Archive: Cortés and Turner
"Identity and Connection," New Orleans Art Review 2020-21
https://www.noareview.org/uploads/4/3/5/8/43585085/noar-2020-21-looking_back-zz.pdf
“I am.” It’s an ancient, glorious, and difficult mantra.
I was struck with it in mind as I walked from Jonathan Ferrara Gallery with two painting students after viewing works by Esperanza Cortés in her solo exhibition “Arrested Symphony,” and “Here and Now” by Meg Turner at the Contemporary Arts Center – a solo show reiterated in a new form in New Orleans from her Master of Fine Arts thesis at Columbia– about conceptions of identity.
The students accompanying me engaged in a variety of friendly banter, getting to know each other in the first two weeks of class, as I drove them back to school. I thought of the awkwardness of learning about someone new (as the practice of being a carpooler always does for me). That process of creating familiarity and a recognition of another’s identity has a lot to do with establishing sense of self. The awkwardness leads to personal identification and awareness.
In an online article for The Times Picayune/The Advocate, John D’Addario addresses the theme of identity in Turner’s work in the context of three other concurrent shows at the CAC. Mickalene Thomas’s individual works, and in her collaboration with Carla Williams and Lee Laa Ray Guillory, explore black identity. Video by Akosua Adoma Owusu uses the iconography of hair to symbolize aspects of African identity. These shows are indisputably linked in their ventures into establishing self.
However, the two shows I consider in this article, in their disparate use of media and subject matter, share a similar thematic “through-line,” as D’Addario remarks. Turner’s primary medium in her exhibition is photography, specifically tintypes, a method akin to the daguerreotype in that it makes a direct positive, but with less expensive materials – of course, expense is relative. She depicts members of the LGBTQ community, personalizes the subjects because of their singular environments, and emphasizes her friends’ buoyant personalities; in doing so she offers an intimate gaze into their lives. But can the gaze of the disconnected viewer be truly empathetic?
Cortés’ sculptures pull from personal history as a mother and a friend from a postcolonial standpoint. Bejeweled clay forms, modeled from Sculpey, mesh icons of European takeover and the blood diamond and mining industry with an approachable substrate easily fired in an oven. This material is maternal – children and mothers use it together, and Cortés relied on it as a single mother without access to ceramics and kilns when her daughter was young. Cortés, like Turner, pulls from a broad swath of both contemporary and historical cultures, touching them with personal narrative to produce evocative work.
Turner’s multimedia installation spreads into three dimensions from the series of small-scale tintypes to CMYK screen prints of specific subjects arranged in linear or grid-like fashion along the walls of the second floor of the CAC. In the midst of this narrative of portraits is a full-scale installation of a roadhouse massage parlor/gas station/bar, which cannot be entered. The door is locked.
The locked door may be a way of talking about how identity is within – a way of stating one’s self can’t be entered without permission. With this in mind, our gazes into this world are indeed barred. This idea is exclusive, though, and Turner seems more interested in opening up a world that proliferates in this city. The tintype, in its achromatic palette, has a documentary aspect that is akin to photography in general. This bubble in the world is alive here, queer and gorgeous.
Turner was making tintypes at University of New Orleans before she started there in the Master of Fine Arts program. Turner began learning the photogravure process as well. The chemistry of the etching and the precision of the images give respect to the subject matter. The tintype, a unique image, affords the subject an appropriate singularity and individuality. It is accessible, much like the mid-19th century frenzy over daguerreotypes democratized the subjects of portrait and landscape while still maintaining the concept of “originality.” They represent what Walter Benjamin called in his essay, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” “the last time the aura emanates from the early photographs in the fleeting expression of a human face. This is what constitutes their melancholy, incomparable beauty.” Turner engages in the “cult of remembrance” identified by Benjamin in his writing.
Neon and moving text like the deconstructivist messages of Jenny Holzer, proclaiming “God Hates Borders,” “God Loves Consensual Boundaries, “ “Loves Gay Porn,” may sound ridiculously redundant in this city’s context. We love the flamboyant. However, the real issue behind this is still keenly national, and it is imperative to be addressed. Like the artists of the Neue Sachlichkeit in Weimar Germany, Turner reveals an underground and a deeply personal connection to it, and verges on the political ramifications of showing this kind of imagery.
Cortés’ work involves a personal history from the death of a loved one. It is represented in a duo of cracked clay hearts and in the chains that suspend them from the ceiling. She also refers to the trauma of those enslaved in the gem mining industry. The iconography of sparkling jewels belies the extreme hardship used to find them.
One work that specifically points to this concept is Suspended Thoughts. An amalgamation of chains, amulets, and jewels, it protects the talismans ensconced in a visual web – themselves icons of protection. But Cortés text reveals the underbelly of their beauty. The work creates a striking contrast between the two opposites, and makes a case for the stringent constraints of identity. The iconography of sparkly chains in this context makes a difficult allegory for the violent practices used to obtain them.
Another work, La Dorada (translated: The Golden), combines a dark mask with a gold chain emerging from its mouth. It’s a second example of the same kind of content. Whether the chain is serving to choke the close-lidded face, or being spit out in protest is unclear. The illustration of the design of the chain on the pedestal appears to refer indirectly to the khamsa, an image of a hand of protection. Dualities proliferate in the show as a whole.
Cortés’ is a heartbreaking show. However, heartbreaks may be beautiful in the ways they allow one to heal. She confronts conflict in her work, but also gives face – sometimes literally – to the family and friends that have informed her own narrative. Like Turner, she is identifying a reality that goes unnoticed, is affected by discrimination, is sometimes outside of the law, and is precious. “I am” is inevitably informed by experience and awareness of what lies outside oneself, at that same time as being a powerful declaration of one’s interior worth and presence.
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