The Walker Art Center
Overall, the entire Walker Art Center experience was entertaining and many pieces, especially in the Brave New World gallery, posed interesting new questions/viewpoints. However, three pieces especially resonated with my experiences in and opinions about our world and I found them worth mentioning.
First, there were two large pieces each featuring a male African worker. One was sitting next to his large collection of sugar canes he had harvested for the day and the other African male was standing in the middle of two sugar cane fields. Both photographs were long shots allowing the viewer to take in the entire presence of both males.
While they looked like they came from an impoverished background and possibly did not enjoy many of the basic comforts that we have come to enjoy, they did look like proud and strong individuals. At first, I did not understand the significance of the artwork until I read the description on the plaque to the right of the pieces. Apparently, the artist works with the subjects in order to create a photo which places the subjects in their best life and focuses less on their poverty since the artist doesn't believe that just because someone is impoverished they should lose their dignity.
The next piece was close to the aforementioned one and featured what looked like a bunk bed covered on all there sides with pieces of cloth and posters of Asian celebrities. The bottom bunk was littered with a Chinese newspaper, a small Chinese book, and a rather sexual poster of an American woman among other stuff. On the top bunk there was a projector running a movie projected on the nearby wall of workers staring into the camera at various places in what looks like a factory. Next to the wall where the projection was running were stacked boxes with Utopia on them. The workers did not smile but stared into the camera with a somber look on their faces. For me, it reminds me of the state many immigrants face when they come to America forced to work menial jobs, sometimes paying much less that minimal wage, because they lack the ability to speak English and/or lack the education to attain higher paying ones. Their life is truly difficult and unlike people who have a choice whether they wanted to work towards a better life or slink through, these people don't. It's either a hard but better life here or a just a hard life in their former country.
Finally, the last piece is also a video which showed various video from around the world edited and juxtaposed together to show that perhaps the world isn't as disjoint as many people believe. Many of the images showed game shows in other countries that were adopted from others such as Wheel of Fortune in Vietnam. There were also
commercials of Coca Cola and news reports on an earthquake in three different languages.