29. white. queer cis female living on unceded Musqueam, Squamish, Tsleil Watuth and sometimes Lekwungen Territories. This blog is an archive of visual and conceptual inspiration, also memes for self-amusement.
For Agitprop!artist L.J. Roberts, history is political. With an interest in queer theory and craft, Roberts has culled the Lesbian Herstory Archives in Brooklyn for source material on several of their projects. Sisters Are Doing It For Themselves (2011) foregrounds the mirror image of a resolute woman armed with a rifle which the artist adopted from a historic postcard.
The work’s determined tone and hand-made touches, including frayed craft ribboning, echo the two banners also on view in the exhibition from the American suffrage movement.
With slogans like “Failure Is Impossible” these large-scale hand-painted banners were proudly marched through the streets in an effort to secure the right to vote for women over a century ago.
Artist Statement: Breathing Walls is a project I originally started photographing in Lebanon, my country of origin. I felt the necessity to document these ephemeral testimonies of life as a record of an important period in time. With the rising of the Arab spring I decided to broaden my project and begin documenting other countries in the region where the walls are a crucial tool of communication and an unbiased reflection of the socio-political status. Egypt being the most recent addition, I intend to continue to photograph this country and others in the region in order to archive the constantly evolving urban landscape.
Ed Ruscha – Your Space #2, 2006 aquatint, sugarlift, and etching in colors, 60 x 50 cm published by Crown Point Press, San Francisco, in an edition of 30
Earlier this month in Brazil, a dam burst at an iron ore mine triggering a massive mudslide and releasing of hazardous and toxic waste. Now high levels of arsenic and mercury have reached the Atlantic ocean. A quarter of a million people are now without clean drinking water.
