Aug 25, 2015 Disguise: Masks and Global African Art at SAM
Sometimes mistakes work out perfectly. We had left Vancouver BC, crossed the border, and drove straight to the Seattle Art Museum because I wanted to see the Chiho Aoshima installation. I hadn’t seen her work in person since Takashi Murakami’s Superflat landed in Los Angeles and changed everything way back in 2001. That was the art show that made art cool for a generation of us, and Asian popular culture received a spike in popularity, as well. We must have milked four or five cover stories out of it for Giant Robot mag…
It turns out Chiho’s piece was actually across town at the Asian Art Museum. Although our SAM passes granted us free entry, it was a little late in the afternoon to drive out there and the other museum would be closed over the next two days that we would be in the city. Anyway, SAM has an impressive collection–Joseph Cornell, Andy Warhol, Cai Guo-Qiang…
And there is also a very cool exhibition called Disguise: Masks & Global African Art. It includes traditional and ceremonial masks and disguises but also uses them as a jumping-off point for a handful of young artists from Africa. The herd of hunting decoys wearing fake African masks by Brendan Fernandes was a real mind-bender, the woven barbed wire by Walter Oltman was very cool, and Nandipha Mntambo’s self-portraiture was impossible to ignore. But I liked Saya Woolfalk’s somewhat spiritual and totally cosmic piece the most.
Her room reminded me of It’s a Small World turned into an informercial for a cult, and involved emptiness, spirituality, consumerism, and loads of style. See it for yourself as well as the rest of Disguise: Masks & Global African Art at SAM until September 7. And let me know how the Chiho piece is while you’re at it.
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