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This assignment is based on the Home and Displacement unit from the Art:21 series from PBS.
In an age of international travel and intercontinental trade, leaving home has become more common and
even expected in many communities. This assignment explores feelings of community, commonality, and belonging to a home;
as well as dislocation, distance, and isolation from the idea of home.
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Focus Area 1
UNDERSTANDING HOME
How do we define the word home? Is it a building? A feeling? The people close to you? The decoration? Home can
be both a physical and a psychological place filled with the complexities of family, identity, culture, and religion. Although
not always the same vision, idea, or ideal, we all carry ideas of home with us that are informed by our sense of self and
sense of community. This unit uses the ideas and imagery of contemporary artists to begin a conversation about the meaning
of home and community with each other, your friends, and your families.
a) Do-Ho Suh left his childhood home in Korea when he came to the United States to study art. He has replicated his childhood
home in silk fabric down to the detail of the roof tiles and ornamentation on the walls. His portable home allows him to carry
his house with him as he continues his global travels.
b) Kerry James Marshall's paintings often incorporate images
of suburban landscapes, urban housing developments, colonial homes and domestic interiors that explore perceptions about race
and class in American society.
c) Andrea Zittel has designed and organized her home into modular units and categories.
Organizing her bathroom into the categories of Tools and Implements, Corrections and Subtractions and Additions Zittel has
structured her living environment as a practical and efficient balance between the freedom of independent living and the security
of organizational systems.
d) Pepón Osorio's work, Tina's House, transforms the story of a fire that destroyed a family's
home, into a sculptural narrative. Traveling to different homes as a visiting work of art, his series of works titled Home
Visits assumes a new identity and suggests new meanings with each new context in which it is viewed as a house, within a house.
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Focus Area 2
MIGRATING VIEWPOINTS
In an age of global travel and migration, many people identify themselves with multiple cultures or cities those
where they have been born as distinct from those that they travel to later in life or those that represent the cultural identities
of their family. We will investigate the effects of migration versus voluntary movement and how the process of relocation
and dislocation can affect the emotional being of a person.
Many artists have talked about shifts in perspective experienced
as a result of being born or growing up in one place and moving or traveling to another place later in their lives. How do
these artists represent the merging of different cultural influences in their work? How does their artwork reflect new hybrid
cultures shaped by migration, transnational identification, and global travel?
a) Do-Ho Suh's memories of his childhood home and school days in Korea surface in sculptures that address the transnational
individuals dilemma of home and displacement.
b) Gabriel Orozco travels between Paris, Mexico City and New York City,
constantly incorporating new techniques, philosophies, and materials into his nomadic practice.
c) Shahzia Sikander
explores both Hindu and Muslim imagery in her miniature paintings, viewing the juxtaposition and mixing of their diverse iconography
as parallel to the entanglement of histories of India and Pakistan.
d) Pepón Osorio's installations and sculptures
often reflect his Latino culture as well as collaborative experiences he creates with specific members of a community as a
community activist and former social worker.
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ASSIGNMENT DETAILS
Choose:
a) Focus Area 1
Select two (2) of the artists in this section and compare and contrast the ways in which they represent the notion
of "home" in their artwork.
OR
b) Focus Area 2
Select two (2) of the artists in this section and compare and contrast the effects of dislocation in their work.
How do these artists merge different cultural and geographic influences in their work?
Links to the artists:
Do-Ho Suh
Kerry James Marshall
Andrea Zittel
Pepon Osorio
Gabriel Orozco
Shazia Sikander
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