Friday, June 3, 2016

When troubles turn into leftovers


As a child, I grew up with a background in visual arts and spent many Sunday evenings taking art classes. Taking art classes was a stepping stone for me which fired up my passion for art. During art classes, I was never interested in drawing the various sample pictures where we had to try our best to get match the details and be precise. I remember the days where I would go into art class and convince my art teacher to let me makeup my own art piece and allow my creativity to be free. Now to this day, I have always had an interest for art pieces that are fun, powerful, and sometimes random. I mean, sure if I see a painting of a tree that is so detailed where it looks like a photo, I am impressed, but I prefer art that is just created through emotions. I was very excited when we were going to the Tate Modern. I always enjoy looking at different art work and the way that the artist express themselves.

The reason why I decided to chose these two pieces is because I think that they really compliment one another. They both were created to inform people about the violence that was happening in this world that these artist were living in. I think think they are also pieces that are meant to have people walk by and take a second glance to understand what the piece is all about.

Untitled 1967 
oil paint on hardboard
by Malangatana Ngwenya 
The first piece that drew my attention was a painting by Malangatana Ngwenya, whom is a Mozambican painter and poet. The first thing I noticed about his painting was the funny animated characters which made me wonder why they all had such an interesting look and why they are eating each other. Secondly, I noticed his use of colors and how they contrasted with one of each other so beautifully. My mind started to wonder why he chose to use such bright colors but instead of making them bright, he darkened them. I thought that his choice of colors and characters  make the painting full of chaos in the society.          

Leftovers 1970
80 cardboard boxes, gauze and polyvinyl acetate
 by Luis Camnitzer 














The second artwork that really left my stomach feeling a little sick was the piece by Luis Camnitzer who is a German-born Uruguay artist and writer. When I first saw his piece, I wondered what these boxes were suppose to mean and if the red color was suppose to be blood. I looked upon the didactic and saw the title of the piece was called Leftovers. At that point I felt more sick because this piece was supposed to be boxes of human remains and on the box was labeled leftovers. Camnitzer's piece was specifically to represent violence towards people in Latin America. I think that this piece really did the job providing us a visual image of how brutal the world is.










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