My friend from Dallas is visiting Gainesville. Had an impromptu visit to the Harn Museum in the University. Funny how I completely missed this one for so long.
We started with Sebastiao Salgado's Photography Exhibit. The 1st goody goody images were rajasathani toilers at the Canal project, which reroutes Sutlej and Beas waters to Rajasthan. It was good to read that the project attempted at planting trees to prevent the advent of the desert. The next subject was Dhanbad coal miners. British wanted to extract coal as cheaply as possible, who cares about destruction of ecosystem, or the weakening of soil structure. Apparently the British system of quickie-mining let in oxygen, and led to incarceration of the coal. The next set of disturbing images were sealing the oil wells post gulf wars, and extreme under-nutrition post exodus from the subjects' native land. These self-funded images have captured and kept alive a censored piece of history: a role-model for budding photographers.
The next cheerful section was contemporary art. One intriguing artwork was Oscar Wild, by Hernan Bas. B My friend thought it referred to grave-diggers. My interpretation of the hazy human figure was that it was an allusion to the Picture of Dorian gray..the hazy figure progressively looks more wicked and older. One appealing feminist photograph was "I am not a Persian carpet". The female artist stamps her body with persian carpet motif to assert that there is much more to being a woman than just her beauty and nationality. "Old man's cloth" is a quilt made up of..wait for it.. made up of sewn together aluminium caps of wine bottles. Misnomer maybe. Should have been called a "teetotaler's cloth" :P. Two headless mannequins wore the "home-made bulletproof vests". They refer to a grim incident where the Romanov family heirlooms were sewn into kids' clothing to safeguard the riches, which couldn't prevent the kids' brutal death.
The art in Harn Museum has a pervasive theme. The exhibits refer to unfortunate (and possibly forgotten/ fact-suppressed) incidents like rich enslaving orphans, assassination of General Sandino, Black Wall street, and Colonial imperialism. What triumphs is the artist's ability to seek out the silver lining in that grim cloud.
We started with Sebastiao Salgado's Photography Exhibit. The 1st goody goody images were rajasathani toilers at the Canal project, which reroutes Sutlej and Beas waters to Rajasthan. It was good to read that the project attempted at planting trees to prevent the advent of the desert. The next subject was Dhanbad coal miners. British wanted to extract coal as cheaply as possible, who cares about destruction of ecosystem, or the weakening of soil structure. Apparently the British system of quickie-mining let in oxygen, and led to incarceration of the coal. The next set of disturbing images were sealing the oil wells post gulf wars, and extreme under-nutrition post exodus from the subjects' native land. These self-funded images have captured and kept alive a censored piece of history: a role-model for budding photographers.
The next cheerful section was contemporary art. One intriguing artwork was Oscar Wild, by Hernan Bas. B My friend thought it referred to grave-diggers. My interpretation of the hazy human figure was that it was an allusion to the Picture of Dorian gray..the hazy figure progressively looks more wicked and older. One appealing feminist photograph was "I am not a Persian carpet". The female artist stamps her body with persian carpet motif to assert that there is much more to being a woman than just her beauty and nationality. "Old man's cloth" is a quilt made up of..wait for it.. made up of sewn together aluminium caps of wine bottles. Misnomer maybe. Should have been called a "teetotaler's cloth" :P. Two headless mannequins wore the "home-made bulletproof vests". They refer to a grim incident where the Romanov family heirlooms were sewn into kids' clothing to safeguard the riches, which couldn't prevent the kids' brutal death.
The art in Harn Museum has a pervasive theme. The exhibits refer to unfortunate (and possibly forgotten/ fact-suppressed) incidents like rich enslaving orphans, assassination of General Sandino, Black Wall street, and Colonial imperialism. What triumphs is the artist's ability to seek out the silver lining in that grim cloud.
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