Introduction to the Issue

November 2021

Interviews

 

Dear Readers,

 

This issue of The Art Section brings together interviews with three artists, each of whose work I encountered many decades ago in significantly different circumstances.

 

In 2000, my spouse and I were in Paris. I remember we visited Marian Goodman Gallery, which is in the Marais district, to see an exhibition of which I have no recollection. However, we must have been looking and discussing the works with some intensity as the gallerist came over and asked if we might be interested in seeing a work by an artist new to the gallery on the lower level. Downstairs in a darkened space was a video by Pierre Huyghe, Two minutes out of time, 2000, an animated film (color, sound; 4 min. 9 seconds). This film starred an anime girl AnLee, whom Huyghe purchased with Philippe Parreno from a Japanese manga house. This virtual avatar, to whom Huyghe and Parreno gave a voice, is totally compelling and questions the nature of artistic ownership, of the identity of the artist, and of human existence. Michaël Amy interviewed Huyghe about more recent works and projects. I so appreciate Amy’s dialogue with this complex artist.

 

I met Tina Maria Dunkley around 1989 when we were both in an exhibition in Atlanta titled “The Idea of Furniture.” I still remember her provocative work, Comin' For to Carry Me Home: Fait Accompli, which is a baby’s crib in stainless steel with wheels like you might find on a hospital bed, and photographically printed bolsters. Inside the crib lies a black sculpture of a child on his back, his face painted with white patterns that evoke African tribal painting. The child is adorned with a medallion on a gold chain around his neck. This work is now in the Collection of Clark Atlanta University Art Museum. I knew immediately that I had to meet this artist. I discovered that we both had grown up in Brooklyn and now found ourselves living in Atlanta. I have continued to appreciate Tina’s work and her investigation of the African Diaspora over the decades. Tina Dunkley is in dialogue with poet Opal Moore.

 

Micah Stansell is a filmmaker and installation artist who lives and works in Atlanta; he often collaborates with his artist spouse, Whitney. The first time I encountered their work was at Flux Projects in 2010; their piece was a video projected onto the side of a building across a bridge in the Castleberry Hill neighborhood of Atlanta. As described on Artspace.com, this multi-channel video follows six people “as their paths intersect and are connected by the objects they carry - objects that help to define them.” However, it is the Stansells' most recent work, Over the Bent World, 2020, presented online by Flux Projects, that I find the most captivating. The personal story telling and the documentary hybrid narrative are particularly compelling. Cinqué Hick’s has conducted an interview that touches on many issues of the Stansells’ work; his questions open up new readings of their art.

 

It is a great pleasure to present these dialogues. Thank you Michaël Amy, Opal Moore, and Cinqué Hicks.

 

All my best,

Deanna  

 

Deanna Sirlin

Editor-in-Chief

The Art Section