face political statements. New to me is the relatively
BILL O’ LEARY/THE WASHINGTON POST
‘SIGNOFSOLIDARITY’: Demonstrators crossGStreet en route to theNational Portrait Gallery to protest the removal of “Fire inMy Belly” by DavidWojnarowicz. “This is a sign of solidarity and a call to our lawmakers,” said Transformer Executive Director Victoria Reis.
directorofWashingtonProject for the Arts in themid-’90s. “Though I don’t think therewill be.”
Weekend picks Breaking from your National
Portrait Gallery protest? Didn’t make it toArtBaselMiamiBeach? Here’s what to see (and avoid) in the galleries (and on the street) thisweekend. Irvine Contemporary’s second
installment of its “Street/Studio” shows — the first hung this sum- mer and bubbled over into the gallery’s rearalleyandontoLogan Circle street furniture — again runs both indoors and out, this time at two locations. At Irvine’s 14th Street NWgal-
lery, you’ll find a group show of artists who write graffiti (or wheat-paste it) but also produce wall-ready work. Among them hang a series of so-so Shepard Faireyeditions, inwhichtheartist mines iterations of his counter- culture bromides to mediocre ef- fect. If your Christmas list in- cludes editioned screenprints of concept albums from the likes of ObeyRecords, this is the place for you. At Montserrat House, the two-
story brick storefront on Ninth Street NW that serves as the show’s satellite location, you’ll see
art inside and out. Irvine bor- rowed the building from its cur- rent tenant,music and restaurant impresarioEricHilton,whoplans to put a studio and Internet radio station in the space. Right now, though, it’s all plywood floors and hastily hung drywall, which makes it the perfect quasi-raw exhibition space for Irvine’s graf- fitiwriters-cum-Picassos. If you have time for one piece
here, make it David Ellis’s video “Animal,” a time-lapse creativity spree that flashes forward, stut- ters, stopsandbeginsagaininjust over nine mesmerizing minutes. To make it, the artist spent six weeks creating and destroying a series of images, one atop the next, on a large-scale panel. Over time, Ellis’s picture refer-
ences everything from action painting and post-painterly ab- straction to 2 a.m. tagging jags. The video’s Roberto Lange-or- chestrated soundtrack of elec- tronic buzzes and beeps, bird tweets, and crowd sounds fuels the frenzy. Outside, there’s a 24-hour show
happening on the building’s Ninth Street facade. Here area graffitist Gaia (a Maryland Insti- tute College of Art student) trans- formed the building’s face with a two-story portrait of modernist
architect Le Corbusier. The early- 20th-century urbanist’s signature round glasses sit atop his fore- head on the second floor as the man who imagined houses and cities as “machines for living” gaz- es intently onto a gentrifying
NinthStreet.Those rigidmodern- ist dictums?Didn’t turn out quite the way he intended. Interesting that his face brings more life to this street thanhis ideals everdid.
JulieWolfe at Hemphill Countme among theHemphill
visitors who won’t bemaking use of their free Julie Wolfe tempo- rary tattoo. Abowl of fake tattoos stationed
at a gallery entrancenever augurs well, but your intrepid Galleries columnist soldiered on, behold- ing an exhibition befitting its ill- advised party favor: superficial (the very notion of the temporary tattoo pains me), yet trying to be artsy, counterculture andwry. The image emblazonedmirror-
backwards above thewords “Julie Wolfe 2010” on the black tattoo adhesive is one that repeats, in some form or other, throughout the show. Let’s call it a heraldic cornucopia: a dense cluster of fruit and lilies surrounding a heart—of the kindculledfroman anatomy book — and a writhing
snake, which in turn wraps around a sword. When iterations of that flower-
and-reptile bouquet appear on Wolfe’s large-scale canvases, they hang from chains as if Marie An- toinette’s chandeliers or stake generous real estate in a canvas’s center. They join the botanical, avian and other quasi-Victorian motifs on these works on paper, panel and linen (Wolfe adds the occasional skull-and-crossbones for creepy good measure). The result iswork that looks likemer- chandise from a fancy card shop — they’d make excellent tem- plates for all-occasion notecards. What with the diamond dust
and glass shards that glitter across many of these works, the emphasis is on surface and pat- tern for decorative ends. The net effect reinforces thegallery-as-pa- pery notion — lovely but empty (afterall, it’sacard’swrittensenti- ments, not its visuals, that give it heft). Though the gallery takes pains
to position Wolfe’s works as “blur[ring] the lines between good and evil, tranquility and vio- lence, and decay and regenera- tion, portraying these forces as less antagonistic and more inter- connected than their definitions suggest,” I cannot find such life-
more subdued work of Paredes, a Lima, Peru-born artist who splits time between Philadelphia and Costa Rica. Paredes’s chameleon- like pictures find her dressed up and body-painted to match the botanical print wallpaper, fabric and flooring around her. She be- comes a figure that’s both there and not there — hidden in plain sight. It’s a statement aboutwom- en—their capacity to advance or recede, according to their liking, in adaption to their environment. With just a few of pictures on
view here, I’ve gotten but a taste. So far, so interesting.
style@washpost.com
Dawson is a freelancewriter. Street/Studio 2.0
runs throughDec. 18 at Irvine Contemporary, 1412 14th St.NW,
Tuesday-Saturday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.; at MontserratHouse, 2016Ninth St.NW, Friday-Saturday, noon to 5 p.m. Call 202-332-8767 or visit
www.irvinecontemporary.com. Julie Wolfe
runs throughDec. 23 atHemphill Fine Arts, 1515 14th St.NW, Tuesday- Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Call 202-234-5601 or visit
www.hemphillfinearts.com. Foto Baroque
runs through Jan. 8 at Curator’s
Office, 1515 14th St.NW,Wednesday- Saturday, noon to 6 p.m. Call 202-387-1008 or visit
www.curatorsoffice.com.
THEATERREVIEW ‘Golden Boy’s’ soft touch lands hard knocks BY CELIAWREN The streetwise boxing pros in
“Golden Boy” rhapsodize about straight punches and left and right hooks — but the Keegan Theatre production of this Clif- ford Odets play packs a wallop through subtlermeans: tense si- lences; shifting currents of flip- pant,dreamy,braggingtalk;even evocative movements of actors doublingas
stagehands.Aidedby a team of largely compelling ac- tors, director LeeMikeska Gard- ner deftly orchestrates the rhythms and intensities of this 1937 work, conjuring up a grip- ping and all too recognizable vi- sion of restless Americans hun- gering for happiness in a floun- dering economy. Odets’s biggest stage success,
“Golden Boy” is the tale of Joe Bonaparte (John Robert Keena), agiftedyoungviolinistwhotakes up professional boxing as a route to wealth. Making his Faustian bargainmoreproblematic isLor- na Moon (Susan Marie Rhea) — the funny, sexy kindred soul who’s themistressofhisexcitable manager, Tom Moody (Jim Jor- gensen).AsTomandLorna court andmanipulatetheerstwhilefid- dler, his father, a soulful Italian immigrant (TimLynch),mourns the waste of musical talent. Meanwhile, Joe streaks likeame- teor through the gritty world of for-profit pugilism, headed for disaster. (The play, made into a 1939 movie starring William Holden, is said to reflect Odets’s conflicted feelings about work- ing inHollywood.) With its high-stakes dilemmas
and atmospheric period diction (“For Pete’s sake, use your noo- dle!”) the story could seemmelo- dramatic or dated, but Gardner and her actors (most of them) locate realism and immediacy frombeat to beat.Hinting at vul- nerability and cynicismby turns, Rhea does a particularly fine job withLorna:Evenwhenthis char- acter is on the fringe of a scene, listening rather than speaking, you can sense the thoughts and emotions swirling beneath her
Raising questions among all faiths islamic from C1
definitely going on strongly in Iran — and in Turkey, it’s also being done.” And also in the United States,
thanks to Azari and others. He was speaking from a Miami art fair called “Zoom,” dedicated to exposing contemporary art from the Middle East to Western eyes. The art he’s showing there in- cludes staged photos of a conser- vative Iranian mullah who’s get- ting dressed after having sex with a woman who is shown in bed nude. Azari says he wanted to explore religious figures “whose private life has always been kept secret.” In a much-publicized exhibi-
JIM COATES
CONTENDERS: John RobertKeena’s young boxer and Chuck Young’s older trainer are two high points of “Golden Boy.”
school-of-hard-knocks surface. Andwhether she’shangingout in an office or a gymnasium, this dame looks right at home in 1930s styles (Erin Nugent is the costume designer and George Lucas set designer; Michael In- nocenti devised the now-realis- tic,now-theatrical lighting). His straight posture signaling
the character’s confident physi- cality, Keena’s Joe is a credible mix of callowness and cockiness, while Lynch’s Mr. Bonaparte ra- diates a persuasive, sorrowful dignity. On an iffier note, Jor- gensen over-exaggerates the ec- centric mannerisms of Moody, who’s seen curling up childishly on his office couch in a fit of nerves one minute and working the phone feverishly the next: A slight staginessclings tothisneu- rotic figure. In smaller roles, Chuck Young
embedsasubtlegentleness inthe boxing trainer Tokio; Mick Tin- der makes the gangster Eddie Fuseli sinister but not cartoon- ish; and Stan Shulman is hilari- ous as the Bonapartes’ Schopen-
hauer-quotingneighborMr.Carp (“It looks like the coffin for a baby,” he says gloomily of a violin case). Complementing the portrait
of these colorful individuals, Gardner adds a few touches that openup broader vistas: aninitial tableau of a Depression-era streetscape, for instance. The scene changes have been choreo- graphed so that, as the actors rearrange the walls and furnish- ings, we seem to catch glimpses of other urban activity: strolling couples in a park or dancers in a dance hall. The use of multi-lev- els, and of the stage’s depth, en- hances the cinematic vibe: It’s as if a whole city, and a waft of American history, is swirling around Joe and hismusical, vio- lenthands.
style@washpost.com
Wren is a freelancewriter. GoldenBoy
byCliffordOdets.Directed by Lee
MikeskaGardner; sound design, Jake Null; properties design,CarolBaker. WithKatyCarkuff,KevinHasser, Jim Howard, ElliottKashner,Belen Pifel, Bradley Smith,Colin Smith,Richard Perry Thomas, Jude Tibeau andKJ Thorarinsson. About2hours and45
minutes. ThroughDec. 19 at theChurch Street Theater, 1742Church St.NW. Call 703-892-0202or visit
www.keegantheatre.com.
tion in May at LTMH gallery in New York, Azari edged still fur- ther toward the edge of blasphe- my. In a series of video pieces he called “Icons,” he took images of martyred Shiite saints, such as might be seen in any kitchen in Iran (the regime approves of them) and replaced their male faces with the faces of crying women, meant to evoke the fe- male “martyrs” of the failed “Green Revolution” that took place in Iran last year. “It could be interpreted as sac-
rilegious,” Azari says, even though he insists his aim was not to “insult religious belief” but rather to explore the connection between religion, gender and pol- itics in present-day Iran. When the show was in the planning stages, he says, “there was a lot of discomfort among people in the gallery.” But in the end the deci- sion was made to go ahead. “We got a few threats,” says his
dealer Leila Heller, speaking by phone from the fair, “but we ignored them.” The work could never be shown in Iran, but in the West, there’s little hesitation, and Azari’s star is rising—he says his “Icons” show had a “fantastic” reception in Germany, and the New York Times did a large piece on him, illustrated with one of his “sacrilegious” images. Azari’s romantic partner is Ira- nian-born video artist Shirin Ne- shat, a full-blown superstar in the art world. Although her art is less
“ICON #2”:A 2010 video portrait by expatriate Iranian artist Shoja Azari, who replaced the face of seventh- century Imam Hossein with that of a modern woman.
SHOJA AZARI/COURTESY LEILA TAGHINIA-MILANI HELLER GALLERY
explicitly religious than his, it probes the role ofwomenin Islam in ways that don’t win her friends among imams. “For sure, the Is- lamic regime is very troubled by her work,” Azari says. Yet once again, the Western art world has embraced her, and her courage, with solo shows in major muse- ums in the United States and elsewhere. The reception for Algerian art-
ist Zoulikha Bouabdellah, one of whose installations includes Western high-heels lying on Is- lamic prayer rugs — a scene that would outrage many traditional Muslims — has been almost as warm. She has shown at the great Centre Pompidou in Paris and was awarded the prestigious MeuricePrize inFrance, as well as the Abraaj Prize — of the United Arab Emirates. If anything, in theWest there is
an expectation that art from the Islamic world will push Islamic buttons, says Sam Bardaouil, a Lebanese-New Yorker who is the
curatorial director of Art Reori- ented. It’s an organization that stages shows of Middle Eastern artists, and it is about to launch the largest show of their work ever to hit a museum. The exhibi- tion, of new and entirely uncen- sored commissions, will be shown at the brand new Arab Museum of Modern Art in Doha, Qatar.
When he launched a show of
Iranian art at the Chelsea Art Museum inNewYork, he says the problem wasn’t that the local audience was hesitant about of- fending Muslim sensibilities. It was that, in the Western art world, “people expect [Middle Eastern] art to be always subver- sive.” They’re disappointed, he says, if it isn’t.
gopnikb@washpost.com
D
MORE COVERAGE ONLINE To see a video on local reaction to
the Smithsonian controversy or to weigh in with your own opinion, go to
washingtonpost.com/style.
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