Tag Archives: contemporary art

The Great Salt Lake Tjitjiti in Carlene West’s Paintings

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Installation view of Carlene West’s work in Marking the Infinite.

Whereas Carlene West’s early work conforms closely to traditional iconography, after returning to Tjitjiti in 2009— the first time since her childhood—her style underwent a rapid transformation. Formal symbolic and narrative elements receded, giving way to more expressive painting. Depicted in swaths of white, the great salt lake Tjitjiti also found greater prominence. West’s paintings offer a metaphor for the connection between place and Indigenous identity. Anthropologist John Carty notes, “Carlene’s marks are the traces of meaningful action; of the actions that made the world, and that continue to make the world meaningful; of the artist becoming an ancestor.”

This work is on view in Marking the Infinite: Contemporary Women Artists from Aboriginal Australia through September 9, 2018.

Los Carpinteros: A Final Good-Bye at the Phillips

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Los Carpinteros, the internationally acclaimed Cuban artist collective known for their immersive sculptural installations and large drawings, recently announced the dissolution of the group. After 26 years of collaboration—creating artworks that critique dominant ideologies and power structures with humor and political undertones—the two remaining members, Marco Castillo and Dagoberto Rodríguez, have decided to split and pursue separate artistic paths. I got to know them years ago when we started to discuss an Intersections contemporary art project for the Phillips. I love that their work beautifully blends playfulness of form and concept with a sense of subtle irony and intentional ambiguity, leaving openness for interpretation. I was fortunate to visit Marco in Havana this spring and Dago in Madrid just a couple of weeks ago before the news went public. We decided to move on with our project as planned and showcase it at the Phillips in fall 2019. Thereby, we reversed the museum’s tradition of celebrating “firsts” this time around to proudly be the last art institution to honor and say good-bye to this wonderful collective.​ Stay tuned for more information about the Phillips’s Los Carpinteros Intersections project.

Vesela Sretenović, Senior Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art

Senior Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art visited Marco Castillo of Los Carpinteros in Havana, February 2018

Senior Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art Vesela Sretenović visits Marco Castillo of Los Carpinteros in Havana, February 2018

Senior Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art Vesela Sretenovic visit Dago of Los Carpinteros in Madrid, August 2018

Board Chair Dani Levinas and Senior Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art Vesela Sretenović visit Dagoberto Rodríguez of Los Carpinteros in Madrid, August 2018

How Regina Pilawuk Wilson’s Syaw Painting Preserve Lost Knowledge

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Detail of Regina Pilawuk Wilson’s “Syaw (Fishnet)”

The patterns in this painting mimic the stitch and weave of the syaw, large cylindrical fishnets made from the pinbin (bush vine). With the imposition of mission life, knowledge of how to make the nets vanished. Regina Pilawuk Wilson sought to revive the lost art in 2014 when she traveled to the distant outstation of Yilan to learn from Freda Wyartja and sisters Lily and Bonnie Roy. In turn, Wilson has taught the stitch to younger generations in primary schools. Her paintings are similarly a conscious attempt to revitalize lost traditions, showing that persistence and change coexist in Ngan’gikurrungurr culture.

This work is on view in Marking the Infinite: Contemporary Women Artists from Aboriginal Australia through September 9, 2018.