Art Speak

Hello! Recently, I visited YBCA(Yerba Buena Center of the Arts) to check out their exhibit Conceiving Place. Did you know, the first Tuesday of each month for YBCA is free admission! Wow!

Before my visit, I did some research on the topic of the exhibition, Civic Engagement. To me, Civic Engagement is actions (one’s or a group’s) to recognize issues and make changes. I’m not sure if I have really experienced a type before but I’ve seen it take place like projects to help a community.

During my visit, I took 5 photos within 5 categories. 

1.      Something that makes you smile

This made me smile because it’s full of color and it looks almost like a collage and I love collages! I liked how the pictures are angled and some overlaps others.

2.      Something that frustrates you

I was confused when I saw this because I couldn’t piece together what it was. I looked for a label but I couldn’t find one for it. I felt frustrated that I couldn’t understand it.

3.      Something that relates to your work at the Asian Art Museum.

This wall is a space filled with many people’s ideas. It’s a hands-on space with comfortable seating for idea brainstorming. I love how it’s a collection of thoughts and its community building. At the museum, we also have a place for visitors to get creative with their ideas with our art activities. Recently, we have a “box project” that’s inspired by the 28 Chinese exhibit and we pulled out some themes of recycling and repurposing materials. Many visitors have participated in our activities and created unique boxes. Although many did take their cool art with them, some left them with us. We took them and displayed it in a space for other visitors to check out!

4.      Something that makes you question your understanding of Civic Engagement

This made me question my understanding of Civic Engagement. This is part of a research project called “Journey to Refuge” which explores neighborhoods that’s affected by prisons and incarcerations. I have not though about Civic Engagement in this point of view. I do feel that my understanding of Civic Engagement is limited but after seeing this, I realized Civic Engagement can take many forms.

 5.      Something you want to learn more about

This is also part of “Journey to Refuge”. I was really intrigued by this collection by the way it appears to visitors. Headphones are provided to listen to the videos. There are books and binders of information. I want to learn more about this project and what was discovered from it.

I enjoyed my visit to YBCA. The exhibit was fairly easy to find as it was near the entrance of the museum. The bright yellow color caught my attention and is definitely an eye catching color. Overall, Conceiving Place was really unique exhibit and you should definitely go check it out!(First Tuesdays of the month is Free Admission!)

-Ivy

This week, I finally got to check out Conceiving Place at YBCA amongst other cool, thought provoking exhibits. Prior to visiting it, I had never heard of the term, "Civic Engagement" but I made the assumption that it was related to communities building something together...

Before the visit:

The easiest way to explain what Civic Engagement is to relate to your own community. Have you ever heard or seen people in your neighborhood/city/or in the Bay Area come together and and work towards a common goal to better their standard of living or to tackled a politically bent issue by protesting, making a petition, etc? That's exactly what it is and is often used to explain activism done by young people.

Civic Engagement to me, is a community learning how to work together and refusing to coexist with oppression by using their voices! It's all about getting recognition for their feats and to help change perceptions.

Have I had prior experience with the idea? Well, if it does count, I did work at a polling place junior year and vowed that I never would again. The volunteers who came in to promote the politicians they supported and numerous obvious questions about how to vote exhausted me and I didn't feel like I was contributing to a greater good.

So without further ado, some important points I searched hard for:

Something that made me smile:

In a sense, I felt both overjoyed and and relieved that many others are aware of what gentrification is doing to urban areas in the US and share the common feeling of hopelessness when it comes to how much you can do for your own community alone.

Something that made me question my understanding of Civic Engagement:

Prison culture?? In what way could a community prevent that? From stats to documentaries I've read, incarceration is often times more the fault of the government than the men of color imprisoned. By marginalizing a community, tension and violence erupts and hurts the people leading to a continuous cycle of it.

Something that frustrated me:

I've heard the term generational trauma before and I'd like to get to the bottom of what it is and how exactly, it affects individuals. One example that is clear cut to me is the prevalence of alcoholism in many Native American communities and has shaped the DNA of the members, being passed down from parent to child. I also wonder how such a cycle can be ended.

Something relates to my work at the Museum:

Creating a safe space! Like the Asian, YBCA did a great job of cultivating a relaxing, comfortable environment for visitors to express ideas, worries, and how to make a change. Both institutions also encourage intergenerational interaction through art and discussion and make a point of displaying political art without having a clear bias of what they think is right or wrong, but leave everything up to the visitor's interpretation.

Something I want to learn more about:

I know virtually nothing about the Native American students who occupied Alcatraz in the late 60's-early 70's other than the fact that it was ended the event by cutting off the power supply. I'm interested in how it has benefited Native American communities today and how non-Indigenous Americans reacted, in support of the issue or not.

After my visit:

Although I had never heard of the term, the content of the exhibit led me realizing I knew exactly what Civic Engagement is. I think I developed a deeper understanding of how communities are marginalized and sense of respect for the many historical instances where people have defied that. I'll admit that I was disappointed to see how small the exhibit was, almost as if it held no relevance. Even the employee at the ticket desk had never heard of it, ironically. That just goes to show how unimportant such matters in are in our society and why we have to educate ourselves and not rely what we're told. Overall, it was an interesting experience and I enjoyed YBCA as a whole.

Samya

Today, I visited the Yorba Buena Center of the Arts to take a look at the special exhibition called "Conceiving Place". This special exhibition focuses on

 a term called "civic engagement". Before looking up the definition of that term, I thought civic engagement meant to engage in a community to try to make changes for the greater good, and I thought it was only for inequality or political issues.

According to Wikipedia, Civic engagement or civic participation is the encouragement of the general public to become involved in the political process and the issues that affect them. It is the community coming together to be a collective source of change, political and non-political. 

There are a few photos I took at the exhibit. This one is a quote and it made me smile because that's basically my life motto. 

This photo made me think about my understanding of civic engagement. I thought it was all about big political issues, but if you think about it, isn't the "idea wall" civic engagement? 

In this photo, I couldn't understand why the artist put her mouth an sucked on the metal bars in her performance.

This next photo reminds me of us interns making projects for visitors to do and executing them to the public.

In this last photo, I was wondering if the drawing was "Tasty" from the show "Orange is the New Black" because of the wall of all prison related projects and items.

After seeing the exhibition, my views on civic engagement have changed a little bit. I understand it more. Before my visit, I thought it had to do with protesting and trying to pass bills, all that technical stuff. But it also consists of performance art and political art. During my visit, as I looked at everything in the exhibit, my views started to change and I gradually understood it better. 

It was a really quiet, small space, but it made the exhibition more intimate and gave it a peaceful atomosphere. It allowed more empathy and gave the feeling that everything you looked at would slowly sink in, allowing you to better understand. It was really relaxing and I learned something new. If you ever go visit, the book on torture tools/methods was interesting. And disturbing...

- Queena

Hellooooo! I'm new here haha. So just recently I went to the Yerba Buena Center of the Arts for their exhibition , Conceiving Place. Before my visit, I did research on what civic engagement was. 

According to google, "Civic engagement refers to the ways in which citizens participate in the life of a community in order to improve conditions for others or to help shape the community's future. This term has been used to date primarily in the context of younger people." (http://jtd.sagepub.com/content/3/3/236.abstract). Civic engagement to me means being involved in a community to make a difference in any way possible. I've done a lot of civic engagement before because I;m trying to make a career out of it. I'm really passionate about social justice work. I was advocating in the LGBTQ community last year for equal rights, teaching health issues at my school, and even more!

During my visit, I was really interested in the exhibition. The way it was set up was as if it was a walk-in office which was really cool. Here are some pics that I took:

Something that makes you smile- This made me smile because it showed how even though we are so tiny on this earth, we are still just as important.

Something that makes you question your understanding of Civic Engagement- The whole exhibit questioned my understanding of civic engagement because I always saw civic engagement as going out physically to help others.

Something that frustrates you- This frustrated me because although we just legalized same-sex marriage, we still have so many issues to address to regain justice for everyone.

Something that relates to your work at the Asian Art Museum- This installation was showing the process of being a citizen or just someone belonging into a community. It really reminded me of a installation we have at our museum called "Buy Everything On You." Theirs had opinions of other peoples about the work which reminded me of how we presented "Buy Everything On You" to others from our perspective and give our opinions which is what we do at the museum: interpreting art.

Something that you want to learn more about- I was really interested in the process of becoming a citizen or being accepted and how different the stories were. At the YBCA it showed different perspectives of acceptance which got me curious about it.

There were many resemblances to the work of the artist we met at Recology to the art work of the 28 Chinese. One of the big resemblance that I've noticed was a heavy cultural influence within their work. For example, Ma Li described that the  the curtains she reused resembled Chinese fans. Another resemblance, is the fact that these artist are all reusing unwanted materials that's been thrown out, such as plastic bottles and dirty water. 

Recology was a one of a kind trip. Never, would I have expected to see an artist-in-residence at the dump. Ma Li's work was truly expressive of her generation and upbringing and reminded so much of a certain upcoming exhibit..Overall, I'd love to see how her project works out and possibly see some of her work in a gallery or museum setting one day.

28 Chinese is going to be the highlight of my year. Over the past months, I've being paying close attention to contemporary Chinese art and literature, admiring the juxtaposition or "fight" between Mao's communism and culture. I highly recommend both Xiaolu Guo's films and novels for a deeper understanding of what the artists of this exhibit are trying to convey through their work. 

A few weeks back, our team visted two artists who's currently residing in SF Recology. During their stay, they are able to create unqiue, creative and personal, artwork. Mali and Michael, the two artists we met were incredibly inviting and seeing their temporary studios were really exicting. I loved how they used everything they found from "the dump" and basically created something out of nothing! That's awesome! 

The exhibit, 28 Chinese will open in the summer this year, Something I found similar with Recology and 28 Chinese was the concept of deconstruction and reconstruction. The artists sometimes took apart objects and used them for another purpose. It's interesting how things can function in multiple ways and even in some ways that are so unusual but fascinating.

-Ivy 

I had such a wonderful time on Sunday. Thank you all for making it extra special! I had also never been to Alcatraz before so it was an interesting experience both seeing the art and the prison for the first time. I thought the exhibit used the space well both to contrast freedom with confinement and to catalyze a dialogue about this juxtaposition. One of my favorite pieces was Refraction, the big bird wing made from Tibetan solar stoves. This piece in particular used the space in a way that was almost frustrating for the viewer, which I think was kind of the point (to feel confined). I also thought the exhibit was successful in making cross cultural, cross nation connections, like comparing the Tibetan Buddhist chant with the Hopi song. Overall, the artwork was beautiful but above all, thought provoking.

-Natalie

The trip visiting Alcatraz to see AiWeiWei's exhibition was amazing! I really enjoyed the time I spent there. One of my favorite installments among all of Ai WeiWei's collection of installments within the exhibition was "blossom" mainly because of the setting that it was located in. I was really intrigued by the hospital setting plus this installment also gave me a piece of information about the artist's childhood which was something nice to know. Another one of my favorite was "Stay tuned" since I have never seen an actual jail cell myself until I had visited Alcatraz. Not only that, there were also these audios that had people from different parts of the world talking or singing for activism which allowed me to compared the views of these many people from around the world. 

-Dayna

My favorite installation would have to be the hand painted kites. I didn't happen to get a picture of it, but the silk screen kite happened to be the one that stood out the most to me because of all of the symbolism it contained. From a distance, you would assume the the pattern of birds was just a unique design the artist created however they really were the national birds of countries that hold the world's most opressive governments. Art that manages to convey subliminal messages and still be aesthetically pleasing is a challenge but seems to be Ai Wei Wei's forte. It was definitely an eye-opening experience. Thank you so much for taking us Hannah!

Samya