Powerful images
Student-curated exhibit explores political movements in America
From prints of the Chicano civil rights movement to photographs of the 1965 march from Selma to Montgomery, Ala., art has long offered a political nexus for expression and controversy.
“The Art of Politics,” an exhibition of 17 works on paper, explores that relationship at the Albuquerque Museum through April. The curator is 17-year-old Amy Biehl High School senior Ben Maseman.
“I thought it would be interesting to look at different types of political art, particularly in light of the (current) socio-political atmosphere of our country,” he said.
The selections encompass photographs of the author and social critic James Baldwin, a cardboard sign from the Women’s March and Patrick Nagatani’s constructions of New Mexico’s nuclear anxiety.
Ester Hernandez’s “La Ofrenda” (1988) depicts the familiar image of the Virgin of Guadalupe tattooed across a woman’s back. But the women bearing this traditional image of maternity sports a Mohawk and skull earrings.
“This was part of a traveling show on Chicano art,” Maseman said. “This is definitely an image of social identity and feminism blending traditional symbols of femininity and punk.”
Dan Budnik’s photograph “The large flag at the end of the day” (1965) captures Civil Rights marchers carrying the symbol of American pride.
“I loved how triumphant and hopeful this image is,” Maseman said. “I liked that it’s the image of the marchers holding the American flag and it’s sunlit. I think it’s very powerful.”
Nagatani’s “Fat Man and Little Boy, F-111Ds, 27th Tactical Fighter Wing, Cannon Air Force Base Near Clovis, New Mexico” (1990) is a play on the nicknames given to the atomic bombs that leveled Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as well as the fear looming in the approaching bombers.
“I think how he explored New Mexico’s nuclear landscape is very powerful,” Maseman said. “I also had just learned about the Trinity Site in my history class.”
The Trinity Site was the code name for the location of the first nuclear detonation, in what is now White Sands Missile Range.
Nagatani “unpacked how deeply interwoven nuclear
weapons are in New Mexico’s landscape,” Maseman said. “It’s really easy to forget that the U.S. is still very much a nuclear power.”
Maseman wants to work in a museum conducting research in art history or performance studies. He recently applied for early admission into Brown University.