Finding Meaning in Art
My moment came at one of the least expected times for me over the past few weeks. To begin, I am not a lover of art. I generally am not a fan of art museums at all. About four years ago I married my wife who was a fine arts major at Penn State University and is currently an art teacher in Wake County, North Carolina. She has tried to convince me of the value of works of art and she has taken me to numerous art museums. I have never been one to get it, though, as I see a painting or sculpture and then move on to the next one.
On Wednesday July 25th, 2018 our NEH Summer Institute (Contested Territory) made a trip to the Ackland Art Museum at the University of North Carolina and my group went to the second floor to spend thirty minutes looking at one piece of art from Southeast Asia. This work was by Dinh Q. Le called Untitled #9 from Cambodia: Splendor and Darkness and I could not believe there was nothing else in the room beyond one piece of art. We were asked to bring our chairs up close to the piece. When we were asked to explain what we saw in the work, I was amazed that so many people could see so much and such a variety of things in the work. We switched angles and people then explained the new things they saw from a different perspective. I couldn’t believe it. One work of art could bring so much out of so many different people. The artist in this particular piece was attempting to display some of the horror and emotion associated with the violence in Cambodia in the late 1970’s.
When I spoke with my wife about it that evening she got excited. Without even seeing the piece she tried to explain what the artist may have been attempting to do with colors and what he may have sought by placing the pictures how he did. While I am in no way going to become an art expert, the emotion one work could bring from so many people was a valuable lesson for me and gives me new appreciation for the role art can play in keeping history alive.
<em>Untitled #9 from Cambodia: Splendor and Darkness</em> by Dinh Q. Lê
July 25, 2018
Michael Miragliuolo, 43, Social Studies Teacher at Green Hope HS in Cary, NC
finding-meaning-in-art
Representing Southeast Asia
There’s a game I like to play in class called “Look At.” We practice our close reading skills by gazing at a picture for 3 minutes and then writing down everything we see (or don’t see) about that image by starting each sentence with: “Look at…” When I first looked at Vietnamese American artist Dinh Q. Lê’s woven photo-collage, “Untitled #9 from Cambodia: Splendor and Darkness,” at the Ackland Art Museum (UNC Chapel Hill), I was struck first by my not knowing: what it was, how it was made, what it represented. On-screen, the image resembles 80’s over-pixelated computer graphics, but in person, it’s a traditional prayer mat woven from strips of two separate photographic images. Look at how colonized cultures are represented. These two images, official photographic records of the Khmer Rouge’s S21 prisoners, who are about to be executed, and a bas-relief of a Vishnu incarnation from the ancient Khmer temple of Angkor Wat, offer polarizing visions of how Cambodia is represented in an American imaginary: the Killing Fields or one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. The two images echo questions that we’ve discussed in our National Humanities Center seminar: how are nations memorialized? What are the human geographies represented and reproduced? How are these competing representations contested? Look at Vishnu’s vanished face. When I visited Angkor Wat, I was overwhelmed by the spiritual power standing alongside me, at this nexus of religious histories, the fall of an empire, the way this temple’s physical weight changed the geographical landscape. Look at these missing eyes. The artist has razored out eyes from the S21 prisoners’ faces. They look like my parents’ old document pictures that I once found buried in a dresser drawer. When I visited the Khmer Rouge Killing Fields outside of Phnom Penh, I literally felt physical distress, panic, anxiety. How can the earth retain emotion and memory? Can trauma leave a residue in the earth itself? Look at the dark spaces woven together. Human meets divine. Official record meets folk tradition. Black and white meets color. Modern technology meets ancient carvings. Vishnu’s arms are outstretched: in pain? In embrace? I leave the NEH Summer Institute on Contested Territory with many more questions than answers, but such compelling questions. What does territory in Southeast Asia mean and who controls its expression? How do humans affect geography? How can we read this image through a diverse set of disciplinary expectations? How do we survive a war? And why is this important? This is why the humanities matter.
Dinh Q. Lê’
"Untitled #9 from Cambodia: Splendor and Darkness" by Dinh Q. Lê’
July 25, 2018
Adrian Khactu, High School English Teacher
representing-southeast-asia