Zoë Charlton and iona rozeal brown: Artist to Artist at Hirshhorn

Zoë Charlton and iona rozeal brown intimately reveal themselves and remind us to be aware of imitating social constructions
by Amy Misurelli-Sorensen

There is no line upon entering The Hirshhorn Museum today, no “headliner” draws only a small crowd, and Ryan Hill, manager of interpretive studies at the Hirshhorn, invites the audience to fill the first few rows of seats nearest the stage. Ryan Hill introduces Zoë Charlton and iona rozeal brown, two local women artists, and they begin a casual discussion on their work and the world.

Iona brown’s paintings are evocative of 17th and18th century Japanese woodcuts and rely on a multitude of resources from eastern and western cultures. She is constructing a “Warrior Aesthetic” where Samurais and Hip-Hop unite. Brown’s dual career as an artist and a D.J. inspires a body of work that represents Hip-Hop’s influences on the youth of Japanese culture. She captures Japanese youth mimicking the hip-hop scene in America through costume in black face, afros, baggy jeans, drawers, grills, logos, and attitudes. One painting depicts a teenage Asian girl in corn rolls; her smile reveals a grill and the audience are faced with a beautiful and pleasurable image of conflicting identities. Brown questions the history of the black face, the Yellow Negro, Warriors, trends, stereotypes in the media, and identity theft.

Charlton’s work explores similar issues with the face as identity. Black face and white face are explored in relation to the figure, usually female and nude. Unlike Brown, Charlton uses the figure to make a statement without clothes, but relies on props and symbols to convey a message. Her theme is politically and sexually charged in a playful way, yet loaded by serious undertones. In one image, for example, Lincoln’s Hat sits on top of the butt of a bent-over black woman. Brown states that Charlton’s work makes her want to laugh, but more willingly cry due to the historical burdens of women, specifically black women represented in Charlton’s work.

Brown and Charlton address sampling, appropriation, and the unquestionable significance these devices have in both of their work. Charlton believes sampling to be culturally free and that an artist is able to “sample” or use something and have the freedom to change its meaning, but not its character. Charlton clearly states that appropriation is a cultural denial. Brown stays committed to research, “owning it”, which is why she is critical on issues of social responsibility in her work. The devices of sampling and appropriation through process are as inseparable from the appropriation and sampling of cultures addressed in their work.

Brown and Charlton both rely on the media as a core source for research. They are critical about the media’s representations of culture and they exemplify a critical view of the media in their work. Charlton states, “We must be proud and critical of who we are and be aware of imitating the constructions of who we are.” Brown gets personal by confessing her shame and weakness to consumerism; she has recently purchased an ipod. This fall to consumerism has inspired a new body of work; ugly, teethed worms trying to drink Hypnotic painted on mirrors in the style of Japanese Animation. Brown tells us to fight the demons, stay strong.

Throughout this lecture, I cannot keep my eyes off iona and Zoë. Their clothing, body language, and personal exchanges exert confidence and pride. There is an element of magic to their presence. I am aware of my own “whiteness” and just as I begin to start aestheticizing these two black women artists, it is no longer about race. As I begin to share similar ideas on women and beauty, it is no longer about gender. We, all people, struggle with the complexities of identity. The discussion has taken a turn and it is not about separating, but instead about celebrating the commonalities of people. After the discussion, I find myself on an unintentional journey tracing back to my own history and personal experiences.

Richard Cleaver: Family Fictions Review

Katherine Knight

On the third floor of the AU museum there is in exhibit of embellished ceramic sculptures by Richard Cleaver entitled “Family Fictions”. The work deals with the repression of certain truths and desires in a rich style evocative of religious reliquaries and icons. The sculptures are complex and extraordinarily detailed, and invite you to study them carefully for clues to their meaning. Some clues are obvious. Most pieces have drawers, hidden compartments, or hinged heads that reveal truths about their subjects. For example Dreamer, which depicts a series of underwear-clad adolescents holding smaller versions of themselves standing atop a larger head whose retractable tongue reveals two men in a tender embrace, is clearly addressing anxieties about being openly gay. Other clues are more difficult to pin down. What’s with the heterosexual couple represented on the back? Or the tongue of fire burning atop the upper figure’s head? I decided to attend the Artist’s talk in hopes that Mr. Cleaver would explain some of these obscure references to me. Little did I suspect the web of concealment I was about to fall into.

It is always gratifying to learn that you were right about something. Many of Cleaver’s more personal pieces indeed deal with the experience of growing up gay in a ‘repressed’ and slightly ‘depressed’ middle-class Catholic family. He admits that the work, with its obsessive attention to detail, has always functioned as a sort of therapy. He also admits that he is unaware of the significance of many of his references, as he relies heavily on dreams and day-dreams for material. This leaves the viewer free to speculate on the significance of many stream-of-conscious details.

What interested me most; however, was not the way he dealt with the struggles he faced growing up, but the way he dealt with his family as a whole. In one such piece, Family Fiction- Arcadia 1, Cleaver shows us his parents in a coffin-like box, surrounded by all the things that consumed their adult lives: their children, their house, their smoking habits, their marriage, etc. Both the small house and the sculpture as a whole are being enveloped by gilded flames inspired, Cleaver admitted, by a mortgage-burning party hosted by his parents years ago. “I can say this because my mother isn’t here,’ he was quick to add.

In a second piece entitled Mother’s Life, Cleaver again depicts his mother in an uncomfortably cramped space, surrounded, or perhaps guarded by her twin sons, and supported by a frieze of clothespins; a symbol of her domestic drudgery. (Cleaver himself appears in the piece as a small gilded icon.) A similar piece, Spring Mother, which claims to deal with the plantation past of the land now partially occupied by his studio, shows a black woman who is literally enslaved by the children she cares for; twin girls this time.

Similar examples abound: Mother’s Tale deals with the discovery, at a friend’s funeral, that this friend was not the British ballerina she had always claimed to be. Cleaver made a point to add that the woman in question looked nothing like the woman depicted in the sculpture. Mars, God of War deals with the current war in Iraq, yet the soldiers wear uniforms from WWI. When asked about this decision Cleaver replied that he just liked the WWI uniforms better.

I got the feeling from Cleaver’s talk that he is completely unaware of the irony. It’s as though he’s unwilling or unable to depict anything that will hurt, embarrass, or step on any toes, and therefore nearly every piece is at least twice removed from his actual message.(The exceptions seem to be Swim Team and Hair Shirt, which deal with his personal experiences in high school, and are fairly straightforward.) He addresses repression with repression (the hidden compartments), and then represses it again (disguising the subject, addressing one issue through another, obfuscating the imagery, etc). Far from being pathetic, it’s actually quite touching to witness Cleaver’s struggle to work through complicated personal relationships in a manner that is entirely considerate and gentle.