Object Record
Images
Metadata
Accession Number |
2021.08.00 |
Catalog Number |
2021.08.02 |
Object Name |
Collage |
Description |
Ganzeer's "Immigrant Blues #5: Woshwoosh" (2021) Mixed media on paper Commissioned with funds from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation In this collage, the artist paints a portait of himself in a sergical mask with a thought bubble in a mix of Arabic and English reading, "I swear I've forgotten what people's faces looked like." His portrait is overlayed on images of pop culture faces from the past like JFK, Marilyn Monroe, Aunt Jemima, and Mickey Mouse among others. From the artist: "The original impetus for the series was an interrogation of Roy Lichtenstein’s famous "Crying Woman" painting and the artworks it has hence inspired: weeping women illustrated in a comic-booky pop-art style. I couldn’y help but wonder why is it always the women who’re crying? It’s high time for a series of weeping men. But then painting any random weeping male didn’t really feel like enough for me. I landed upon myself as the most obvious subject for this series which lead me to explore the things that make me sad. Created as a reflection on the year 2020, IMMIGRANT BLUES #4 and #5 deal with the realities of living with a global pandemic. IMMIGRANT BLUES #5: Woshoosh, portrays a longing for human faces after a whole year of seldom seeing any, with our idea of faced increasingly relying on those we see in media or based entirely on memory (as depicted by the background). The text in the dialogue balloon roughly translates to: “I swear I’ve forgotten what people’s faces look like.” Artist's Bio from website, 2021: Described as a “chameleon” by Carlo McCormick in the New York Times, Ganzeer operates seamlessly between art, design, and storytelling, creating what he has coined: Concept Pop. His medium of choice as described by Kaelen Wilson-Goldie in Artforum’s Slant column is “a little bit of everything: stencils, murals, paintings, pamphlets, comics, installations, and graphic design.” With over 40 exhibitions to his name, Ganzeer’s work has been seen in a wide variety of art galleries, impromptu spaces, alleyways, and major museums around the world, such as The Brooklyn Museum in New York, The Palace of the Arts in Cairo, Greek State Museum in Thessaloniki, the V&A in London, and the Edith Russ Haus in Oldenburg. Ganzeer’s current projects include a short story collection titled "Times New Human," and a sci-fi graphic novel titled "The Solar Grid," which has awarded him a Global Thinker Award from Foreign Policy in 2016. He has been an artist-in-residence in Germany, Poland, Jordan, Holland, and Finland, and has lived extensively in Cairo, New York, Los Angeles, Denver, and finally Houston—where he is now based. |
Artist |
Ganzeer |
Title |
Immigrant Blues #5: Woshwoosh |
People |
Ganzeer Kennedy, John F. Monroe, Marilyn |
Search Terms |
Arab American art Egyptian Americans |
Subjects |
Art Celebrities Collages Mixed media Portrait paintings |
Lexicon category |
8: Communication Artifact |