ArtsX UMMA will be putting on Spectra: Voicing Our Experience A Night of Spoken Art & Music, featuring a wide array of participating student groups and individuals performing music, poetry, and song. Giving voice to the students’ stories, this event aims to display the diversity of experiences through art forms. Performances hosted at UMMA situated in the middle of the gallery spaces always prove to be beautiful; the sound echoes off the walls, amplifying and reverberating back at the audience to immerse the senses. If an event hosted in UMMA’s Apse surrounded by art and performance can’t tempt you enough, perhaps the hot cocoa bar will.
“I am standing on the shoulders of all those artists who came before me, but here there is a space for a new way of seeing black and brown bodies all over the world” – Kehinde Wiley
Upon arrival to the Toledo Museum of Arts and promptly demonstrating my navigational incapability, I was kindly directed to the temporary exhibit just around the corner featuring the works of Kehinde Wiley. Near empty – my favorite way to experience museums – the gallery continued beyond my expectations, featuring a large number of works. Wiley’s portraits often reached from floor to ceiling, a daunting presence over the viewer. The pieces are beyond striking; Wiley’s characteristic style features portraits placed onto bright, almost cartoon-esque floral and geometric backgrounds that begin to creep over the bodies of the subjects. Wiley’s portraits feature men and women of color, often strangers he has approached on the street. Looking to the works of Old Master paintings for inspiration, Wiley allows the models to choose for themselves who they are modeled after, giving them authority within their representation. Wiley’s work encourages a discussion about the roles of race, gender, and religion within art. It was a strange experience to exit the world of Wiley the Toledo Museum created, only to enter into the next gallery featuring the same white, aristocratic portraits this exhibition critiqued.
Bound by Kehinde Wiley
Outside of the Wiley exhibit, the Toledo Museum of Art features a strong collection of pieces. One exhibit that struck me, to the point of gawking, was a gallery called “the Cloisters”. Set up as a medieval monastery, the ceiling can transition from “day” to “night”. Standing beneath an artificial night sky in the middle of an artificial monastery, the soft sounds of recorded monk chants filtered into space, is how all art should be experienced. The gallery and museum space almost fades away, no longer art on display, you begin to witness objects within their original context. A gallery featuring works of art that were all of different mediums, regions, and time periods particularly caught my museum-loving heart, as I don’t commonly see this in museums; it looked at what techniques made them similar or different, giving the visitor an art-history vocabulary and allowing them to be able to pick out the trends themselves.
I loved the progressive feel of the Museum. It offered chairs not merely for resting oneself from museum-exhaustion, but for pondering art in only the most immersive and slightly pretentious of manners. Technology was used in a way that enhanced the experience without encroaching upon the art itself (I admittedly did stand in line behind a group of not-quite-teenage girls for the photo booth). The Wiley exhibit featured two documentary-style videos that could have taken an afternoon to view in themselves.
Be Afraid of the Enormity of the Possible by Alfredo Jaar
Kehinde Wiley’s exhibit will be on display at the Toledo Museum of art until May 14. Whether you’re an art connoisseur or an art novice, this exhibition gives the viewer more to ponder than merely the visual, a timely and dynamic array of art.
A Dangerous Experiment, apart of U-M’s Bicentennial Semester, follows the college careers of the fictional first class of women at Michigan, beginning in 1871 and concluding in 1875. It tells of their trials, triumphs, and the different paths they choose to take. All the women choose a varying way, emphasizing the factions within one movement. Imbued with school spirit, it took a different form than the usual maize and blue rally cry, acknowledging both the strengths and pitfalls of the University’s history.
As I waited in line for the doors of the Keene Theater to open, I looked around and realized the awaiting audience – including myself – was 95% female. While it was not entirely unexpected, being a play about women, it always strikes me that this seems to be the theme in contemporary culture: if the plot is composed of women, it is likely the audience will too.
Emma McGlashen, a U-M student as well as the writer and director, proved to write a script that featured the female-empowering speeches I want to wake up to and drink my coffee over, steeping myself in the fierce words of other women. The play opened to a stage full of men, unintelligibly rumbling about the future of women – not so different than what our country looks like today. As I talked with my friends over intermission, we had to keep reminding ourselves that this was taking place 150 years ago, butalso only 150 years ago. It sometimes seems as though the extent of our progress surpasses the decade and half timeline, yet the dialogue was simultaneously present and poignant. One of the points emphasized in the play was that these women, fighting for the right to study alongside men at the University of Michigan, were not only fighting for themselves, but for the women who would come after them. The play’s sharp and timely dialogue hit the center of an ongoing injustice against women; the statements were composed of a century-plus discussion without being trite.
Walking out of the theater, I realized that almost three hours had passed, and yet it felt as though we had just begun to hear this history. I suppose I’m just a sucker for any story about women supporting women. Within the main female characters, I saw the same fears and determination of female students I know today. This play only reaffirmed my love for portraying a female-studded history within the arts.
While it confirmed that I have no wish to return to the roots of Michigan, where women are subject to wearing corsets and attending class behind a curtain, I discovered a nostalgia for one aspect of the past: petitioning every male on campus to return to wearing suits and ascots to class. This, though, is a one-sided street; I will continue to wear pants.
If you get the chance, I could not recommend going to see this show more. If you’ve missed both Friday and Saturday nights’ showings, there is one more performance on Sunday afternoon!
Consent. Relationships. Although these two topics occupy a certain space on university campuses, Valentine’s Day makes these subjects more relevant than ever. SAPAC — the sexual assault prevention and awareness center of the University of Michigan — will be addressing these topics through a zine that has compiled student art and written work showcasing these topics. The release party will be celebrating the publication of this zine.
SAPAC has been working all year to compile this zine of artwork and poetry, and is proud to celebrate its release. Come support SAPAC and attend the event! Details are on the image above, but also in text below!
Details When: Monday, February 13th
Time: 7:00 to 9:00PM
Location: North Quad Room 2435
TEDx UofM 2017 was as busy as ever, adding to the disruption part of this year’s theme: Dreamer’s and Disruptors. The army of volunteers running the independent conference have by now created a finely-tuned machine with the perfect mix of emotional roller-coaster, thought-provoking ideas, and blissful entertainment.
The student group Groove = bliss
A student jazz band played in the minutes before the conference started. Their grooving, polished performance was a reminder that so many students at this university are talented and sound like professionals even before they’ve graduated.
Then the first speaker took the stage. Koen Vanmechelen came all the way from Belgium to talk about chickens. Specifically, about how breeding various species of chickens can be used to teach us important lessons about human nature.
Next was Sophia Brueckner, a brilliant woman who was a preeminent software engineer at Google until she suffered an injury that prevented her from using computers for two years. She argued that we as a society have developed a dichotomy of looking at technology as either a complete disaster, or as completely awesome. Instead, she asserted, we need to approach technology with critical optimism.
Ironically, Sophia Brueckner pointed out that making an app to solve all our problems is a fallacious idea, but the 2017 TEDx prize went to a student that developed an app called FoodFind. Meant for low income families to find free food, you have to wonder how many families can actually afford and use the smartphones that the app runs on.
Caitlin Holman proposed three things we need to learn: autonomy, competency, and belonging. Videogames, she suggested, provide all of this. With that in mind, she founded GradeCraft with the purpose of making learning more “gameful.”
Erika Newman–a pediatric surgeon–talked about both clinical and personal experiences with cancer. She was introduced to the lack of information on neuroblastoma when one of her patients asked her about the disease and she realized how she didn’t have any answers. The only surprise here was that she was having trouble getting funding from the NIH to treat the cancer using DNA repair mechanisms.
Rollie Tussing and the Midwest Territory Band played during the break. Although they were a stereotypical band you’d hear in Ann Arbor (at least one instance of well-manicured beard, a cello, and music reminiscent of vintage records), they were entertaining. Their sound was both stripped down and full, and antique without feeling archaic.
Next was Abdul El-Sayed, the current Executive Director of the Detroit Health
Department. In case that didn’t already tell you what a monumental task that entails, he cited several facts about the city of 600,000+ people such as a life expectancy of 70, an asthma rate of three times that of the rest of the country, and vision and other problems that far surpass the rest of Michigan. His argument was to think about pathophysiology in the social realm so that we can help people prevent health problems from developing. Abdul was also one of the best speakers of the night and I highly recommend watching his talk at least.
Next was Jeffrey Veidlinger, a historian who went to Eastern Europe to interview survivors of the Holocaust as a way of preserving their culture via understanding Yiddish. He challenged the audience to “Ask your loved ones about their life. Ask them about their dreams. Ask them about what they cherish.”
The most heart-wrenching talk of the night came from Scott Matzka, who was a talented athlete and is now a husband and father battling ALS. This is another talk to watch, and to check out his organization MyTurn.
Documentary filmmaker Sophia Kruz was the last speaker of the evening. Showing clips from her latest documentary Little Stones, she showed how sharing individual stories is important, as well as using culture to address problems in society.
Art Outta Town is headed to the Toledo Museum of Art, an institution will a globally reputable collection, for Kehinde Wiley’s exhibit A New Republic. Wiley’s work draws attention to the lack of African American subjects in historical artwork and narratives. His exhibited pieces feature contemporary men and women modeled after the work of the “old Masters”, whose work heavily featured white European aristocracy. This is but one exhibit currently on display at the Toledo Museum of Art, only an hour from Ann Arbor. The museum houses pieces from almost every continent, ranging from medieval to contemporary works.
Saturday, February 11 / 11am-4pm / $5, Registration required here.
