"To see the work as ethnographic deflects away from the seriousness and makes it mostly entertaining."
This first quote, spoken by Carrie Mae Weems, is a pretty solid encapsulation of her interview with bell hooks in my opinion. Here, Ms. Weems talks about how seeing her work (or any work by black artists, for that matter) as simply ethnographic can take away from any other potential themes and meaning the art may have. Throughout the interview, hooks and Weems discuss how people and critics tend to view art by black artists with a simplistic colonized view, essentially boiling the work down to just the blackness of the piece and not what's really going on.
"You know, I feel I can't sit back anymore and just allow people to do whatever the fuck they want to do around the work, particularly when it becomes truly disinformation."
Another quote from Carrie Mae Weems, this is a point from her in the discussion about how people misinterpreting her work to the point where it's disinformation is really frustrating for her. For me, this is a really interesting view on the 'death of the author' viewpoint, which is something I occasionally try to do when it comes to viewing art. Sure, you can disregard whatever the artist intends with their work, but for some pieces, that's just really impossible. From some of the examples of Ms. Weems's work that were given in the interview, the meanings and themes of her work are just waiting to be dissected, but most people seem to critically approach the work in such a drastically different way than what's needed.
No comments:
Post a Comment