Suzanne Lacy's life of public collabs and conversations

The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is pushing my understanding of art and its limitations yet again!

Suzanne Lacy is one of the leaders in the art of "social engagement", which includes (my impression about her exhibit) outdoor and indoor performances documented via photography and/or videography. These installations are intended to include the audience in the creation of art and to spark conversations about controversial topics. As someone with limited appreciation of modern art, her works were something I don't understand because I felt like I was supposed to find art in things so ordinary, like a market scene where vendors were selling clothes. Beauty in the mundane, yes, that was easy to see; but what made a piece of work art? That's the question I kept struggling with.

Alterations is composed of three piles of colour-coded clothes—red, white, and blue—surrounding a sewing machine that just kept on sewing. I think that the colours represent the US flag (and therefore nationalism). The sewing machine probably symbolises workers in sweatshops, many of them living and working in substandard conditions (and receiving low wages) in other countries, for fast fashion brands. While looking at this piece, I was thinking about the news of 2012 fire in a Dhaka garment factory and about Fantine's predicament Les Misérables (set in 1827). Yes, my references are hardly current but this piece jogged my memory of the plight of factory workers doing the same job over and over again.

Alterations 

I became curious about SFMOMA around the time I visited the Pintô Art Museum in Rizal because it was around that time when teenagers pranked SFMOMA visitors by placing a pair of eyeglasses on the floor and people thought that it was art... the prank got people talking about what makes a piece of work art. In Pintô, I was mulling over the same question with Ate Mary, Ate Bing, Man, and Krishna as we stared at people taking photos of a cat having a performance (i.e., sleeping on a sculpture) and a hideous piece composed of figurines on a makeshift stage adorned by stickers. I made a better piece in second-grade art class!

Anyway, these memories and questions about the definition of art came rushing back when I saw this Lacy piece called Cleaning Conditions. A sweeping brush is propped against the wall. The caption says that it's about sweeping dust from one room to another so it won't get noticed. Perhaps, a performance art version of the idiom "sweeping under the rug", this piece wants people to talk about issues that are taboo or are too controversial to be discussed in a public setting. 

Cleaning Conditions

In the middle of the exhibit space is a piece called Freeze Frame. It does not look like a photograph at all. Instead, it's a living room with couches and a centre table. But on the wall are diagrams that remind me of leadership program lecture notes and focus-group discussions. Perhaps, this space is designed for people to have conversations... but the presence of headsets actually prevents people inside the exhibit from talking with each other.

Freeze Frame 

In one of the smaller spaces is a wall dedicated to plaster masks with handwritten messages written all over the face. It's a piece called Tattooed Skeleton. Many of the writings are not in English; hence I couldn't understand them. But for people who can understand what's written, it's quite unfortunate that they cannot come close to the pieces. During my visit, a guard was vigilantly watching over this wall, preventing people from coming close enough to read the stories written on the masks. Too bad, because the stories are totally lost to the audience. I was able to take a zoomed-in photo because I was using my Canon point-and-shoot; otherwise, the faces just look like they're riddled with lines.

Tattooed Skeleton

Travels with Mona is a set of images laid out as a foldout set of postcards. In each photo, Lacy is seen with the Mona Lisa paint-by-numbers propped up on an easel in various locations. The Mona Lisa reminded me the Flat Stanleys I used to carry around whilst travelling to different cities in 2012.

Travels with Mona

These pieces are products of Lacy's collaborations with other artists. However, the conversations aspect of the exhibit is lost with me... I don't see how these pieces get people to talk loud enough for people who actually shape policy can hear, or long enough to keep the masses engaged in meaningful conversations. Perhaps, I need to see these in their performance art versions, not just as installations... then, I will probably understand her messages better.

The exhibit makes me ask, just like most modern art I've seen, when does art become art? Do artists like her actually get conversations going where she wants them to go? Does any item need to have a deeper meaning—to be a symbol of something—to be considered artistic? 

As I mulled over these questions, I remember Miranda Priestly (played by Meryl Streep) from The Devil Wears Prada. She berated Andy (portrayed by Anne Hathaway) for belittling the seemingly petty details of fashion industry (specifically her lack of knowledge about her blue sweater, which was actually cerulean) and the huge amount of investment made and the workers who designed and made the sweater for a fashion brand. For Andy, the sweater was utilitarian; it kept her warm. For Miranda, it was a piece of art (albeit worth its place in the clearance bin). Perhaps, as I try to figure out what modern art is for me, I ought to think about Miranda and her lecture about the different shades of blue.