Wednesday Exhibitions: Illegal America

Canceled: AlternativeManifestations and Productive Failures , curated by Lauren Van Haaften-Schick, is on view in our main exhibition space. 

An interesting piece in the exhibition is Illegal America, curated by Exit Art in 1982. It was the first exhibition organized the group known as Exit Art which included Jeanette Ingberman and Papo Colo. It was a compilation of acts of resistance and provocation, and many of the artists anticipate controversy and arrest as a conceptual aspect of the work.

van Haaften-Schick, the curator, writes:

According to Colo, a conflict is required for not just legitimizing an illegal work, but for creating the essential element of risk. Moreover, inverting a more common attempt by artists to produce overtly political artworks that operate in the real, these projects posit an “intention of the poetic to transform reality into a symbol,” proving that the law, like art, is “also an abstraction.”

There will be talk on Wednesday June 13th at 6:30 with Sergio Munoz Sarimento Esq. on the Visual Artists Rights Act in conjunction with the exhibition Cancelled: Alternative Manifestations and Productive Failures.

You can read about more works in the exhibition, there are posts about the two films in the show A Fire in My Belly and Rarely Seen Bas Jan Ader Film, and Guerrilla Girls "Do Women Have to Get Naked get into the Met. Museum?" you can read about them by clicking on their titles. You can purchase the catalog at the center and read more about the pieces in the exhibition.

-Ania Stypulkowski

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