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"Can art really improve people's lives?" continues to be a relevant
question for me. Like many artists, I vacillate between a belief in the
political efficacy of what we do and a cynicism that is reinforced daily
by the seemingly endless supply of vacuous art. Is visual art even up to
the epic task of transforming an inequitable social system? Doubtful.
Then I remember being taken to see Diego Rivera's Industry murals at the
Detroit Art Institute when I was a kid. And I realize how profoundly
images have influenced and even shaped my consciousness.
For this online exhibition, the challenge was to find art that spoke
to the issue of global economic and sexual justice without resorting to
the didactic, diagrammatic or the just plain dry. The artists included
in CRASH PROOF—Chitra Ganesh, Deborah Grant, Esperanza Mayobre,
Sheila Pepe, Mickalene Thomas, Fatimah Tuggar and the collective, fierce
pussy—know how to cut through the visual clutter and convince us of
their point of view. Through their smart, layered interrogations of
gender, class and race, these artists prove once again that art can be
both visually and politically compelling.
The work presented here utilizes many of the intersecting theoretical
and formal innovations associated with Conceptual, Feminist and Identity
art of the 1970s and 80s. Chitra Ganesh and Mickalene Thomas re-cast
lived experience as staged, larger-than-life installations and
photographs. Sheila Pepe and fierce pussy deploy ephemeral or
"unmonumental" materials to disrupt the authority of public
and/institutional space. Deborah Grant claims squatters' rights on the
patriarchal body of Modernist painting. The détournment of civic and
domestic platitudes, through the manipulation of mediated imagery, is
the chosen method of both Esperanza Mayobre and Fatimah Tuggar. Through
the reinvention and reinvigoration of familiar critical strategies, the
artists of CRASH PROOF manage to restore a sense of urgency to their
underlying subjects and—perhaps more importantly—reconfirm our
belief in the agency of art.
Thanks to the artists for their exceptional work and their
participation in this project.
Carrie Moyer
January 2009
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