Warlimpirrnga Tjapaltjarri, an artist whose work is currently being displayed for the first time at the Salon 94 gallery in New York City, is not your typical small town artist looking for fame. In fact, until he was in his 20s, Mr. Tjapaltjarri belonged to the Pintupi Aboriginal group, in a West Australian desert. When the Pintupi were forced to move into settlements in the 1950s and 1960s, his family remained out of view, “hunting lizards and wearing no clothes except for human-hair belts”. In 1984, Mr. Tjapaltjarri and his family were discovered and moved into a Pintupi community. They were a sensation in the news, known as the Pintupi Nine, the last “lost tribe.”
Mr. Tjapaltjarri
Mr. Tjapaltjarri took on painting with his two brothers, modifying traditional designs that Pintupi men used on rocks, spears, and bodies. As a healer and keeper of ancestral stories among the Pintupi people, Mr. Tjapaltjarri captures the history of the natives in his art. His abstract style, which has made him famous in the Desert Painting Movement, is seen as unique and fascinating to many. Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn, the owner of the Salon 94 gallery, said that she first saw Mr. Tjapaltjarri’s work in the remarkable Documenta exhibition in Kassel, Germany, in 2012, and his paintings stood out the most. “I also loved the fact that this abstraction had another kind of abstraction behind it — at least abstraction to us, because we’ll never be able to understand these stories in the way they do,” she said. “And I thought that they looked so contemporary at a time when abstraction is being practiced by so many New York artists.”
The Central and Western Desert in black and white.
The unusual history behind Mr. Tjapaltjarri’s art is what makes it so exceptional. Every painting has a story behind it, although not every story is revealed to the public. The way the artwork tells a story has remained a secret. Fred R. Myers, an anthropologist at New York University who has studied the Pintupi and their art since the early 1970s, says, “I’ve been asking that question for 40 years, and I’ve never really gotten the same answer twice — it’s very inside knowledge, the paintings operate more like mnemonic devices than like representations of a narrative.”
The Gibson Desert, Mr. Tjapaltjarri’s current home.
Regardless of his growing fame, Mr. Tjapaltjarri will always be an important figure among the Pintupi people. In Kiwirrkurra, the community where he lives in the Gibson Desert, he is well respected for his knowledge and experience. His artwork tells the mythical stories about the Pintupi people as well as about the formation of the desert. For example, one of his paintings, which may simply look like lines and curves, tells the story of a group of ancestral women who appear only at night in the desert around Lake Mackay, an immense saltwater flat that is the main focus of his paintings. His art has a deeper meaning, one that may or may not be understood by everyone, but holds a place in the hearts of the Pintupi.
Each day, thousands of illegal immigrants are smuggled across the border. They are shoved into gas tanks, squeezed into cargo boxes, and hidden in the backs of trucks.They are pressed into small boats by the hundreds just to be sunk off the coast. News coverage has made us all painfully aware of what Syrian refugees go through in order to enter Europe. Yet with all the focus of the Syrian refugees fleeing the Middle East, why haven’t we asked ourselves what happens to those who stay behind? In his article “Photo Exhibition Puts Syrian Refugees on the Seine,” Elian Peltier features Reza Deghati who seeks to answer this question by creating a photo exhibition right on the banks of the Seine River.
Before we look at Reza’s work, we must first understand what is happening in 
Syria. In 2011, a series of reform movements and protests spread across the Middle East including Syria. Feeling threatened by the movement’s demands, Syria’s president Bashar al-Assad responded by attacking the protesters. He ordered their kidnappings, tortures, and murders in addition to destroying the suburbs in which they lived. In wake of this totalitarian atrocity, militant rebel groups were formed, aiming to establish a more moderate government. Syria erupted into a full blown civil war. In the midst of the internal fighting, ISIS entered Syria in search of territory and has been fighting both the rebel and government forces ever since. Surrounded by three opposing fronts in a war that has been going on for over four years now, Syrian civilians have no choice but to flee the country.
Once outside of Syria, refugees have two options, to stay in the Middle East in a refugee camp or to enter Europe and try to establish themselves. It is easy for Europeans to blame the refugees for entering Europe instead of staying in the Middle East. After all, these refugees are disrupting local economies and cultures. In the midst of this harsh sentiment, Reza’s photos call their audience to see past the negatives and accept the immigrants as human beings.
Reza’s works focus on the homeless children living in Middle Eastern refugee 
camps. While it is easy to dismiss a suffering adult, a child in pain cannot be so easily ignored. He glamorizes their childhood in certain pictures by capturing the children while playing. It is easy for a viewer to relate to his own childhood in such pictures, and as such he recalls fond memories and develops a connection with the child in the photo. Later photos shock the audience by capturing the children at their low points- while performing physical labor or laying on the ground motionless. According to Reza, “[these] kids have lost the paradise every kid has.” Now in his state of shock, a viewer is more sensitive to the conditions refugees face and will be less likely to dismiss their rights as humans.
By forcing the public to see what the alternative is, perhaps Reza’s works will persuade Europeans to be more accepting of the current demographic shift from Syria. These immigrants are not criminals sneaking into a country. They are victims fleeing from one.
Luxury is in the eye of the beholder is the crux of Kathleen Beckets’ article, V&a asks: What is Luxury? I had never thought about luxury in this way before, but when I did, I thought of all the people that are less fortunate than I who would think that the vegetables that I repeatedly toss away after dinner are luxuries. It is a very clichéd thought but I feel that it is labeled a cliché by the people, like me, who do not do enough to help the millions of people who do not know when their next meal will be, or even where they will sleep.
Our Garbage
His luxury
Why is it acceptable that Carlos Slim, the richest man in the world, is worth $55 billion dollars, enough money to run a small country, while nearly half of the world’s population lives in poverty? Upwards of 3 billion people live on less than $2.50 a day, more than 1.3 billion live in extreme poverty, less than $1.25 a day. 22,000 children die EVERY DAY as a result of poverty. I still cannot fully comprehend the severity of these numbers and this is not an area that I have looked into before, but that in itself is a problem.
Our society amazes me by the fact that the people in countries as well off as America, myself included, worry about Bruce turning into Caitlin but not about any real problems. In the time it has taken me to develop this post thus far, 4,736 children have died. I am most likely going to forget about this post the second after I post it because of how emotionally devastating of a topic it is to think about. I don’t know if you guys can relate but I want something to be done for the less fortunate but I don’t see myself doing anything to significantly impact the problem.
I think that as soon as I post the article, I will move on and not act on any of what I am feeling right now. I just don’t understand why this happens. Why do we walk past the homeless on the street, is the overused excuse that “they might use the money I give them for drugs, so I won’t give” good enough? I realize that I am exactly the type of person that I am criticizing and that bothers me but not enough to start handing a dollar to every homeless I see, but not enough to travel to some of the most problem-ridden parts of the world and doing something to help.
One’s culture greatly defines how they perceive art, but if you are born in an aboriginal world then art is no longer perceived the same way as an average person would like to believe. Too often, we are stuck thinking in very conventional and non-original ideas. In Randy Kennedy’s “An Aboriginal Artist’s Dizzying New York Moment,” the author describes a man that came from a long lost tribe that hadn’t assimilated into civilization until 1984. This man, Warlimpirrnga Tjapaltjarri, was raised in a remote desert in Western Australia. It was “so remote that even after other Pintupi were forcibly relocated into settlements in the 1950’s and 1960’s.” Mr. Tjapaltjarri’s art seems so abstract to a regular person, but he is having fun telling the stories of his people and of his ancestors through seemingly simplistic lines. His art is so different that most of his work doesn’t have any titles, which allows the viewers to make their own assumptions and ideas fly.
Warlimpirrnga Tjapaltjarri was the head leader of the Pintupi Nine, also known as the “lost tribe”, who insisted they were separated from their other Pintupi clan members. The group consisted of two sisters and their seven teenage children, where they would travel from waterhole to waterhole, just like their ancestors. They were so isolated from society that they were “…overwhelmed by the experience of travelling in a car for the first time.” In addition, “The plane would fly over and we would hide in the tree. We would see the wings of the plane and we would get frightened. We thought it was the devil and so we kept hiding under the tree. When the plane had passed we would climb down from the tree.” They weren’t found until 1984 by pure chance, but they can be shown as a prime example of people that weren’t influenced by the outside world for a good amount of time.
Living in modern society, we often are influenced by many different cultures around the world. But, in the case of Mr. Tjapaltjarri, he was only influenced by “ceremonial designs that Pintupi men used on rocks, spears and their bodies.” The art really speaks with nature because it really seems like Mr. Tjapaltjarri drew in the desert sand and froze it in a specific movement. Making desert paintings is no easy task, as these paintings consist of “…thousands of dots — a signature of much Desert Paintings. The dots form tight parallel lines…” This exemplifies the difference between modern people and “old-school” people, in today’s society we lack the mental capacity to focus on something that requires all of our attention because we are always overthinking on what we should be doing next.
Mr. Tjapaltjarri’s artwork reminds me of a child in the sandbox with a branch who is drawing anything he/she wants in the sand. His artwork is so unrestricted from a mental-state and an artistic point-of-view, even though it seems so simplistic, each line in his works is another reason to enjoy life. His artwork is a reminder of where he came from, where his ancestors came from, and what he has endured all these years. Being in America, sometimes we forget about our own heritage and family history. Maybe we should reflect more about our family history. Perhaps we can get a better understanding of our identity. There is no doubt in my mind that Tjapaltjarri understands the value of culture and family.
“The lines and switchbacks, painted on linen canvas while it is flat on the ground, correspond to mythical stories about the Pintupi and the formation of the desert world in which they live.” The paintings are like topography maps, as they show geographers a story about a landscape at an average wouldn’t know. Tjapaltjarri’s work tells Pintupi a story about their ancestor, his works allow us to create our own stories just by gazing at it.
When one develops an urge to enrich himself/herself with the knowledge of another culture what would be their main source of information? Many would turn to google or on a rare occasion even to the library, and to be honest I would’ve done the exact same thing. New York Times journalist Holland Cotter, however, has more creative and innovative idea on how to learn more about a culture’s history in his article, “Review: ‘Kongo: Power and Majesty’ at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.”
Cotter believes that art is the key to learning the truth of a cultures history. He uses the new Kongo exhibit in the MET as an example. He mentioned how the people of the Kongo region didn’t take records of their history or important events for most of their early generations. Due to this, westerners never really understood their cultures and what they have truly been through. Cotter goes on to say that this is not the case, the people of Kongo have always been keeping records of important events in their cultures, just not in the traditional way of paper and pen.
The Kongo people have recorded important events of their pasts with the help of art. They used sculptures, paintings, engravings, masks, religious objects, and ceramics to record their history. I was fascinated by their clever and unique artworks that had so much to say about their cultures. I completely agree with Cotter and feel that artwork is a great tool to record one’s history.
This tusk carving is a great example of how the Kongo people used art to record their history. This carving depicts Kongo’s relations with European countries. At the beginning of the tusk, it seems as if everyone is happy with their relations and there is a mutual respect between them. The second visible level depicts upper class Europeans making shady deals with some Kongo people. With the help of these deals, Portugal, France, and mainly Britain began enslaving the people of Kongo. They managed to chain up a third of the Kongo population by 1850. As one could see this small tusk artwork told us so much about the people of Kongo.
There are other great examples of the Kongo artworks that depict their culture if you’re interested. I believe that this is a much better and more enjoyable way to present one’s cultural history than the way of a classic textbook.
CREATIVE PROJECT
The inspiration of the designs: Edwin Booth by John Singer Sargent
Design 3 Adobe Photoshop
Design 2 Pencil Drawing
Design 1 Photograph
Sculpture is a form or expression where the artist attempts to portray his or her work on a three-dimensional platform. The quantity mediums through which this is possible is endless. Sculptures can be made of clay, stone, marble, even paper. Almost any material can be used for sculpture, under the discretion of the artist. However, viewers usually examine the symbol that the sculpture portrays, rather than how the material contributes to the expression of said sculpture. Will Ryman took it upon himself to add symbolism to the materials that he used in his sculpting works.
In her article, “Will Ryman Prepares His New Exhibition at Paul Kasmin Gallery”, Hilarie M. Sheets describes previous and current art work of Will Ryman, a former playwright and a current sculptor who has chosen to emphasize the material that he uses to
in his art as a way of incorporating a narrative to his work. For example, his sculpture “America” is a cabin of gold leaf that is meant to resemble the childhood log cabin Abraham Lincoln. The walls and floors of the cabin are lined with materials that either influenced or influences the American economy, such as tobacco, slavery shackles, iPhones, and cotton. In this way,
Ryman tells a story in still motion, and attempts to convey a history in one scene.
I feel that it is absolutely fascinating how an artist can take every aspect of his work and manipulate it to convey more than what it actually is. For example, “The Situation Room” is a sculpture that, as Sheets’ wrote in the article, “reacted photograph of President Obama and his inner circle of advisors watching from the White House as the covert Navy SEAL operation to kill Osama Bin Laden unfolded on Pakistani soil in real time.” Ryman chose to dust a layer of coal over the sculpture because of how it is a resource that has fueled many wars and instances of violence. In the article, it was mentioned that Ryman thought that the photograph of Obama was a clear form of propaganda, and so his sculpture was meant to recreate the image without the influence it was meant to have. I think that this added symbolism to his works gives an entirely different dimension to his portrayal of such a significant moment in our history
I had never looked an sculpture and thought, even for a second, about how the materials that were used could offer a story to sculpture itself. Even with examples from ancient civilizations, the materials used for artwork could allude to goods that were considered valuable or resources that were plentiful in a particular region of the globe. In terms of modern art, the materials that an artist choses to use can mean more than just a medium, as clearly proven by Ryman’s work.
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Cloud Gate brings to mind the supposedly pearly gates of heaven in all its pure, blinding glory. It breathes of clarity, fluidity and serenity. It is the oldest known dance in China – and Lin Hwai-min earned a Lifetime Achievement Award for deciding to share it with the world in 1973 by creating the first contemporary dance company in a Chinese speaking community.
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Wait, we need to backtrack. A LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD for starting a dance company?
It turns out that at the time what Taiwan needed more than anything was a cultural spark. And the flame just grew until it defined Taiwanese culture. But history lesson first.
If Taiwan and China were on Facebook, their relationship would surely be listed as “it’s complicated”. In 1945, Taiwan was a territory of the Republic of China (ROC). Then the Chinese Civil War happened and the ROC lost to the People’s Republic of China (PRC). It relocated its government to Taipei, Taiwan.
Taiwan is the island next to mainland China.
The rest of the world followed the PRC’s victory by recognizing the PRC officially as “China”. How did they do this? In 1971, the other countries gave the PRC “China’s” seat in the United Nations and kicked the ROC out. Now Taiwan is left in an awkward area between being part of ROC, a territory of PRC, or an independent state. The rest of the world isn’t quite sure how to address this either so everyone is friendly toward Taiwan, though not straightforward in labeling it. This is the “political situation” of Taiwan.
This world class dance company formed 2 years after the PRC joined the United Nations at a time where Taiwan, as well as its inhabitants, was trying to discover its identity. Lin Hwai-min made Cloud Gate a symbol of the country. In fact, he is seen as “a kind of cultural ambassador for Taiwan” according to Yatin Lin, a professor of dance studies at Taipei National University of the Arts.
From a new $22 million Cloud Gate Theater to a street now known as “Cloud Gate Lane” to an asteroid discovered in 2010 by National Central University, Taiwan also named Cloud Gate to Cloud Gate Liveried Aircraft on China Airlines, the troupe of 24 dancers seems to represent Taiwan as international ambassadors. Mr. Lin recognizes this by saying, “I often remind the dancers that when they are onstage, they are often the only Taiwanese people that a lot of people get to see that are actually labeled as Taiwanese.”
A culture, a region, a people are all defined by the art of dance. Who would have thought dance could transcend artistic boundaries into politics? I believe that this expansion of the art of dance is a necessary step that should be more prominent in the future as well. In response to the hidden filth and corruption of the Gilded Age, artists pushed America to fight for justice and protection under the law. Photographers like Jacob Riis and cartoonists like Thomas Nast used art to communicate with the large, often illiterate and foreign-speaking, immigrant population in a way they could understand. Dance can be just as expressive with an equally as powerful impact on people. Especially with the massive network of social media, a dance can spread through a Vine or Youtube video to become a global sensation. This was evident in the popularity of the Ice Bucket challenge last year and the way the spread quadrupled the money donated to the ALS Association to $115 million.
Taiwan is getting more recognition though its dance company. The Cloud Gate Dance Theater is remarkable, with a natural essence to its dance and a foundation of self-discipline, inner strength, and harmony within the body, mind, and spirit. This stems from the training all the dancers receive in a meditation called Qi Gong which consists of breathing exercises, internal martial arts, modern dance, ballet, and calligraphy. From the clips I have viewed, the performance is truly breath-taking.
After considering the background and training of Cloud Gate Dance Theater, the art seems more fiery than I originally thought.
Thanks to Amy Qin, the writer of the September 11, 2015 New York Times article, “Cloud Gate Dance Theater: A Roving, Bounding Symbol of Taiwan” that brought Cloud Gate to my attention, I am also aware of the dance company’s performance at the Brooklyn Academy of Music this week from September 16-19. They are opening the annual New Wave Festival by premiering a 2013 work “Rice”. For more information, click here.
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