i ran into several friends in the line before making my way into the
every woman biennial.
inside the works screamed from the walls.
Julie Eisenberg Pitman’s collages depict a re-imagined understanding of our constructed environment and how our mind works to resolve diverse components. She organizes these hybrid assemblies using abandoned, found elements and ordinary materials. Standards of perfection versus inherent human fallibility are fundamental in her work. Embracing mistakes follows the Japanese ideology of wabi-sabi, which is based on the acceptance of beauty that is ephemeral, imperfect and incomplete. Characteristics of the wabi-sabi aesthetic include asymmetry, economy, simplicity and modesty, much like Eisenberg Pitman’s constructions—allowing her tell stories of spatial ambiguities with unconventional depictions.
Concerned with personal freedom, her work reflects the places we hide to speak our mind or discover ourselves. We are vulnerable to intolerance and hatred surrounding us. If we do not feel safe to live a free life, people are forced to hide and covertly subsist clandestine existences. Eisenberg Pitman tries to encourage audiences to consider these “half worlds" as places for socio-political exploration and transformation.
JULIE EISENBERG PITMAN
UNDECIDABLE III
COLLAGE
24” x 32”
Every Woman Biennial
The collection has more than 3,700 works of contemporary art. Photo: Floto + Warner
"My paintings assess the state of our shared humanity. Subjecting war, climate change, social and economic injustice to humanist investigation. They are vibrant narratives responding to the violent events of our time and the accompanying emotions. Telling the stories of our current history within a single frame. By revealing the intersectionality of the oppressed and the brutality of the oppressor, my paintings produce an alternative story to the dominant historiographies of Empire. Through these representations, the world of the painting becomes a space for personal, communal and societal reflection, while emphasizing the harmony of nature, suggesting another world is possible.
I develop my narratives by engaging with and researching current events and mulling over their historical, psychological and philosophical implications. While composing a painting I am very actively thinking about how to bring the viewer into the world of the painting so that they are already in the work when they realize it is their world, that they carry it on their shoulders. Once I’ve decided on a structure for the painting I further research and image source the topics and seek out their connections, looking at pictures of war crimes in Fallujah or the killing of Heather Heyer in Charlottesville etc. to extract details, symbols, and more closely understand the emotional realities of these events. My work can be found in the Watermill Collection, Allen Art Museum and Wellesley College and has been published by The Nation, Huffington Post, W, Wallpaper and Title Magazines. Exhibitions and Group shows include Bushel Collective, Haverford and Columbia Colleges, MoMa PS1 Book Fair, E/AB Fair, Whitney Houston Biennial, EFA Project Space, Sunview Luncheonette, Gowanus Studio Space and Field Projects. Former I-Park Resident and acting member of the Dome Theatre Co. performing at SpringBreak and SCOPE art fairs, Saint Marks Church, Dixon Place, Zebulon and numerous venues in the us and abroad.( Self-Taught. Born is Paradise, CA in 1984)."
All week long I got invitations to the
Every Women Biennial.
Haley
Hughes invited me.
So did Julie Eisenberg Pitman.
She wrote:
“if you are downtown NYC Sunday check out my work in
the
OPENING:
SUNDAY, MAY 19
1-4PM
LA MAMA GALLERIA
47 GREAT JONES STREET
4-7PM
222 BOWERY
**THE GALLERY WILL BE OPEN MAY
19-29TH
DAILY 1-7PM
LA MAMA GALLERIA
47 GREAT JONES STREET
Making my way to the show, I pass
Basquiat’s old apartment on Great
Jones.
My friends Raken Leaves
and Julius Klein say hi,
Still high on their amazing show that closed the week before.
Hi
Julius.
Faaaabulous people are everywhere,
Getting ready for the flash mob
Star fucking here.
Caught up the commodity fetish
there.
We love art and artists,
hoping they can help
point us toward the sublime.
But can any of us elude the ever expanding, ego gratifying,
Dissent commodying culture machine,
Basquiat down the
street?
“The Biennial
engages artists, through a democratic open call, to cross-pollinate with each
other from a variety of mediums, generations, and racial and ethnic
backgrounds. The exhibition features a large scale salon of painting,
photography, installation, sculpture, video art, textile, and multimedia works,
activated by performance, dance, music, poetry readings, theater and film.”
Increasingly,
museums and cultural institutions are contested spaces.
Unpacking
the layers of
a colonizing
history of plundered relics,
the museum’s
secrets revealed.
Revolting
Lesbians condemning climate denialists
On the board
of the Museum of Natural history.
Kick her off
the Board God Damn It.
Nan and Pain
Sackler.
L.A. Kauffman tweets:
“14 months ago
@sacklerpain @nangoldin1 + our allies stormed the @metmuseum
Today the Met finally did the right thing!
Thanks to the 1000s who spoke up w/ us + the journalists who uncovered Sackler misdeeds
Now let's see museums take down the Sackler name”
Today the Met finally did the right thing!
Thanks to the 1000s who spoke up w/ us + the journalists who uncovered Sackler misdeeds
Now let's see museums take down the Sackler name”
Decolonize
this Place.
Get Fossil
Fuels out of culture.
Thank you,
Guerilla Girls.
What about
the struggle?
The dialectic of sex.
What about
the weight of history?
Can art
carry it?
Or will it?
Thank you
Christine Blasey Ford.
We believe
women.
Abortion is
healthcare.
Alabama be
damned.
Hence,
“The Every Woman Biennial –
“The Every Woman Biennial –
the all women and non-binary
exhibition and festival- launches on Sunday, May 19 with a 5 minute Flash Mob
to I Wanna Dance With Somebody - a tribute to Whitney Houston,
who inspired the original biennial, with songs of love and support for women.
·
This is open to everyone
·
We will gather around 47 Great Jones St
between Bowery and just before the Firehouse @ 3:55pm
· Be
ready for the dance to start exactly on time-4pm –
·
EXACTLY AT 4PM!!!
·
The Flash Mob will begin with a small group of dancers exiting
the front door of 47 Great Jones St and beginning the dance by performing the Intro & 1st Verse
·
YOU will join them after the 1st Verse and begin dancing all
together for the 1st Chorus &
continue the rest of the dance as taught in the instructional video
·
GO TO THE CELEBRATION AT 222 BOWERY***
We dance
Snap pics
Gaze.
I finally make it into the show.
And
Down to the Bunker.
My favorite people are in the line.
Karen and I chat it up.
Countless friends.
Inside, the walls scream with
ideas, colors, lights,
More star fucking.
And selfies.
The gaze.
I think of Vito Acconci’s seedbed and
Raken Leaves
and Julius
Klein’s show the week before.
William Burroughs’ ghost looms.
Frida’s aches.
Breugel’s rebel angels fly across Haley Hughes’ canvas,
Mark Alan Stamaty’s
quest for donuts.
Kurt Schwitters photomontages struggling
to reshape reality.
Julie asking us what we bring to the question.
A world of art opens in front of our eyes.
Colin and I walk
to Elizabeth Street Garden,
A
living breathing work of art,
The city plans to destroy.
Commodifying community by the inch.
Pop will eat itself.
So will the city.
Art is everywhere.
So are star makers,
The Horts and bottom feeders,
Finding emerging artists.
Buy low sell high.
Everyone is looking for Van Gogh’s
ear.
Basquiat’s children.
Art and commerce dancing,
currencies fueling cultural capital.
Later in the week,
“Don’t let them take any pictures
of the bedroom,” Susan scolds her son
leading the tour, although many others
have taken photos of the space.
They don’t really say they are
looking for deals.
But they imply they are doing very
well,
Dropping names of friends whose careers
they helped,
Checks they wrote,
and meetings with Bloomberg.
“We didn’t spend much – say $600,000
thousand for the works in the bedroom,” notes Michael. “$90,000 on the Richard
Prince. Other than that it was pretty cheap. But now it’s worth ten
million….my wife doesn’t want me to say that much.”
Yet, where does the money come
from?
A family business,
Goldman Sacks?
Black Rock?
None of us are pure.
We’ll all caught up in the maze of
it all,
Trying to find our way out.
People converge the next morning at
the BlackRock shareholder
meeting,
On May 23rd, we're taking action at the BlackRock
stockholders meeting in New York City.
455 Madison Ave, New York, New York 10022
BlackRock has their tentacles all
over the
place,
BlackRock could do well to look at
their portfolio.
“Divest from Gilead,” declares an ACT
UPper.
“Black
Rock, you’re making a killing us. Divest from Gillead!”
“High profits equal high infection
rates.”
“Hey
Black Rock gotta come clean, divest now from the war machine!”
Democracy activists from Brazil.
Immigrant rights decreeing private
prisons.
AIDS activists condemning drug profiteering.
Extinction rebellion condemning climate
warming industries.
Ravi and Christine
Emily recalls Andy.
Who loved Broadway.
Art was everywhere.
As was the struggle,
Uptown and down
“BlackRock
has billions of dollars invested in weapons companies such as Lockheed Martin,
Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, Elbit, and General Dynamics. They also invest in
civilian gun manufacturers and private prisons including immigration detention.
They position themselves as a company that is socially responsible, yet they
continue to invest in weapons. They are making a killing on killing. The
misconduct by weapons companies ranges from groundwater contamination to labor
violations and includes overinflated pricing and overbilling the federal
government. These companies are flagrantly engaging in bad business practices
while misusing limited federal resources.”
One of the highlights of the Women’s
Only Biennial is the work of
Statement by the Artist
If the status quo is not challenged by the masses, what is
considered possible will remain defined by those in power. I believe organizing
around debt is an important and necessary part of transforming the current
power structure; by putting that power back in the hands of THE PEOPLE to
decide what is possible, what is needed and what is acceptable.
We live in a time with no real representation and mounting
deregulation; our tax dollars largely go to the military industrial complex,
tax incentives for fossil fuel extraction and the privatization and sale of
public spaces. The corporate welfare state is continuing to balloon with
endless mega tax breaks for the super rich on the backs of the underserved.
Through collective action we can force the hand of the oppressors (or 1%, or
oligarchs?) and flip the paradigm. In reality the employer/ corporation/
government needs the worker, the tax payer, not the other way around and in
realizing that, we find where the collective power resides.
For me painting is an important tool that seeks to hold the
afflicted in love and testimony and shows those of privilege and power their
own culpability big or small by addressing the problems of our uncivilized
society of so called progress.
This painting for the Debt Collective (yet to be named) is an
epic that lays out multiple and intersectional forms of egregious abuse. The
intention of this work is to expose economists, corporations, paid politicians,
lobbyists, international special interest groups, lenders, traders, debt collectors
and human relics from the history of global neoliberal capitalism living and
dead and then literally surround them with prime examples of the economically
oppressive and ultimately enslaving institutions that they personally profit
from. The water is rising along with the indelibleness of the repercussions of
their policies. We get a sense of what will and might happen if we are left to
their callous neglect. Encapsulating the whole of the painting are various
forms of protest, collective action, strike, dissent and struggle.
The people are rising too, they are not afraid anymore because
they have nothing to loose.
-- Haley Hughes
A stroll to Elizabeth Street.
A walk through the Hort Collection.
Zap at the BlackRock stockholders
meeting in New York City.
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