ArtsConnectEd iPad Challenge #4: It's About Choice
This ArtsConnectEd set was created as a way for high school students to dive deeper into understanding an artist's motivation to create. Often, an artwork may be created as a form of response to an impactful event.
In this set students will be asked to reflect on their own personal and cultural experiences as a "jumping off" point to find meaning in a work of art. The study of cultural experiences shaping art making can be a study in and of itself, or this set may be used along with another unit of study.
Teachers are strongly encouraged to use Visual Thinking Strategies as a means of fostering critical thinking and discussion when looking at each artwork.
Theme in life: we all seek meaning in our lives
Theme in life and art: art can express shared human experiences or have individual meaning to the artist
Essential inquiry question: How do personal and cultural experiences influence what an artist creates?
War.
Greed.
Prejudice.
Politics.
Indifference.
Our everyday world is faced with challenges and adversity. We do not choose the events of each day that prevail, but we do select our response.
Will we get angry? Give up? Speak out? It's about choice.
Title: Untitled [Birmingham Race Riot] from the portfolio Ten Works by Ten Painters
Artist: Andy Warhol
Date: 1964
Medium: Prints, Edition Prints/Proofs
Size: unframed 20 x 24 inches
Institution: Walker Art Center
Accession #: 1986.109.5
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We do not exist alone; we have shared human experiences and feelings that transcend time, place, and culture. Sometimes artists use themes that are universally understood. Look at the artwork on this slide and reflect on how this piece speaks to the broader human experience.
Discussion:
What is going on in this picture? What do you see that makes you say that? What more can you find?
What words would you use to describe this work of art?
What type of feeling does this artwork convey?
Do you believe this artwork can easily be understood by everyone? Why or why not?
Title: Rwanda
Artist: Gilles Peress
Date: 1994
Medium: Photographs, Photograph
Size: 8 7/8 x 12 13/16 in. (22.54 x 32.54 cm) (image)10 15/16 x 13 7/8 in. (27.78 x 35.24 cm) (sheet)
Institution: Minneapolis Institute of Arts
Accession #: 95.46.27
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Each one of us approaches an artwork with a unique background and cultural values. Look at the image on the left and answer the following questions based on your own perspective and through the broader lens of the human experience:
Discussion:
What is going on in this picture? What do you see that makes you say that? What more can you find?
What words would you use to describe this work of art?
Do you believe this artwork can easily be understood by everyone? Why or why not?
What do you believe the artist's purpose was in creating this artwork? Why?
Title: Rebellious Silence
Artist: Shirin Neshat
Date: 1994
Medium: gelatin silver print with ink
(courtesy of Flickr)
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Art is not created in a vacuum. An artist's work may be created based on a personal experience or based on a global crisis.
Watch the Art 21: Protest video.
Discussion:
What events served as a catalyst for each artist's work?
If you were the artist, how do you think you would have responded to the same circumstances? Why?
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Shirin Neshat was born and raised in Iran, but was sent to the United States at the age of 17 to study art. When she was 22 years old, in 1979, the Islamic Revolution overtook Iran. She did not return for 11 years. During that time Iran went through major cultural and social changes, and by the time Neshat went there in 1990 she barely recognized her country. This experience affected her deeply, as she has said, "I can never call any place home. I will forever be in a state of in-between." Shirin Neshat stands between cultures metaphorically, psychologically, and socially, and she explores this feeling in her films and photographs.
Artist: Walker Art Center
Date: 2003
Medium: Commentary, online content
Institution: Walker Art Center
Reflection:
Has there been a time in your life where you have felt isolated and alone?
How does it make you feel when something familiar changes?
Imagine your country of origin underwent a revolution and you were unable to return for over a decade. How would you respond to the changes?
(photo courtesy of Flickr)
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"I had been working on the subject of the female body in relation to politics in Islam and the way in which a woman's body has been a type of battleground for various kinds of rhetoric and political ideology. Recently, through some reading, I became very interested in how space and special boundaries are also politicized and are designed to lift personal and individual desire from the public domain and contain it within private spaces. Ultimately, men dominate public spaces and women exist for the most part in private spaces . . . "
--Shirin Neshat, 1997
Many of Neshat's works relate to women's rights in conflict with contemporary Islamic practice, which dictates strict rules for women's behavior and mode of dress. But the artist cautions that feminist ideas from the United States may not apply to feminists in Iran. Equality between women and men is a goal often associated with U.S. feminism. Neshat, however, believes that Iranian feminists don't desire equality with men. They accept and respect differences between men and women, and seek rights that serve women as equal partners with men, but with different roles in society.
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With the tremendous amount of turmoil in her life and in her country, artist Shirin Neshat had a choice to make; how should she respond?
Read the excerpt below from an interview with the artist about the video installation, Soliloquy:
"Soliloquy was not a biographical piece. It is based on my personal experience--this experience of course not being unique, as the globalization of the world and the rapid migration has uprooted many of us. . . . My family of course never completely understood the feeling of "dislocation" that I have experienced, since they were not with me. But after so many years of distance they have accepted that I will never completely come back. These are the types of subtle issues that I was hoping to bring up in Soliloquy: issues that are entirely based on emotions as opposed to facts."
(Excerpt from an interview with Shirin Neshat on the online forum of the Carnegie International: 1999-2000.)
Artist: Gerald Matt
Date: 2000
Medium: Dialogue/Interview, interview
Institution: Walker Art Center
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In Iran, wearing a chador allows women to move outside the confinement of home into public and professional areas. As one Iranian schoolgirl explains: "We want to stop men from treating us like sex objects. . . . We want them to ignore our appearance and be attentive to our personalities and minds. We want them to take us seriously and treat us as equals, not just chase us around for our bodies and physical looks."
Excerpt from Women in World History Curriculum 2002
Shirin Neshat has firsthand knowledge of the chador and its complex history, having grown up in an Iran that forbade the chador and now representing her homeland in her work. But the complicated symbols suggested by the chador are a small part of what Neshat is after. For her, it points to larger issues of women's roles and cultural identity in a global world.
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On the two following slides, you will view Shirin Neshat's Soliloquy. This is the most autobiographical of Shirin Neshat's works, and examines self-identity.
This work is meant to be shown on two screens that face each other, thus placing the viewer in between. Play the videos simultaneously to provide the best opportunity to compare and contrast both films.
One screen depicts a veiled Neshat roaming through an anonymous modern cityscape (filmed in Albany, New York). On the other, she is similarly dressed but traverses a traditional Eastern cityscape (Mardin, Turkey).
Looking deeper:
(watch Shirin Neshat's Soliloquy)
Which cultural references, if any, are familiar to you?
What is compared and contrasted in the films? How do those comparisons help to convey the artist's message?
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Whether it is a global crisis or an incident in our neighborhood, we all see and experience impactful events. Sometimes those circumstances result in a call to action.
It's about choice:
How will you respond?
How can you speak out?
How can you make a difference?
Artist: Thomas F. Arndt
Date: 1984
Medium: Photographs, Photograph
Size: 12 15/16 x 8 5/8 in. (32.86 x 21.91 cm) (image)13 15/16 x 10 15/16 in. (35.4 x 27.78 cm) (sheet)
Institution: Minneapolis Institute of Arts
Accession #: 94.96.3
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