In Conversation with Los Carpinteros (Part I)

Posted on December 4, 2019 by Experiment Station

Los Carpinteros (Marco Castillo and Dagoberto Rodríguez) is an internationally acclaimed Cuban artist collective best known for merging architecture, sculpture, design, and drawing. Through two films and a group of sculptural portraits, Los Carpinteros’s exhibiton Cuba Va!, produces a social landscape of Cuba’s modern history that has been at once utopian and dystopian. As part of the Phillips’s Intersections series, the project is on view through January 12, 2020.

In this two-part series, Senior Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art Vesela Sretenović discusses Cuba Va! with the artists.

Los Carpinteros at The Phillips Collection, in front of It’s not Che, it’s Felicia (2017). Photo: Carl Maynard

VESELA SRETENOVIĆ: This project has been four years in the making, and we went through a number of revisions. Meanwhile, last summer, in 2018, Los Carpinteros dissolved, and you, Marco and Dago, decided to pursue separate careers but also to show your works that were conceived and produced as a collective. Together, we agreed to move forward and complete what we started years ago and make this exhibition happen. In this sense, its title, Cuba Va!, is emblematic not only of Cuba, but also of Los Carpinteros now, no?

LOS CARPINTEROS: Cuba Va! is an ironic title because the situation today is the opposite—Cuba is not going anywhere. Cuba is no longer a revolutionary, progressive place, but a place of stagnation, a place to be and survive…On the flip side, the exhibition title sends a message of hope for the future, for both the country and for us, the collective. Los Carpinteros will continue to showcase and publish artworks in order to preserve its legacy—26 years of collaboration—for posterity.

But back to the title itself. Cuba Va! derives from a popular song from the early 1970s written and produced by the Experimental Sound Collective. At the time, it was an experimental and emotional song in terms of both melody and lyrics. The sound is very repetitive, somewhat inspired by the rock-and-roll of the Beatles, but mixed with salsa, while the words echo hippie optimism, the pop aesthetic and spirit that were positive at heart and promising of “a new man” that is the new social order.

Left to right: It’s not Che, It’s Simón (2017); It’s not Che, it’s Eusebia (2018); It’s not Che, it’s Alfonso (2018); Cachita (2013). Photo: Carl Maynard

VS: Let’s start with the portraits. Seven are on view: Cachita, René, Isabel, Eusebia, Simón, Felicia, and Alfonso. Cachita, along with Emelino, were the first ones created, in 2013. They were very personal—Cachita was made after Dago’s mother and Emelino after Marco’s grandfather. Then there was a gap of a few years between them and the rest.

LC: The idea behind the first portraits was to tackle the notion of heroism, or rather to question what constitutes heroism and who are the real heroes. Here we focused on the generation that aged with the Cuban revolution itself, including our relatives. At the same time, we made portraits of internationally renowned political figures such as Angela Merkel, Noam Chomsky, and artist Santiago Sierra, who were all critical of high capitalism. The recent portraits created for and presented in this exhibition return to the original idea of portraying ordinary Cubans who carried out the weight of the daily struggle in Cuba and who are the real heroes. Now many of them live in asylums and nursing homes where the care is very poor; they fought for the ideals of equality only to be forgotten in poverty—very sad!

VS: What were you looking to capture in these portraits?

LC: Aged faces, a map of wrinkles that trace hardship but also beauty. They are heroes not of the revolution, but of life, endurance, and survival.

VS: And how did you come up with their titles: It’s not Che, It’s Isabel or It’s not Che, It’s Simón, etc.?

LC: We were first using only the names of real people, but then we realized that that’s not enough, that we were missing the link to the concept of heroism. The idea came from an article that was referring to the Merkel portrait, saying, “It’s not Che, it’s Angela.” We read this while we were in Greece exhibiting our portrait of her. And that was it—something clicked right then!

VS: Tell us more about how you made them. Was it an elaborate process?

The process of rendering the portraits based on photographs by Leonardo Feal. Courtesy of the artists.

LC: Yes, we tried to follow the steps of Enrique Avila, author of the sculptural portraits of Che Guevara and Camilo Cienfuegos located in the Plaza de la Revolución in Havana. He worked from the famous photographs of Che taken by Alberto Diaz (Korda), so we called Leonardo Feal, a contemporary Cuban photographer, to work with us on this project, thinking of him as the Korda of our time. We went together to visit old people’s homes, nursing homes, asylums, and also places where they would congregate, like the May 1 parade (International Labor Day). We amassed a large group of photos from which we selected seven. Feal’s photography has the great power and sensitivity in conveying facial expressions that we were looking for and it served as a basis for developing our sculptural portraits. From there on, we alternated between hand-drawn and digital processes in order to simplify the photographic image.

The Plaza de la Revolución in Havana by day and night, with portraits of Che Guevara and Camilo Cienfuegos.

We faced a lot of technical problems because digital design tends to generate cold-looking images and we wanted revealing faces. Therefore, we went back and forth numerous times until we achieved a desired appearance. Then, we had to work on the grooves where the LED light cables were going to be placed and balance that with the drawn lines that capture the personality of the portrait. This was another big challenge that we had to work out with our fabricators. After many lighting tests, we finally got our glowing portraits. For us, they function like domestic monuments; they are personal and commemorative, humble and heroic.

Stay tuned for Part II of the interview about the films in the exhibition.

Read the full interview in the Los Carpinteros: Cuba Va! catalogue, available in museum shop.

The Phillips Collects: Zoë Charlton

Posted on November 20, 2019 by Experiment Station

On October 24, the Phillips unveiled its latest acquisition selected by the Contemporaries Steering Committee: Zoë Charlton’s The Country A Wilderness Unsubdued, 2018.

Zoë Charlton (b. 1973, Tallahassee, Florida) is best known for her large-scale drawings of nudes as well as collages that merge diverse figures with phantasmagoric landscapes. Combining cut-outs from books and magazines, decorative stickers of trees, leaves, clouds, and birds, with drawings from life, she creates poignant images that blend elements of high and low culture and confront the viewer with their scale, directness, and bold expression. The Country A Wilderness Unsubdued is part of the artist’s Migration series produced during her residency at ArtPace in San Antonio, Texas, which draws from Charlton’s memories of her grandmother’s homestead in Florida. Here, lush vegetation grows out of a female body, suggesting both the beauty and the weight of the world.

Zoë Charlton with her work The Country A Wilderness Unsubdued (2018) at the unveiling. Photo: Ann Lipscombe

Detail of The Country A Wilderness Unsubdued (2018)

The artwork is on view along the Goh Annex stairwell, giving visitors various perspectives along the stairs.

Unpacking and installing the artwork

Charlton received her MFA from the University of Texas at Austin. Her work has been featured in the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas; Studio Museum of Harlem, New York; Zacheta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw, Poland, and other museums. Charlton lives in Baltimore and is Associate Professor of Art at American University in Washington, DC.

The artist was on site for the installation

Installation of the artwork

The Contemporaries Steering Committee—under the guidance of Phillips Senior Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art Vesela Sretenović and Vradenburg Director and CEO Dorothy Kosinski—selected the work by Zoë Charlton for the Phillips’s collection. The Contemporaries Acquisition Fund—active from 1996 to 2008 and recently reinstated—closely involves young professionals in the life and philanthropic efforts of the Phillips.

Contemporaries Steering Committee Member Juliana Biondo explains why the committee was drawn to the piece: “Zoë Charlton’s piece has an immediately striking dynamism that explodes in both directions as it moves upward. The multiplicity of foliage and animals—meticulously yet spontaneously placed—create a sense of ever-growing abundance. Combined with the surrealism of the human torso, the rich visual field triggers a whole host of questions about growth and our relationship to the natural.”

For more information about the Contemporaries, visit PhillipsCollection.org/contemporaries or contact membership@phillipscollection.org.

The Warmth of Other Suns: In the Classroom

Posted on November 18, 2019 by Experiment Station

In September, 9th grade students from Whittle School and Studios in DC visited the Phillips’s exhibition The Warmth of Other Suns: Stories of Global Displacement. Back in the classroom, using the exhibition as a research resource and inspiration, students wrote papers for a project cycle about the biology of the stress response and global human migration.

Take a look at how students Sophia-Nicole Bay and Simon Lee explored artworks and imagery from the exhibition through the lens of current research data for their projects.

Sophia-Nicole Bay’s Research Paper

Sophia-Nicole Bay uses panels from Jacob Lawrence’s Migration Series to identify moments that would have triggered a biological stress response among the migrant African Americans. She uses current research data discussed in class to substantiate how the identified moments in the paintings may have affected biological parts of the stress response. Specifically, she associates the race riots to neural responses when seeing the face of someone of a different race; diseases and death to anxiety-related neural changes; and challenging living conditions to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). She explains: “We can play a part in helping migrants by making sure they always feel included in the environment since they are already dealing with the social barriers of accepting different customs.”

Simon Lee’s Research Paper

Simon Lee uses a photograph of Syrian refugees disembarking a boat to reach safety to identify moments in the journey of a refugee that would trigger a biological stress response. He uses current research data to identify moments in a refugee’s journey that would affect the stress response. His specific associations include: the face of a little girl being held by a man to the increased susceptibility of children to trauma and subsequent adverse behavioral outcomes in adulthood; the chronic nature of stress associated with the poor living conditions experienced by refugees and PTSD. Using data from studies, Simon also explores the role of transcendental meditation in mitigating the symptoms of stress and mental health disorders associated with refugees. He explains: “By working on this project, I am educating myself on this issue and am raising awareness about some of the solutions that can be implemented to solve it.”