Week 2

Javier Morales

1. Who are the 5 artists you chose?

The artists that I picked are Cao Fei, Theaster Gates, Barry McGee, Joan Jonas, and Gabriel Orozco.

2. What were the themes the artists addressed about making work?

Most of this artists shows how they are part of a community and sharing identity and talking about experiences that they had in the past and try to share to the world with their work and give to the people a different perspective in some aspects of life.

Cao Fei. She liked to play with the fantasy and the reality with her work like using fictional characters and how the people with this characters on them with cosplays react in real life by being in a real background instead on a fantasy one like their characters.

Theaster Gates. He used everyday objects to create his own artwork trying to share history of this objects that he kept in time and re use their story to tell in a new different way to the public.

Barry McGee. He is part of the graffiti community and he uses his art to share how this community is on the streets and try to give a different point of view to his public.

Joan Jonas. She liked to communicate with her performance and she callas it as her new language by being her body language and using it with sound, music, and a 3 dimensional space.

Gabriel Orozco. He gives free Spanish lessons to the people and he would like to make in a future change that Spanish being the 2nd language to the 1st one and use it in the everyday with everyone outside.

3. What were the challenges the artists faced in making their work? 

Cao Fei. Her main challenge was to make the combination between real life with fantasy be a reality even since that was her main idea organizing everything to be good and try to fight the censorship in China and also making a good choreography with the actors and be synchronized.

Theaster Gates. His biggest challenge was try to find old magazines and old objects to try to share their story and create a new artwork with something that already existed.

Barry McGee. His challenge was that of being outside in a rush trying to give a memory to the artwork and try to replicate in a closed space like an exhibition.

Joan Jonas. Her Biggest challenge was that on her very first performance that was trying to do the weather wasn't suitable since it was really cold and there was a lot of wind that could break the choreography.

Gabriel Orozco. The problem that he had was knowing the fact that most of the people that learn they don't really usually use it all the time and it's only used for little moments like ordering food instead of being something actually necessary like their first language.

4. What were the inspirations you drew from the artists? 

The way on how this artists even having a lot of trouble and setbacks that were not even within their control they still working hard to succeed for their work and give their message to the world.

5. What were the things you would like to incorporate into your own work after watching these videos?

I would like to have the same patience that they had so they could make their artwork the way of how they never gave up even if there is the feeling of failing they still risking everything to complete it so I would say I would like to focus on myself and not to get worried about what is going to happen in the future and don't give up if there's something that could sop me from doing my art.