Author: ethokar

By K.A. Letts One hundred and twenty-six artists and more than 700 pieces of art were displayed across metro Detroit during Pride Month in June 2022 as part of what’s being billed as the largest exhibition of LGBTQ+ art ever. “Mighty Real/Queer Detroit” demonstrates both proof of concept and a declaration of intent—to represent, to party, to persist. Organized to celebrate the ins and outs and ups and downs of Detroit’s LGBTQ+ artists over the last 77 years, from 1945 to 2022, plans are in the works to make this sprawling celebration of gender fluidity a recurring event. The idea for the festival was initially sparked in the mind of visual and performance artist Patrick Burton by a conversation with longtime gay activist/writer Charles Alexander at the Scarab Club in 2020. “I just had this kind of surreal idea,” Burton said. “I wanted to put a show together to celebrate the experience of others—to reveal the [LGBTQ+] community emerging from a desire for visibility. And to show how real and good that desire is.” Burton organized and curated the multi-venue, multi-media exhibition over the course of the next two years, a process complicated and extended by the pandemic. Oh, and by the way, the number of participating galleries expanded from 5 to 17 and picked up a sponsor: the Ford Foundation. A curatorial project of this size and scope needs careful structuring—not an easy task for a stylistically diverse group unified by its identity but not by aesthetic outlook. And Burton not only elected to show work by young contemporary artists, he also included work that honors the memory of the many gay artists who were casualties of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s and early 1990s AND chose to posthumously honor gay artists of historic regional importance. All of this amounts to a pretty tall order. In each venue, some aspect of gay life was showcased, from LGBTQ+ participation in the Detroit community at large to exhibitions more attuned specifically to the gay lifestyle. Rather than show the work of a given artist in a single gallery, examples of each artist’s work were scattered throughout multiple sites according to theme. So, for example, New York photographer Matthew Papa’s artworks were shown at Cass Café, the Center for Creative Studies, Galerie Camille, Hatch Art, and Playground Detroit. Julie Sabit (coincidentally the longest living, working artist in the show at 91) had paintings at Anton Art Center, Collected Detroit, Galerie Camille, and Hatch Art. Leroy Foster (1925–1993), a historically significant Detroit artist, had paintings and photographs at four different galleries. Any effort to form an overview of the work of a particular artist rapidly devolved into a frustrating treasure hunt. Still, the abundance and excellence of the work no doubt ended up being a heart-warming and life-affirming experience for the LGBTQ+ arts community. Art critics’ quibbles aside, the positive energy of Mighty Real/Queer Detroit was pervasive. Future iterations of the event will, as a matter of course, build upon the success of this year’s inaugural effort. As Patrick Burton states in his exhibition essay: Queer art as a studied aspect of American art (and life) has been a comparatively recent phenomenon—and only recently celebrated. Over the past 77 years, the richness of Detroit Queer life, as expressed in art, has developed in unseen and diverse ways. This exhibition is one of the first to capture the range and breadth of that development—and to give it the public space and curated attention it deserves. In 2022, the LGBTQ+ community finds itself at a peculiar societal crossroads. Many Americans—and members of the arts community in particular—have willingly accepted gender non-conformity. But a sizeable minority of the general public seems eager—still—to stuff gay and trans people back in the closet. It is certainly not a time for triumphalism. But it might be appropriate to be optimistic. Photographer Matthew Papa captures the glass-half-full character of the moment well. “Achieving marriage equality in 2015 was a level of progress I never expected to see in my lifetime, but since then we’ve seen a frightening backlash against the transgender community with the aim of erasing diverse voices and lives,” he says. He continues, “It’s a reminder that we need to stay vigilant and continue to fight until everyone in our community can live with freedom and dignity.” Public events like “Mighty Real/Queer Detroit” play an important part in supporting theLGBTQ+ community through raising visibility and acceptance. Art and artists keep up the resistance and create progressive and inclusive environments that will open space for future generations. The artworks pictured in this review are only a fraction of those shown in the exhibit. For a complete list of artists, go to https://mrqd.org/artists/. K.A. Letts is the Detroit editor of the New Art Examiner, a working artist (kalettsart.com) and art blogger (rustbeltarts.com). She has shown her paintings and drawings in galleries and museums in Toledo, Detroit, Chicago, and New York. She writes frequently about art in the Detroit area.

The rise and decline of narrative power in television By Evan Carter Art is a big tent. It encompasses so many things that arouse the senses and stimulate the intellect: music, food, painting, film, and so on. And while many would roll their eyes at the mention of “the art world,” fine art seems to be doing better than ever—at least within its insulated world of academics and wealthy collectors. Is there an art for the people anymore? The answer is surely yes, and it can be found in a variety of places and forms. But what seems to be the most popular artform, by far, is television. On occasion I have found myself looking for something to watch on television. I do not have cable, just streaming. I may turn on Netflix or start scouring my ReelGood app in search of something to match my mood, if not augment it in some way. As I scroll, I find myself reading synopses, watching looped clips, and adding any potentially interesting content to an ever-growing list of things to watch at a later date. Soon, enough time has passed in which I could have enjoyed an episode of a show or started a film. There is so much entertainment available that we now find ourselves laboring over it without even being entertained. It would not be preposterous to say that we are living in a world where we have access to peak television or what some call the “new golden age of television.” This began in the late ’90s, at the cusp of the millennium, and was marked mostly by the episodic television series developed and aired by HBO during this time. Series such as Oz, The Sopranos, and Deadwood were groundbreaking, even controversial, given the maturity of the themes and juxtaposition of graphic sex and violence against complex plotting, intelligent drama, dark humor, and compelling performances by actors either well known, plucked from obscurity, or just beginning their star-making careers. Other networks also got in on the action, despite still being subject to a ratings system that did not apply to HBO. One interesting specimen was 2003’s Battlestar Galactica, an early example of the “reimagined reboot.” This 21st-century adaptation of the campy 1978 classic stretched over 76 episodes and beat out its predecessor, which was cancelled after 24. It also featured a talented cast headed by respected actors like Mary McDonnell and Edward James Olmos. Its narrative dealt with complex themes ranging from artificial intelligence and posthumanism to classism, identity, cancer, trauma, and suicide. Some of the actors were even invited to the United Nations to discuss human rights. Less serious but still interesting was the circumvention of censorship by replacing the “F” word with the word “frack.” Clever as this was, it also allowed the show to depict its characters as relatable, flawed adults existing in a world that, despite its fantastical futurism, is still much like ours. The writers were not only working within the show’s constraints but also adapting to them to tell as full a story as they possibly could. Other critics writing about this new golden age of television debate its point of origin, suggesting it goes as far back as the ’80s or starts with ’90s shows like Friends or Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Those examples pushed boundaries, depicting things like lesbian relationships, counter-normative familial structures, and young women grappling with internal and external struggles. But those shows still clung to familiar serial formats like the sitcom, even if they threaded stories around an overarching plotline. Regardless of the starting point, a distinct moment in television history made clear that things would no longer be the same: the ushering in of the “mockumentary.” If you are reading this and have been living in the woods for the past 30 years, “mockumentary” refers to an entirely or mostly scripted and/or fictional story shot with a handheld camera and thereby gaining a sense of the credibility and realism often associated with documentaries. These shows often feature quick edits and swings of the camera with sudden jumps to “confessional” interviews in which characters actually comment on events depicted in the show. This presented a complete upending of the traditional sitcom, typically shot in front of a live studio audience on an artificial set with limited camera angles and accompanied by a laugh track. This format, with origins in radio, had been a television staple since its deployment there in the 1950s. The mockumentary itself could also be traced back to radio with Orson Welles’s notorious 1938 War of the Worlds broadcast. It continued on in the music world with the Beatles A Hard Day’s Night (1964) and This is Spinal Tap (1984). But it would not be until 2001 that the television sitcom would be transformed for a global audience by The Office. Created by Ricki Gervais and Steven Merchant, the British comedy launched Gervais to comedic stardom and elevated Merchant to a respectable career as a showrunner and actor (his dramatic performance in 2017’s Logan is worth noting) and was adapted for the United States in 2005. Though the UK version of the show was intentionally brief, spanning only 14 episodes, it was a hit abroad. American showrunner Greg Daniels was placed at the creative helm of what still seems to be the most successful show of all time. As of 2020, according to the “Hollywood Reporter,” the nine-season-long American version of The Office has been streamed for a whopping 57.13 billion minutes, putting it in first place for most viewed television show and dominating its runner-up, Grey’s Anatomy, which clocks in at 39.41 billion minutes. There are many reasons this show is so rewatchable. I am one of many people who have lost count of how many times I have viewed the series in full. The wonder of the show is not just in the humor, which ranges from cute to cringe, or the well-defined characters and their variety of quirks, but also in how the narrative is driven by visuals as well as dialogue. The mockumentary format opens the door for so much

by Phillip Barcio There’s food in Wendy Kveck’s portraits of women—but it’s the women who are being consumed. Consumed by the viewer’s gaze; consumed by time; consumed by judgment and expectations; consumed by a culture ravenous for the souls of the vulnerable. The women Kveck paints have the look and feel of people melting, succumbing to physical and metaphysical gravity. Kveck’s gloopy, painterly brushstrokes, radioactive color palette, and frenetic scrawled lines conjure depictions of femininity rarely represented in fine art—women confidently, powerfully coming undone. (Left) Wendy Kveck, Consciousness Raising, 2021. Oil, paint pen on canvas on panel 54 x 40 inches. © Wendy Kveck. Photo by Sampsel Preston.  (Right) Wounder Woman, 2018. Oil, paint pen on canvas on panel 54 x 40inches.© Wendy Kveck. Photo by Sampsel Preston. “I’m thinking about states of vulnerability and exhaustion, feeling out of control by design or through the circumstances of one’s life,” Kveck says. “Against the backdrops of this current moment when feminists are fighting for bodily autonomy and social justice and an art historical canon in which women were depicted predominantly by male painters working in the Western European tradition, I’m interested in artists having agency to revisit specific art historical and contemporary tropes and insert their own lived experiences through a feminist lens.” Kveck’s portraits begin with performance. She doesn’t use her own body; she enlists other women who are interested in having these conversations, in subverting female representations from the media and art history and invites them to collaborate with her in a private, intimate space. The women cover their faces with foodstuff like frosting or meat and then reenact or re-pose images from the internet, art history, or children’s coloring books—images that relate to different female cliches such as the princess, the martyr, the party girl, the pageant queen, or other characters that Kveck and the women cocreate. The food masks start off fresh and beautiful, then quickly become messy as they begin disassembling. “There is a relationship to aging, to evolving or devolving, and the impact of the environment on our bodies and psyches,” Kveck says. “I think about these as messy interiorities spilling out, in over-the-top form.” Kveck photographs the performances, then creates sketches from that documentation through a technique known as blind contour drawing, in which an artist draws a subject using a single, unbroken line without ever looking at the paper, with the goal of learning to look more closely at your subject. Pulling from these drawings, as well as from other found images and the performance photographs, she develops an exquisite corpse of sorts, then paints that amalgam on canvas with impasto oil paints—a visceral, medium-specific call and response with the performer’s liquescent culinary veil. (Left) Wendy Kveck, Hildegarde, 2021. Oil, paint pen on canvas on panel. © Wendy Kveck. Photo by Sampsel Preston.  (Right) Munch, Good Eaters (beer and twinkies), 2021. Oil, paint pen on canvas on panel 46 x 56 inches.© Wendy Kveck. Photo by Sampsel Preston. Kveck’s portraits are defined by their excesses. They undermine something simplistic by using a messy approach. They’re unlike what people are used to looking at, which, by definition, means they expand the visual literacy of viewers. “Images shape perception,” Kveck says. “People are shaped, communities are shaped, culture is shaped by language and the language of images.” Kveck has experienced the negative consequences of image consumption firsthand. “I just stopped looking at fashion magazines in my 20s,” Kveck says. “I definitely consider what it means to put more images out in the world, as painted objects. I don’t really want my portraits to have a fixed meaning or message or even interpretation. They’re not traditional presentations of beauty in my mind. It’s more about asking questions about our relationship to images, and subverting certain kinds of representations of women, or even the idea of representing women.” Kveck was raised in a traditional middle-class Catholic household in the suburbs of Chicago. Both visually, and in terms of what roles were modeled for women, the suburban landscape was, she describes, “very homogenous.” When she went away to study art at the University of Iowa, she was immersed in a community of visual artists, writers, musicians, and performers that fostered a diversity of new ideas. That’s where Kveck first became aware of feminist art. Cuban American performance artist Ana Mendieta is among the University of Iowa’s many influential alumni. For her Rape Scene performance in 1973, Mendieta challenged community indifference towards campus sexual violence by inviting fellow students to her apartment, where they found her half naked, bent over a table, and covered in blood. Kveck also studied the work of Adrian Piper, Hannah Wilke, and Faith Ringgold, along with the writing and curation of Lucy Lippard. Her collaborative portraiture process continues the feminist legacy these luminaries helped establish—of mobilizing the female body as both the object and the subject of the work. “I pull from Feminism, the value of community, of being in dialogue with other women, and the idea of consciousness raising in conversations we have before and during the sessions,” Kveck says. Like her feminist forebearers, Kveck is creating aesthetic phenomena that have the power to transmit cultural signifiers that can undermine codified attitudes and behaviors. She thinks about how the artists of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood represented female bodies—what those representations say about that time in history, and what they continue to assert about gender roles today. Dante Gabriel Rossetti, the founder of that aptly named brotherhood, is still revered within contemporary institutions for his depictions of such tropes as the fallen woman (Persephone); the sinless, perfect mother (Virgin Mary); women as objects of men’s sexual desire (Bocca Baciata); and women as fertile, nurturing, docile creatures (Monna Primavera). What values do we endorse when we celebrate depictions of women borrowed from pagan myths and ancient religious texts that served mostly to maintain systems of social hierarchy and control? Kveck highlights another dehumanizing representation of women from art history that continues to resonate through visual culture today: that of women as

Cinematographer Haskell Wexler (1922–2015) comes in for a close-up in a centennial retrospective at the Gene Siskel Film Center. By Andrew Peart A woman in a yellow dress moves through Grant Park and the streets of downtown Chicago in search of her young son. It’s August 1968. The camera follows this incongruous figure, a recent transplant from West Virginia, as she glides deeper into the unrest gripping the city. As the Democratic National Convention unfolds and party leaders hole up in the nearby Conrad Hilton hotel, the camera captures the outbreak of real riots even as it tracks the storyline of its fictive heroine. Suddenly tear gas plumes up. “Look out, Haskell, it’s real!” yells an unknown voice to the man in charge of the camera. The film is Medium Cool (1969). The story of how the man who made it came to be shooting it this way is the stuff of legend. By 1968, Haskell Wexler was a leading Hollywood cinematographer. He had already won an Oscar for his photography on Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) He had a reputation for working closely and hands-on with his directors—whether they liked it or not. A studio executive at Paramount Pictures gave him an assignment to direct a film of his own: an adaption of the 1967 novel Concrete Wilderness, the story of a country boy in the big city by zoologist and cameraman Jack Couffer. Wexler went back to his native Chicago for the production in 1968 and found a city on the brink of boiling over: Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy had both been assassinated, and national elections loomed. As writer, director, and cinematographer on the project, Wexler kept Concrete Wilderness as a loose framework but set out with a new purpose: in his words, to see what was going on in Chicago, in the style of cinema verité. The film Wexler put together would become famous for getting entangled in the politics of the moment it sought to represent. “The result is a film of tremendous visual impact,” said critic Vincent Canby in 1969, “a kind of cinematic Guernica, a picture of America in the process of exploding into fragmented bits of hostility, suspicion, fear and violence.” For all its national implications, Medium Cool is still a distinctly Chicago film, and Wexler himself deserves to be as much of a household name in his hometown as contemporaneous local stars like Studs Terkel, the Staples Singers, and Mike Royko. With a centennial film series honoring the late cinematographer this May, the city’s Gene Siskel Film Center did its part to elevate Wexler’s status in the cultural record. Like those other stars, Wexler honed supreme artistic craft and a unique style to speak truth to power. The month-long series screened eight films spanning a 20-year period in Wexler’s career (1967–1987), putting the focus on his achievements as a leading director of photography on feature films. During Medium Cool, the only directorial effort of Wexler’s included in the series, audience members laughed during a scene in which the Illinois National Guard drills a riot-defense squad under the bullhorn-booming supervision of a Mayor Richard J. Daley soundalike. More than 50 years later, Wexler’s major outing as an auteur still had satiric bite for the local crowd. Beyond his Chicago bona fides, Wexler also deserves to be remembered as a cameraman who successfully managed a double career as Hollywood journeyman and indie legend. Before and after the release of Medium Cool, Wexler was in high demand as a cinematographer who could take a camera crew into the streets and give the drama an authentic look and feel. Wexler famously moonlighted as a visual consultant on his onetime protégé George Lucas’s American Graffiti (1973). He was brought in as the master craftsman who could ensure the film’s daring in-the-streets color photography came out right. If you wanted a stylish flick with more than a touch of the guerrilla filmmaking of the 1960s, Wexler was your man. By the time he was shooting One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975), the film that kicked off the Siskel Center series, Wexler’s political bent was just as well known in Hollywood as his realistic shooting style. He was monitored by FBI agents on the set of this Miloš Forman film. It would become the second Hollywood picture in a row, following Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation (1974), from which he was fired. In both instances, the reasons likely involved turf battles between powerful directors and their equally headstrong cameraman, but it’s not hard to imagine how the aura of political controversy could have worked against Wexler’s standing in Tinseltown. It wasn’t always that way. The Siskel Center series featured two films on which Wexler worked with Norman Jewison, a big-studio director interested in making socially conscious films. In the Heat of the Night (1967) stars Sidney Poitier as Virgil Tibbs, a Philadelphia homicide detective wrongfully implicated in a murder case as he’s passing through a small Mississippi town. In the Heat of the Night would go on to win a handful of Academy Awards, including the best picture prize. Wexler’s most celebrated contribution was in how he shot Poitier as Tibbs. The photographer went to great lengths not to wash out the nuances of Poitier’s skin tones with either too much light or too much darkness—no small feat in a film whose color palette makes a motif of the eponymous “night.” For the police station scenes, Wexler borrowed a technique from silent cinema, filtering his light sources through silk draped over the top of the set, which softened the glow on the actors. Wexler’s sensitivity carried political force. When Tibbs examines the murder victim’s body, Wexler uses closeups to underscore the gravity of a Black detective’s hands laid upon a white man’s in a room full of southern whites. We understand later, when Tibbs examines the hands of a jailed white suspect, just how incendiary that kind of touch can be in the 1960s Deep South. At other moments in the film, Wexler proves how far his resourcefulness could go in sharpening the story’s

By Neil Goodman Over the past four decades, Peter Shelton (born 1951) has shown his work nationally and internationally, and his work has been the subject of numerous museum and gallery exhibitions as well as the recipient of public and private commissions. For many years he has also been represented by Los Angeles’s premier gallery, L.A. Louver in Venice, California. His work was the subject of a one-person exhibition at the Arts Club in Chicago, and he received a large-scale public commission for the City of Indianapolis. As the tides and valleys of the artworld shift quickly, Peter has persistently and consistently maintained his vision as well as challenged himself in both scale and subject. He is also a consummate craftsman, working in wood, concrete, iron, bronze, glass, and fiberglass. Peter’s work varies from large-scale installations to more succinct individual objects. In an overview of his work over the years, there is an amazing variation in style and a sensibility distinctively his that is at the core of his sculpture. Some works stay with you and others leave quickly. My interest in writing about Peter’s work dates to 1988 when I first saw his monumental installation floatinghouseDEADMAN at the Indianapolis Center for Contemporary Art. Whether serendipity or happenstance, I was visiting the center in preparation for an exhibition I was planning there the following year. At the time, Peter and Robert Roman, the curator at the ICCA, had recently relocated from LA. As they had been connected geographically, Robert was both aware of Peter’s work and blossoming career and  instrumental in arranging both the transportation and installation of floatinghouseDEADMAN. Occupying most of the gallery and the focal point of the exhibition was a large elevated floating house. With its combination of both wood and paper paneled corridors and rotunda, the structure seemed to be equally inspired by early American craftsman architecture and a traditional Japanese tea house. The house was held aloft by a series of cables and pulleys connected to fourteen heavy sculptures in the surrounding space. These shapes acted pragmatically in providing the anchored weight for the house’s suspension, as well as poetically introducing Peter’s rich vocabulary of forms. As the structure was intended for walking through, the elevated and swaying house was both enticing and alarming: we were both viewer and subject. Considering that more than three decades have passed since I first saw floatinghouseDEADMAN, the work is still very much alive in both impact and memory. If several earlier works focused on large installations, the later works seem more singularly composed. Vessel forms mutate into lungs and hearts, and evocatively suggest figures, cocoons, shells, amphorae, inner tubes, and boulders. His sculptures seem equally familiar yet reconfigured as they fluidly cross boundaries and organically evolve and metamorphize. Orifices inhabit the sculptures; they are highly sexualized large bulbous forms with a beguiling intimacy that is at once prurient and evocative. The imposing scale inhabits our physical space inconveniently. The lurking forms are like animals in respite, of which we are equally curious and wary. We both want to touch them and remain at a distance. Like a magician, he reveals the secret life of objects, and through his forms as a sculptor, reinvents a world that we both know and imagine. Neil: Who did you study with at UCLA and were they major influences in the development of your work? Peter: Honestly, I went to UCLA mostly to have space and equipment. Making sculpture of any scale is impossible when you start off. I certainly did receive support there from Gary Lloyd, Lee Mullican, Bill Brice, and a few others, but my undergraduate experience was more important. I started as a premed student at Pomona College but the antiwar moment of 1969–1970 drove most of us out onto the street. In the fall of 1970, I lived in Eastern Kentucky up in the coal mining hollers. I switched to anthropology then, later theater, and finally art after taking art classes all the way through college. There, my teachers were Mowry Baden, Guy Williams, David Gray, Michael Brewster, and Jim Turrell. Neil: Did you ever consider living in NYC? Peter: After college, I went to Hobart School of Welding Technology in the town where I was born, Troy, Ohio. This experience and the work as a welder afterwards in Ohio and Michigan were probably as important as Pomona to my art training. As I was about to leave Ohio, I considered whether to move to New York or back to LA. In 1974, New York, at least in the galleries, was filled with “miniature art” and “photo realism,” etc. Making sculptures in New York or at least in Manhattan seemed out of reach logistically. I had grown up in Los Angeles with the Light and Space guys and artists like Bruce Nauman and Ed Kienholz. They were all hybrid artists where sculpture, painting, theater, and architecture were liberally blended. I had the mistaken impression that Los Angeles was palpably more supportive of these concoctions. When I moved back, I realized that these artists operated in a near vacuum without significant cultural or commercial support, so nobody cared what they did except their fellow artists. In a way there was no art superego in Los Angeles, and at that time at least, everything seemed possible. I think the lack of cultural places for showing their art caused artists to see their own studios as art venues, and, in many cases, the envelope of their studio became the art itself. Without the “cultural mosh pit” like in New York where the shear density of artists and art institutions could hold certain art content aloft, Los Angeles often simply referred to their own senses, minds, directly physical experience for inspiration. The meaning and significance of their work was verified in their bodies. All that said, it certainly would have been useful to be in New York from a career point of view. Lately, LA is cooking, but in the 70s, LA artists had little commercial success. Neil:

By Leandré D’Sousa Thirteen women are seated along the water’s edge at their village. In front of them lies a table filled with shiny crab heads, crustaceans, dried prawns, and fish coated in salt. A patch of gauze is handed over to them. Picking up the seafood, they begin to wrap the white bandage tightly over each specimen. Cocooned inside and resembling tombs, the fish is wound with a string and hung over a bamboo column. Mummification is an ancient technique, and, for an indigenous fishing community in the metropolis of Mumbai known as the Kolis,1 it has been a customary practice to preserve food passed on from the Paleolithic period.2 With great pride, the women show off their embalming skills. The action, interlaced with secrets of the ocean, is their story and forms the setting for this piece. Contemporary artists Parag Tandel and Kadambari Koli belong to the Tandel family of the Chendani Koliwada (“village that opens to the sea”) in the district of Thane, Greater Mumbai. As part of their respective practices, each began chronicling how their surroundings were being altered—through reckless urbanization, the invasion of industry, the seepage of pollutants into the sea, and the effects on marine life and the Kolis who depend on it for sustenance. They observed how these intrusions affected the sociocultural and economic well-being of their community and how they had to cope and adapt to survive. With many young Kolis abandoning fishing altogether, and with major infrastructural projects threatening to displace entire settlements that have existed at the tip of Mumbai’s shoreline from the precolonial era, the Tandels feared their ancestral way of life was in danger of vanishing. As witnesses to this transition who aim to reverse the process of decay, Tandel and Koli reinstated an existing fund from the 14th century that was once used to support families in times of need3 and launched the Tandel Fund of Archives (TFA).4 Operating as an interface between the community and the city, TFA positions itself as a pop-up museum. It is a repository and the voice of 500,000 Kolis inhabiting over 240 Koliwadas in Mumbai. Memories once forgotten that now exist as fables are being reconstructed. Personal stories can find shelter. The Kolis themselves are both subjects and protagonists of the archive, which mirrors the matriarchal nature of the community. Placed at the forefront of that archive, women steer the city’s fishing industry, supplying fish and running the markets and their households. A Waning Culture of Ancient Seafarers A visit to the Tandel home is like stepping into a portal where time drifts to a stop. With the chaos and cacophony of the city behind us, the Chendani village comprises cottages, one-story dwellings that overlook the Thane creek dotted with stacks of fishing nets, and boats floating on the water. Parag’s mother, Aai, prepares a simple meal from their morning catch. With the aromas of fish and the salty sea all entangled, you are taken on a voyage as Parag, Kadambari and Aai, speaking in a dialect known only to Kolis. They recount their past, like the story from their childhood about the sea monster mankaape (“neck-cutter”) who is ready to chop the heads of naughty children venturing out to the water alone. Or how they depend on the lunar cycles that control the tides to determine their fishing patterns. You’ll hear of sea creatures you thought only existed in legends. For the Kolis, the ocean is their forest. Being in close proximity to it is paramount, as it ensures that the village can function independently and in isolation from the rest of the city. Parag provides a visual map of the terrain that encompasses freshwater wells; demarcated sections for socializing, drying fish, making salt, and docking boats; and the ocean. With pride, he narrates the history of the Tandels who were ancient mariners and navigators with acute knowledge of the stars and the ocean’s currents. But they faced severe losses under the pressures of industrial development along the coastline, chemical discharge, and later silting rupturing ancient fishing bloodlines. He recollects that they “used to trade dry fish and spices with Kochi, Sri Lanka, Burma, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Africa, and Oman. Kadambari’s grandfather used to trade for corporations in Mumbai and my grandfather with the British and Parsis.” Today they are fishermen for the city. The story of the Chendani Koliwada is also peculiar. It was the first village to be connected to the main city after the first passenger train in India began running between Bombay’s Bori Bunder to Thane on April 16, 1853. Because of Chendani’s mercantile nature, its people were wealthy and educated. As a result, they were the first to lose their language. “Culture is protected by illiteracy. Once educated, you move away from your culture, language and customs,” states Kadambari. She continues, “Our financially wealthy status meant that different communities like the Shaivites, Brahmins, Portuguese traders, and Christian missionaries started encroaching on our land. [They] built temples but then banned us from entering them because we were fishermen and, at the time, crossing the sea was forbidden. So even though the temples were funded by us, we were not allowed inside them.” At the end of the meal, Aai reminds you not to throw away the fish bones or shells of prawns and crabs as they are all preserved in her collection or turned into crafted objects adorning their home. The Archive as a Tool for Empowerment Working at the intersection of aesthetic and archival practice, the TFA project carves a new fissure in how we represent our past, how memory is revisited, and who tells the story. Encouraging a phenomenological approach, it turns into an instrument for creative and social agency. People are at its core, their stories, histories, and knowledge its greatest asset. Parag and Kadambari call it an “autoethnographic project archiving the shifts in the lives of communities living on the peripheries of the ocean. We are interested in what people want in their museum, how they perceive and engage with the archive and how they disrupt existing patterns of knowledge creation. We

Someway, Somehow EXPO Chicago seems to elude me every year. I never quite get to experience it in full. Mostly because no matter how much I think I want toattend,I find it to be a daunting chore. Although others can probably relate, I am speaking for myself when I say that It is a short lived, inconveniently scheduled, and expensive (for some) event to participate in. Based on my past experiences I have found it to be alienating, exhausting, and a great way to de-sensitize oneself to aesthetic experience,thereby neutralizing and containing one’s interest and,dare I say,passion for art. This is achieved through the sheer volume and excess of not only the innumerable art objects but of the overpowering presenceof manufactured social and cultural capital.This year’s virtual rendition of EXPO is different in a way thatisradically boring.