Artist Op-Eds

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Artist Op-Ed Walker Art center

Examining the thinking of artists as citizens and change-makers, this series of commissioned opinion pieces features provocative reactions to the headlines by contributors including Ron Athey, James Bridle, Natascha Sadr Haghighian, Ana Tijoux, Dread Scott, and others. Taking inspiration from artistic and political leafletting throughout history, each op-ed is also available as a print-on-demand pamphlet. As with any forum for urgent conversation, the views reflected here are those of the artists and do not necessarily represent those of the Walker Art Center.

abstract image of human

Touching a Third Sound:
Trans-Sensing in a World of Deepfakes

In this world of cheap visual proliferation, we’re forced to make quick binary judgments—i.e. real/fake, good/bad, man/woman—which often leave us feeling disempowered and reduced to slotting. In the 13th installment of the Artist Op-Eds series, composer and visual artist Jules Gimbrone proposes what they term Trans-Sensing as a model for a more nuanced way of experiencing the world, one that transcends the quantitative binary of real/fake and doesn’t rely on the categorical flattening of complexity that comes with merely seeing.

The Centers of Somewhere

“A difference between learning and knowing is little more than asking questions without the entitlement of an answer, and honoring the vulnerability in saying and hearing, ‘I don’t know.’” In his Artist Op-Ed, experimental filmmaker Sky Hopinka ruminates on power, privilege, and identity—including his own—as he responds to the burden of representation and authority placed on groups of traditionally oppressed people.

2043: No Es Un Sueño

Why does the term “native” lose meaning south of the border? And why are some white people calling themselves “nativists”? Postcommodity melds poetry and prose in a powerful reflection on native self-determination, identity, and the year 2043—when whites are expected to become a minority in the US.

Forward Ever, Backward Never

Gary Simmons created Everforward—white boxing gloves embroidered with “Everforward” and “Neverback”—in response to turmoil: the killing of Yusef Hawkins, recession, AIDS. On Inauguration Day 2017, he reconsiders the work two decades later—its echoes and its call for artists and others to fight back.

The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Campaign

Flood a gallery, embalm an animal, smash an object—critics hail such gestures as having the power to “shape worlds.” But when artists demand fair conditions for workers building western museums in Abu Dhabi—as the Gulf Labor Coalition has done—this work becomes illegible to the same museum.

Reading Things

North Carolina’s “bathroom bill,” the Pulse nightclub shootings, police killings of African Americans, a soaring murder rate among trans women of color: Gordon Hall responds to recent traumatic events with a meditation on the potential for self-transformation through our relationships with objects.

A Circle of Blood

Paris. Beirut. Charleston. What is art’s role in the face of heinous violence? Jack Whitten links his experiences growing up as “a product of American apartheid” to the deaths of so many, including Eric Garner, Aylan Kurdi, and Darren Goforth.

A Crossing

A raft filled with passive world leaders. An online mashup combining a photo-op of western politicos at the Charlie Hebdo march with the deaths of hundreds of migrants in the Mediterranean, it’s an apt metaphor for an EU refugee policy that’s hopelessly adrift.

La Cultura de la Basura

“Where are the videos showing a woman in her role as sister—or protector, or economic head of family, or devoted daughter, or grandmother dignified in her old age?” Chilean hip-hop MC and activist Ana Tijoux looks at la violencia del cuerpo en la musica.

Polemic of Blood

Ever since a suicide attempt at 15, death has been a constant companion for Ron Athey–even more so since 1985, the year he tested positive for HIV. Until it wasn’t. Healthy on the 30th anniversary of his diagnosis, the artist reflects on the “post-AIDS” body.

The Siege on Citizenship

“The cloud renders geography irrelevant, until you realize that everything that matters, everything that means you don’t die, is based not only on which passport you possess, but on a complex web of definitions of what constitutes that passport.”

Artist Op-Eds in Print

In the spirit of pamphleting throughout political and art history, from Thomas Paine’s Common Sense to the Great Bear Pamphlet Series,
each essay is available as a slim, standalone booklet. Purchase a copy online or in person at the Walker Shops.