MOWA Exhibit Internationalizes the Language of Art

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Image via Museum of Wisconsin Art

Adding By Subtracting Safety Zones & Panic by David Najib Kasir

By definition, art is an esthetic approach to ideas and themes that communicates the artist’s emotions to viewers in evocative and sometimes provocative ways. Broaden that palette to include artists from different cultural and ethnic backgrounds and the conversation is bound to get very interesting.

Such diversity of expression is behind “Artists Without Borders: Reflections on Art and Place,” a new exhibit opening April 24 at the Museum of Wisconsin Art in West Bend. A concurrent version of the same exhibit opens May 12 at MOWA/DTN, located inside Milwaukee’s Saint Kate—The Arts Hotel.

Nine different artists—seven first-generation immigrants and two Midwestern artists from immigrant families—will draw on their various cultural and artistic backgrounds, contributing a total of 54 works—many multifaceted and large in scale—on view within the two locations. The artistic media includes everything from painting to sculpture to animation and large-scale puppetry.

“At MOWA, we constantly ask ourselves what makes Wisconsin artists and art and have always aspired to represent both in their diversity,” says J. Tyler Friedman, the museum’s director of collections, education and research who was intrinsic in developing the exhibit. “Representation matters everywhere, including the museum, and we want to make sure the work we present is representative of what’s going on in the state.”

Participating artists include British-born Faisal Abdu’Alla, whose art explores his Muslim identity; Iranian native Nina Ghanbarzadeh, who builds bridges between English and her native Farsi through repetitive mark-making; David Najib Kasir, a Chicago-born Syrian/Iraqi artist who explores social themes through traditional Arab mosaics; Mexican surrealist Francisco X. Mora whose textiles and printmaking reflect the immigrant’s experience; Indian-born artist Nirmal Raja, whose multi-media art examines colonialism and migration; Gabrielle Tesfaye, a first generation American artist of Ethiopian/ Jamaican heritage who studies the African diaspora and related themes; South Korean sculptor Jason Yi, who creates highly expressive works from everyday materials; and Xiaohong Zhang, who explores social and political issues through western digital techniques applied to her native Chinese art forms.

In tandem with the regular exhibits, which explore place and identity as their major themes, 24 teen artists from 12 regional high schools will mount an ancillary exhibition, “Myself When I Am Real: A Teen Perspective on Identity.” The student art will be on display May 15- June 6 at MOWA’s West Bend facility.

“We chose artists whose work is a prompt for thinking about place, belonging and identity in unique ways,” Friedman says. “Jason Yi, for example, has found multiple ways to marry the dichotomy between high art and humble materials that subverts expectations about what art is made of and what it should look like.”

Yi, currently a professor at the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design, was born in Seoul and in 1975 at age 11 moved with his family to the United States. His art combines his Korean heritage with his American experiences, which took the young man years to assimilate. “The spectrum of cultural differences has impacted my work,” Yi says. “I have a certain skepticism and cynicism in realizing there are things that run counter to what I originally understood to be true.”

Trails of the North Star 02, Yi’s contribution to the exhibit, is a form of artistic sleight-of-hand, something he says is not what it seems. The sculpture derived from a photo Yi saw of the test launch of the North Korean missile “North Star” into the Sea of Japan. The sculpture’s conjoined series of rounded spheres represent the missile’s “plume”, or exhaust smoke. “I wanted to take out the missile and simply recreate the plume, which can represent devastation, but also is a beautiful construct that disappears into the air,” the artist explains.

Yi’s dichotomy continues with the construction itself of the 42-inch-high sculpture, which is ornately carved and appears to be a heavy metallic object. In reality, the spheres were formed from black spray foam—the kind used to fill cracks in walls – molded over plaster balls and then carved and coated with metallic silver paint. The construction is quite light and airy, much like smoke itself, he says.

“Common materials help demystify the art-making process,” Yi says. “My bicultural experience leads me to make this piece accessible to audiences without presenting it as an Asian-influenced work or from any other sort of platform, but as something recognizable to viewers on their own terms.”

Another Yi sculpture, Legend of the White Snake, greets visitors to MOWA from outside the museum. In this case, the permanent installation is a tangle of white PVC piping, another common material familiar to just about everyone. “I enjoy some level of subversion in my work,” he says. “But I am cognizant of the fact that I want to reach as many people as possible through my art and spark a dialogue at any and all levels with viewers.

“Through differences in aesthetics and culture we may gather that we’re all human beings concerned with the world we live in,” Yi adds. “I hope the exhibit reinforces that there are multiple viewpoints and that people from all cultures can gather and contribute to the country.”

Artists Without Borders: Reflections of Art and Place will be on display through July 3 at the Museum of Wisconsin Art, 205 Veterans Ave., West Bend, and at MOWA/DTN inside Saint Kate—The Arts Hotel, 139 E. Kilbourn Ave., Milwaukee.