{"id":16683,"date":"2016-04-05T09:07:27","date_gmt":"2016-04-05T13:07:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=16683"},"modified":"2016-04-05T09:59:00","modified_gmt":"2016-04-05T13:59:00","slug":"cultural-mixing-and-power","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=16683","title":{"rendered":"cultural mixing and power"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>\u00a0\"Screen<\/a><\/p>\n

These two objects were juxtaposed during a wonderful Tisch Talk in the Humanities <\/a>yesterday, with Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts and Lisa Lowe<\/a> from Tufts’ Department of English.<\/p>\n

On the left, an 18th century desk made in colonial Mexico that’s now in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. Lowe noted that\u00a0the shape derives from the Northern European Renaissance. The geometric patterns on the outside are reminiscent of Moorish\u00a0Spain. But, as Lee Lawrence writes<\/a>, “With the desk flap lowered and the bookcase doors open, …\u00a0the gold-on-red interior screams China\u2014until, that is, you take a closer look. The artist has depicted a hacienda with palm trees and deer, not a landscape with willows and oxen, and the figures wear sombreros, not conical hats.” Some of the figures appear to be Africans, slaves or freemen.<\/p>\n

On the right is a photo of Campos-Pons in the Piazza San Marco, Venice. She is an Afro-Cuban artist with some Chinese-Cuban<\/a> ancestry. She was responsible for the Cuban Pavilion<\/a>\u00a0at the 2013 Venice Biennale, a remarkable installation built partly of\u00a0bird cages. Here she is\u00a0dressed in an elaborate costume that has\u00a0Cuban, Chinese, and Yoruba elements, claiming the piazza as a kind of town crier.<\/p>\n

Both objects\u00a0mix Chinese, New World, European, and African content. Both are made by Hispanic\u00a0artists\u00a0of\u00a0color.<\/p>\n

It might seem that power and agency is different in these two cases. Campos-Pons is an internationally recognized and successful artist. She makes images that mix specific cultural elements of her choice, and she is honored for the results. The anonymous (to us) artisans who made the desk combined\u00a0a specific set of cultural elements because Spain had occupied Mexico and turned its indigenous people into subjects. The Empire also\u00a0forcibly combined\u00a0the decorative art of the conquered Mud\u00e9jars,\u00a0Chinese porcelain\u00a0(via the Manila-Acapulco galleon route<\/a>), and the cultures of Africans who’d been transported as slaves.<\/p>\n

But that contrast negates the creativity and agency behind the beautiful desk. Some person or group chose to make it look as it does. If a\u00a0Spanish-descended\u00a0patr\u00f3n\u00a0<\/i>had a lot of say in the matter, he or she had\u00a0vision and talent. And if a native artisan conceived\u00a0the object, that person\u00a0was highly creative and–for all I know–well rewarded. As for Campos-Pons, her ethnic and cultural heritage is due to the same Empire. And now she produces goods prized by powerful patrons: museums, collectors, and foundations. Her clients\u00a0seek\u00a0a cultural mix or synthesis, as did the original owner of the desk.<\/p>\n

One can push the analogy too far, until it seems to make no difference whether\u00a0an artist\u00a0has political and economic rights.\u00a0Campos-Pons faces\u00a0different objective circumstances from the maker(s) of the desk, and it’s important to improve all people’s circumstances. Still, we can find agency and\u00a0artistry everywhere, and often\u00a0it’s by mixing disparate\u00a0inheritances\u00a0that we create the objects that represent us\u00a0best.<\/p>\n

See also:\u00a0when is cultural appropriation good or bad?<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0upside-down Foucault<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 These two objects were juxtaposed during a wonderful Tisch Talk in the Humanities yesterday, with Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts and Lisa Lowe from Tufts’ Department of English. On the left, an 18th century desk made in colonial Mexico that’s now in the Boston Museum of Fine […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16684,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16683","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fine-arts","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16683","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16683"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16683\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16702,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16683\/revisions\/16702"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/16684"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}