Third Text
Issues
Volume 36, 2022
Issue 3
Number 176, May 2022
Indigenising Water: Rebecca Belmore’s Fountain and the Crisis of Hydrocolonialism 195–213
Mark Watson
This article unpacks the stakes of Rebecca Belmore‘s ‘Fountain’, a video installation that represented Canada at the 2005 Venice Biennale. The artwork consisted of a video installation based on a performance she gave in Vancouver. The work engaged with water from a perspective informed by the artist’s Indigenous identity and heritage, framing water as a site of struggle and violence in a manner informed by settler colonialism on Turtle Island but in a way that resonates with the crisis of global water inequality and hydrocolonialism today. This article unpacks the stakes of this biennial artwork, relating it to the artist’s long interest in water and Indigenous rights, the influence of Ana Mendieta’s performance work on the piece, as well as global efforts to reimagine water outside regimes of state and corporate control. It joins a growing literature on reimagining water in the current period of crisis.
A Proximate Past: Trauma and Remembrance in the Work of Danh Vo 215–240
Marcus Verhagen
In a stinging critique of the work of Danh Vo, Claire Bishop argues that he reduces moments of historical significance to pretexts for ornamental displays. In stressing the need for sustained engagement with historical trauma, she aligns herself with Theodor Adorno and others who have identified a waning historical consciousness in modern society and culture. Writers descended from Adorno have put forward models for an art of remembrance, including ‘memory sculpture’ (Andreas Huyssen) and the ‘counter-monument’ (James Young). A closer examination of Vo’s work suggests that he borrows elements of both of these models in works that display powerful but contrasting investments in the past. Bishop’s analysis is harsh. The ornamental motifs that dismayed her are crucial to a practice in which the continuing relevance of the past is established through the conflict between different attitudes to the objects it leaves behind.
KwieKulik through the Lens of Feminism: The Acted out Passiveness of Zofia Kulik and Her Maintenance Work 241–261
Tobey Yunjing Pan
Active in the 1970s and 1980s, KwieKulik was a Polish artistic duo comprised of Zofia Kulik and Przemysław Kwiek. Despite the duo’s dissolution in 1987 and Kulik – the female artist – having departed from her previous practice, KwieKulik’s art is framed by the so-called political and regional context of Poland’s state socialism. This article argues that the still ongoing struggle of Kulik for self-definition opens up the possibility of rereading KwieKulik’s art through the lens of feminism. It analyses the visible and invisible gendered roles and identities reflected in two of KwieKulik’s most characteristic performances: ‘Monument without a Passport’ and ‘Activity for the Head: Three Acts’. The visible refers to how, in their performances, Kulik had to actively allow herself to be restricted and humiliated in order to be viewed as a subject. The invisible, meanwhile, refers to the maintenance work that Kulik did for KwieKulik, which was once rendered secondary to Kwiek’s ambition for the appearance of spontaneity.
Craft as Anti-colonial Universalism in the Bienal de La Habana 262–277
Paloma Checa-Gismero
The distinction between art and craft is one touchstone of Western aesthetics. Among other implications, this distinction has supported hierarchical valuations of culture that support processes of coloniality. In 1983, coherent with its mission of Third World solidarity, the Cuban state created the Bienal de La Habana, an international exhibition of art that sought to question Euro-American hegemony in the aesthetic field by showing objects from Latin America and the Third World. This article explores the dimensions of practised and theoretical work performed within the Bienal, with especial attention to those invested in the re-evaluation of the seminal art vs craft distinction. In doing so, I show that, in addition to revisiting core principles of Western aesthetic philosophy, biennial curators also opened fruitful avenues for an emancipatory curatorial practice that resonates with present concerns to decolonise the art institution.
Unbecoming Men: The Masculinity Crisis of the Bollywood Hero 278–292
Sonal Jha
Throughout the history of popular Hindi cinema, the figure of the hero has been identifiable as the bearer of hegemonic masculinity, but in the last five years, this figure appears to have developed an existential crisis with respect to his masculinity. This article seeks to identify why the spotlight has shifted to non-dominant constructions of masculinity. It charts out the changing discourse of masculinity within Bollywood. It also places this in the context of a global masculinity crisis, while attempting to understand the changes within the Indian context propelling the crisis. Three recent popular movies, showcasing narratives of men struggling with issues such as alopecia, sexual dysfunction and a lack of agency, are discussed. The analysis of the male figure probes into why these specific deficiencies become shorthand to question the protagonist’s manliness, while also placing him in relation to women and other men around him who serve to accentuate his crisis.
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