(via An Interview With Hiromi Tango | Brisbane | The Thousands)

Japanese-born, now Sydney- (but ex-Brisbane) based artist Hiromi Tango is building something I like to refer to as ‘the womb room’ – but is really an installation representing the female reproduction organs of flowers – pistils. ..

SW: Can you tell us about collaboration in your work?
HT: Collaboration is a really difficult word – I’m often asked if my process in collaborative, but it’s actually more site and situation responsive, or conversational. I just respond to those elements. For example, a Japanese tourist just came to say hello as an audience member, and now he’s heavily involved in the project – he’s actually the Assistant Director of the project. He’s making a catalogue and taking lots of photographs and taking a big direction with the work. He absolutely influences the way the project looks, but it’s really about conversation and dialogue. If someone is willing to give happily, then I respond and we respond to one another.

SW: A pistil is also the reproductive organ of a female flower, how is the work you’re making relating to nature? The installation seems very chaotic, but very organic as well.
HT: I guess the inspiration comes from the human organs, or biology that I was interested in. I was always interested in identity. Pistil responded to a personal experience where I nearly lost a close friend in Japan – she lost her home, her neighbours, her only possessions and many lives in a split second. I had no choice to make work about nature and the human condition. It’s not really a deliberate process, but I continue accumulating, generating and editing. Someone told me my work was about loss and accumulation, so I guess I’m confronting those issues in Pistil. The work is lots of things that have been wrapped, so it’s about wrapping emotions. The pistil is the brain part of the flower for my artistic direction and also about the rich emotions we carry that are incomplete or imperfect. I think emotions are organic, like nature. Reality is really tough and regardless of difficult issues, there’s always a way to recover, and this is the object of Pistil.

(via Hiromi Tango being interviewed - ABC Radio National ))

Hiromi Tango ‘X chromosome 2012’ Instillation.

From the ‘Contemporary Australia: Women’ QAGOMA exhibition. interview audio here

ahitinsweden:

Felix Gonzalez-Torres “Untitled” (Placebo), 1991

“Untitled” (Placebo) from1991, consisted of 1,000 to 2,000 pounds of silver-foil wrapped candies originally laid out across the floor of the Andrea Rosen Gallery in New York. Placebos are used in clinical trails; they are sugar pills that essentially have no effect on the body. Those who visit the gallery are invited to take a piece of candy; viewers are taking part in a clinical trail of Gonzalez-Torres’ creating. Individuals who participate in actual clinical trials do not know weather they are getting the real pills or the placebo. So too visitors to the gallery are partaking in something not completely known to them, they must put their trust in Gonzalez-Torres. Regardless, these pills, or candy, real or inert, become part of your body in a highly intimate way, for a time, actually becoming part of you. These individuals allow something into their body without fully understanding the implications, a sign of the desperation that griped so many during the AIDS crisis.

(via sexartandpolitics)

insaniyat:

Imagine a dream.
Eyes closed, Mouths open, as if in a dream. Standing facing us with their backs to the darkness, they sing, soundless; they have been standing here, singing for themselves for a long time, imagining us, hearing. Standing, facing days of tedium, facing a world that has adorned them with a false crown.
Standing, waiting.

For ‘Listen’, a project inspired by Newsha Tavakolian’s childhood dream to become a singer, she made six studio portraits of professional women singers, who are not allowed to sing solo, perform in public or produce CD’s in Iran because of Islamic tenets.

Inspired by her feelings about her society, she made six extra images, which are also imaginary album covers with titles for the singers. As a statement, the CD cases are left empty.

The works are accompanied by a video installation with silent clips of the women singers performing. 

Check out the rest of the collection here via azaadi

(Source: , via globalvoices)

Yayoi Kusama -Infinity Mirror Room 1965

bybabaoutlook:

Clark Sorensen Pink Orchid Urinal

utnereader:

(via Designboom)

“The Mending Project’ by Chinese-born artist Beili Liu is a performance art and installation project that consists of hundreds of Chinese scissors suspended from the ceiling in a shimmery cloud. Put on at the Women and Their Work gallery in Austin, Texas, USA earlier this year, the piece involved the artist sitting in front of a small black table, hand-mending patches of fabric together which visitors are encouraged to cut themselves near the entrance. As the performance continues,
the piece grows as one continuous cloth and lays spread on the floor. 

johnnypurple:

These amazing paper installations are by Japanese washi artist Kyoko Ibe. Her work is currently on show at the LACMA until November 28. [source: uponafold]

(via nixwilliams)

Insanity magnet (ongoing) | Hiromi Hotel

Moving away from themes of unconditional love and providing shelter, Insanity Magnet draws on the detritus and ‘pus’ of humanity’s subconsciousness. Occurring sometimes as a performance, sometimes a sculptural object or installation, Insanity Magnet is a work that evolves as the artist continues her process of accumulating and editing, presence and absence. Tango explores the nature of mental illness, hope and hopelessness, function and dysfunction. She states that “my interest had been in listening to stories, spending time with people and absorbing or interpreting this world as honestly and sincerely as possible, but the more I try, I feel a strong emptiness and anger over our existence.”  Insanity Magnet is a manifestation of the darkness that lurks in the souls, minds and bodies of humanity. Hiromi intends to collect ‘material’ (metaphorical or physical) from public interactions and artistic collaborations, and to create the work in isolation. Insanity Magnet will appear as part of the Hiromi Hotel tour around Australia throughout 2010 – 2012 where guest artists will also be invited to create their own creature in isolation.

photo credit :1-3 Yuki Nakano, 4,5 Craig Walsh, 6 Hiromi Tango

I love all of Hiromi Tango’s interactive pop culture detritus sculptures. Yes, you can address alienation with awesome play.

New Work: Ehren Reed. - my love for you is a stampede of horses.

Thanks to the less than stellar weather here in the bay, Ehren Reed has utilized Fogaust (to rest of the world it’s referred to as August) and been hard at work. Here she shares with us her latest collection for her solo show Sink & Swell.

artlistpro:gouachegalatea:sympathyfortheartgallery:i-peach-feng-shui:

Chemical Balance, designed by Jean Shin, is a light installation project using thousands of prescription bottles (collected from nursing homes, pharmacies, and individuals’ medicine-cabinets) and fluorescent lights.

This speaks to our culture’s over-consumption of prescription drugs and our bodies’ dependency on these medications. It also acts like a group portrait, mapping our society’s chemical intake.

Do you call yourself a patient or a junkie the only thing that separates is who takes your money… 

I love Atmosphere.

flol:

Alycia Martin’s ‘Bibliographic’ installations