Friday, February 19, 2010

Take a Green Look at:



Voices In Green
Creative Practices in Response to the 2009 Iranian Presidential Election
February 19 – March 5 2010
FAB Gallery

Please join us for the opening of Voices in Green in the FAB Gallery on February 19th at 5PM.

Voices in Green is an archival exhibition focusing on art and activism around the Iranian Green Movement. These works were created after the crisis of the 2009 Iranian presidential election and all of them were distributed online. Voices in Green will be on view from February 19th to March 5th in the FAB gallery, located on the lower level of the Doty Fine Arts Building.


Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Black Abstraction!

How I hate traveling!
I lose my little things.
How I hate iron tubs!
I lose my colorful little things.

That's how I've lost them,
Two sticker butterflies, two Eastern tiger swallowtails.

When I first noticed my butterflies are not there
On the black of my notebook,
I looked out of that hateful window of the cylindrical iron giant that happens to fly.
I looked with a childish hope that they are out there,
Flying above the white clouds.

But,
Of course,
They were not out there.

So my eyes wondered around the airplane,
I searched and searched; Nothing!
Hopelessly I started asking people,
Secretly thankful to my good look and my now improved English,
So no one would notify a shrink on emergency call - at least not immediately.

I asked them seat by seat,
“Have you seen my butterflies?”
I asked myself “Where are my butterflies?”
Nostalgically reminded of the past summer,
When, in now a faraway country, people went round and round shouting, “where is my vote?”

Here I was looking for two fake butterflies,
So I can stick them back to the vacant blackness of my frightened notebook.

And when I got some nasty pitiful looks from my puzzled fellow-travelers,
I came back to where I first noticed them gone.

And it is like this that I hate traveling.
I lose the things that once made me the happiest girl with curly hair on earth.
And that is like this that I hate faraway places.
I know there will be no butterflies on my notebook when I get back home.

I didn’t know what really happened to my sticky butterflies;
How I lost them, or how they decided to leave!

But I could imagine,
And yes, I can imagine well,

Like me, perhaps,
With broken pride and wings paralyzed with throes,
They could not take the humiliation of phoniness,
At least not on their being,
At least not on their love,

And I could imagine,
When the butterflies of my childish happiness,
Drew back from the darkness of my notes on Greenberg and abstraction,
The garden of my naiveté
Transformed to the black of réalité.

No more butterflies,
No more colorful stickers,
No more, I thought.
Nothing phony can refine the childish sincerity by sticking to it!

And that's how I stuck with the black of abstraction!


Black Abstraction, Georgia O’Keeffe, 1927


Saturday, February 13, 2010

CAA 2010: 2nd Glance

Chicago is not getting warmer, but it has not been as cold as expected. Daily panels and discussions, museum and gallery visits during lunchtime and afternoon breaks, and evening drinks is a good précis of my 4 days of CAA 2010 Conference in Chicago. Other than the usual art historian’s snobbishness and some hyper-intellectual-after-session discussions there is nothing much to gossip about. The most crowded and well-discussed panel so far has been Intention and Interpretation part I. (part II will be this afternoon)

I miss Zeitoon. I just hope to return to Austin soon. I will have a very exciting week ahead with the installation of Voices in Green, the archival exhibition that I am curating.

Bird's Flight, Jean Dubuffet, September 1959
The Art Institute of Chicago


Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Scattered on CAA2010

In Chicago. It snows. Tired of airports. My mind is freezing. Missing my chubby cat.

Just picked up my conference badge. I feel sheepish wearing the badge around my neck; wish there were ID pins.

Already marked the session I am interested in; my list is much shorter than last year. Tomorrow I would like to check out two morning panels: Post-Duchamp, Post Production (Media in Art Theory and Pedagogy) and Future of Criticism. In the afternoon, I will check the open session on Surrealism and one talk on the Modernism & Collectivism panel.

Like always there are some sessions starting at 7:30AM and like always I feel bad for their organizers. In the middle of the winter, in Chicago, at 7:30AM; not everyone is staying at the conference hotel!

I look forward to meeting Professor H. It is a year since I’ve seen her last. Have lots of things to tell her; many sad things on Iran and some progressive professional news.

Wednesday, February 03, 2010

Pouring!


It is a feeling, before the first drop falls,
It is a feeling, sharp, crisp, awake,

It is a feeling in the throat,
A feeling of rain,
Just before the tears pour down!


Pouring, Austin, Feb. 3rd 2010