ISCP Trip Review-James

As a class we took a trip into Brooklyn to the International Studio and Curatorial Program in order to take tours of a few artist's studio spaces. Chaw Ei Thein, Lilibeth Cuencea, Michael Hofner, and Till Steinbrenner all were gracious enough to give us a sneak peak into their artistic process and previous works. The program was designed to give artists from around the world an opportunity to work and display their work in New York City.

Chaw Ei Thein's work was ultimately a critique of her native Burma. She worked in a large array of mediums, but one of the more striking parts of our conversation was when she described how she handled the nude figure. She showed us a painting of a nude who was chained, mangled and disfigured. Chaw Ei Thein explained that in Burma people would cut off their fingers, or otherwise disfigure themselves, so that they wouldnt have to be enslaved by the government and work in the fields. The entire talk was a sobering experience and tragically reminded me how poorly the quality of life is for some people in less fortunate countries.

Lilibeth Cuenca, a video and performance artist from the Philippines, made work that commented on a wide variety of things. Wrapped up in feminism, she provocatively pushed issues of racism, machoism, and pop culture in a music video entitled "Cock Fight Song." This video showed her dressed up as a rooster and singing, with clips of cock-fights and their predominantly male spectators edited throughout. Another video had a chorus which repeated over and over "how cool to be a nigger" while showing men in sexually suggestive positions and the artist hula dancing, a comment to the racism and homophobia that is still prevalent in her native country.

Michael Hofner showed three photographs from his journey in Tibet. Armed with just a few rolls of film, he strolled on foot through the landscape and took photos of what he felt was important. His wanderings have spawned several commercial books of areas previously uncovered, with more to come. Michael Horner's work may have many parallels with documentary photography, but his struggles to leave and stay out of the studio push it into art.

Till Steinbrenner is one half of the duo Linder & Steinbrenner. They consider themselves inseparable in terms of making art, and even the solo work they make, or made before they met, is all put under the name Linder and Steinbrenner. Their collaborative work consists of site specific installations. In a public park, they put a pair of bleachers facing a park bench. In a gallery they glued photographs of themselves onto the walls. In a cathedral they faced all of the chairs on an angle towards Mecca. Their pieces consistently undermine the places that they're working in.

These artists are wide ranging and their only real connecting force is that they have all come to New York through this program. It was fun and exciting to see this work by established artists overseas, and listen to them talk about their work and the opportunity they have.