handle with care

“They are basically a unit of space owned by a corporation in which to ship objects,” explains Walead Beshty, the London-born author of the FedEx series. The fact that FedEx was able to copyright the dimensions of their boxes – in Beshtys’ own words – this idea of a company being able to “own” an empty volume of air that was only designed to transport goods seemed so surreal to him that it motivated this artwork that turned into a decade-long series.

Since 2007 Beshty constructed glass boxes that would fit inside the FedEx shipping containers, exactly matching their interior dimensions. He send them out to the museums or …. without any padding or additional protection. Then, when the piece arrived to its final destination, it was usually cracked but not totally shattered (Beshty constructed them constructed from shatter-proof glass).

That way, the key element that gives each art-piece its uniqueness happens in transit – the shattering gives each piece its own individual story. 

All of the art pieces were named after the FedEx deliveries: the date of shipment, tracking number and box dimensions, then put on display (e.g.: FedEx® Large Box ©2005 FEDEX 139751 REV 10/05 SSCC, Priority Overnight, Los Angeles-New York trk#795506878000, November 27-28, 2007).

Keep up with Walead’s work online: regenprojects.com/artists/walead-beshty

Sources:
https://weburbanist.com/2017/02/09

Picture from:
https://www.yellowtrace.com.au/walead-beshty-fedex-works/ 

don’t ignore me

The artwork that we’ll be discussing in this article is actually a social campaign for UNICEF China that aims to remind the Chinese public to remember the 1.5 million underprivileged children in the country. This particular ad was published during the lead up to the Beijing Olympics (2008), but unfortunately the situation for children is still not ideal. These homeless boys were painted to present children them as almost invisible, easy to ignore.

The standard of living in China has improved over the few decades. However there are still widening gaps between rich and poor, and urban and rural areas. Many children, especially those from minority ethnic groups, live in remote areas and lack access to good quality health services and education.

For example an estimated 27.3 million children between the ages of 6 to 17 years old drop out of school. Furthermore, according to the Global Times, a new report reveals that one-third of China’s rural students are “left-behind children” (rural children under the age of 16 whose parents are migrant workers, or who have one migrant-worker parent with the other incapable of guardianship).

According to Shanghaiist (2017) the reported number of children left in this condition varies drastically, with estimates falling anywhere between 9 to 60 million. Obviously, it is impossible to know exactly how many children have been left to live by themselves out in the Chinese countryside, but it is obvious that this is a serious issue.

In just five days, UNICEF was able to raise funds totalling approximately USD 30,000 for the welfare of underprivileged children.

Artists:
Kevin Lee, Haohui Zhou, Bin Liu
Advertiser:
Unicef China
Agency:
Ogilvy & Mather, Shanghai, China

Sources:
http://theinspirationroom.com/daily/2008/dont-ignore-me-4/
http://shanghaiist.com/2017/07/26/left-behind-children-survey.php

Picture from:
http://osocio.org

mirrored tombstones

“From a distance, the mirrors shine brightly but the closer you get the less attractive they become because they reflect reality,” says Parisian artist, Kader Attia, speaking on his series “Holy Land”. The environment altering installations of mirrored tombstones have been displayed in two locations, one on the Canary Islands and the other in the countryside of Tucson. Attia’s Interest lies in the conflict of identity, specifically cultural backgrounds and ethnicity.

Upon visiting Holy Land, people are firstly confronted with stunning and lively reflections, but upon further consideration, they also find a strong reminder of their own mortality.

The French-Algerian artist has always been interested in the conflicts of identity, particularly in regard to cultural backgrounds and ethnicity. For Holy Land, he chose to place the material items within nature in order to form an uncomfortable tension and to remind us of our own individuality, as well as our “human vanity and the desire to dominate nature.”

Keep up with Kader’s work online: http://kaderattia.de

Sources:
https://www.juxtapoz.com/news/street-art/kader-attias-mirrored-tombstones/
http://mymodernmet.com/kader-attia-holy-land/

Picture from:
http://kaderattia.de

smoking kills

You may be a little confused by my choice of the title of this first article and wonder why am I trying to connect the current president of USA, cigarettes art and politics. Well, let me start this off with a quote that I think very well expresses what I’m trying to say.

“The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude.”
(George Orwell)

If you think that trying to connect art and politics is stupid and pointless, well hold on. Nowadays, in the world of internet, media and technology the art is everywhere around us. It can find you while you’re scrolling through your feed on Facebook or wait for you on the corner of the street you pass every day, you can see it in the news you read or hear it playing on the radio. I could go on and tell you that art is hidden in every single one of us and that people themselves are art, but this article is not exactly about that.

The point I’m trying to get to, is that the art is one of the most influential means of communication today, even if we don’t always realise that.

And even though you may not agree with that, you can’t deny that art has a great power. Every piece of artwork carries some kind of statement, the form of self-expression, that you sometimes may not see at the first glance, but it’s almost always there. Art is created by people, by members of this society and so it reacts to political and economic changes in the world and to all its struggles.

At the end of the day art reflects life, sometimes it imitates it, but mostly it allows us to express ourselves. Sometimes the messages behind it are hidden, and in cases like this one an artist uses his work to share his statement and beliefs very clearly.

This first article is dedicated to the British artist Antony Micallef, more specific to one of his most famous artworks – a series of miniature oil portraits of Donald Trump on the front of Marlboro cigarette packets, “finally putting the presidential candidate’s image to good use”.

Bearing the now familiar “Smoking kills” tagline, Micallef, is trying to express the threat that Trump means for the society. As he explains, “I thought a warning sign of the imminent danger of a narcissistic sociopath fitted aptly into the concept.”

He says, “I think Trump being elected is born through a lack of desperation and lack of education. When we swap education for entertainment and take away cohesiveness by stripping jobs, extremism grows. It grows in all forms like a fungus or a cancer and spreads to all the weak parts of society who desperately want to belong to something.”

And his work was met with a great support. You can see people printing these pictures on their t-shirts, carrying them as signs to protests or simply posting them all over social media and that’s definitely not something neglectable. Now whatever your political beliefs and opinions are, you cannot deny that art is a very powerful means of communication with huge audience and following.

Micallef’s work in this case is a great reminder that artists will always have something to say and they will continue to challenge, provoke and inspire, no matter what.

Keep up with Micallef’s work online antonymicallef.com + @antonymicaellef

Sources:
http://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/article/donald-trump-antony-micallef
http://antonymicallef.com

Picture from:
https://www.instagram.com/p/BPiE2DMlWSa/?hl=en&taken-by=antonymicallef