Unwrapping Artistry Seeing Through Tradition

75% of artists whose works are featured in US Art Museums are white men. The knowledge of this stark disparity in museum collections inspired me to create a wearable representation of the racial demographics of artists whose works are featured: The White Jacket.

When given the opportunity to revisit the project I wanted to decenter white men from the narrative and explore the remaining 25%. I started to consider what made an artist and what influence power structures, like museums, have not just over the visibility and promotion of artworks but the minds of artists themselves. This direction of inquiry led me to 5 women who have each marked me (some quite literally) on my journey in art and life.

These representatives of the 25% are my best friend, my tattoo artist, a previous student, my mother, and my grandmother. All of whom I would enthusiastically call artists. Through recorded conversations with these 5 women, I endeavored to uncover any commonality in their thinking on craft, themselves, and art's relationship to institutions.

The Data

When I was considering how I wanted to revisit my jacket from a different perspective I started to research the demographics of US-based artists to try to gauge the statistical distance between the demographics of artists in museums and artists creating in this country. This simple inquiry led me on a journey I did not expect, one that left me questioning what makes an artist an artist.

Much of the data on US artists’ demographics are based on those in the labor force working as artists. The National Endowment for the Arts 2019 data on artists is tightly bound by the ties of capitalism. The individuals represented in the data are those whose work as artists serves as their primary or secondary source of income. Most if not all the data I looked through was derived from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The prevalence of data focused on artists being interconnected with employment and job status led me to wonder what establishes someone as an artist. I set out on discovering the truth of that by asking 5 women, who I believed to be artists, to help me figure that out.

I asked all 5 women the same 9 questions. One of which was to describe their art as a flower. Their answers were: Hibiscus, Orange Day Lily, Peace Lily, Carnation or Dianthus, and Chrysanthemum.

Three of the questions I asked were on a linear scale of 0 to 5.

The first question I asked in this format was “Do you identify with the term artist? Is that a title you claim?” 0 representing “I would not call myself an artist” and 5 representing “If I am anything I am an artist.” Four of the five women chose 5 “If I am anything I am an artist.” with one landing in the middle with a choice of 3 on the scale.

For the second question, I asked them to use a scale from 0 to 5 and best explain the relationship between their works and the institutions. 0 representing “I do not need my art to be in a museum (or similar institution) to feel like a true artist” and 5 representing “I'd feel more legitimized if my art was in a museum.” 3 of 5 (60%) were in the middle with a choice of number 3, one woman chose number 1, and one chose 5 “I'd feel more legitimized if my art was in a museum.”

The last question on a linear scale asked the women to reckon with their personal relationship between creation and power. 0 represented “Creating does not make me feel powerful” and 5 represented “I feel incredibly empowered by creating.” Three of five (60%) chose the number four on the scale and two of five (40%) chose 5 “I feel incredibly empowered by creating.”

Three of the remaining questions were yes or no questions.

80% of the women said “Yes” to the question of whether they profit from their creations. 20% responded with “No.”

60% of the women responded “Yes” that creation was their main source of income. 40% said “No.”

80% of the women I conversed with said “Yes” to the question of them being self-taught. 20% answered “No.”

The last questions gave the women an opportunity to provide their racial ethnicity if they chose. All the women chose to share their racial ethnicity with me it is a follow:

2 women or 40% are White/ Caucasian, 2 women or 40% are Black/African American, and 1 or 20% woman is Asian.

These 5 women come from a variety of backgrounds all have varying levels of education and vary 47 years in age from the youngest to the oldest. Despite all those differences, there were more commonalities than I expected.

These commonalities in artists' responses are very apparent when examining them closely against each other. I wanted to encourage the interaction between their unique feeling and highlight the synergy between these incredibly different women in my data visualization, Unwrapping Artistry.

Unwrapping Artistry is a Pojagi or a traditional Korean textile that’s history dates to the Chosŏn Dynasty. Traditional Pojagi uses varied greatly, serving as wrapping to protect valuable items, bed coverings, covers for food, even wrappings for premarital gifts. The prevalent belief no matter the use was that the recipient of the pojagi and the item wrapped within were receiving the well wishes of the maker.

About Pojagi

My pojagi is a hot po or unlined pojagi made to resemble the chogak-po style of pojagi wrapping cloths. Chogak-po were the wrappings of the common Korean woman. Made from leftover silk, ramie, or other gauze-like fabric the scraps were cut into angular shapes and arranged in whatever aesthetic style was satisfying to the maker (Kim p.14-15). This satisfaction and artistry are made even more interesting when you acknowledge the restrictions placed on these women during the Chosŏn Dynasty. Most of these craftswomen, artists, were confined to the innermost parts of their homes and required to remain unseen by those who were not family (Song-mi p.25).

I believed the chogak-po style wrapping clothes would be an interesting way to display numeric data, so I went about figuring out how I wanted to make use of the craft with my data. Finished pojagis likeness to stained glass also felt like an appropriate analogy for seeing through the traditional confines of artistry and it's spaces into the lives and experiences of artists who all to a certain extent make to live.

Pojagi as Data Visualization

I have been interested in the Pojagi textiles since I came across a modern pojagi curtain while on social media. After learning the history of the women who made them, I desired to understand them on a deeper level. I attempted to do that through experiential learning. I am continuously trying to discover how to reckon with our known history and exploring the different ways there are to interact and develop relationships with those who have come before. My most accessible tool is creation. Replicating the experience and likeness of the works done by those I’ll never know.

The creators of the majority of the pojagis that have been found and preserved are unknown. They were created out of necessity. A necessity to show how deeply they cared for someone, or to provide the appropriate amount of respect for an object, or maybe it was a necessity to express who these women were inside themselves.

I let the language of expression created by these anonymous women speak for the 5 women I know, some deeply in my heart. I hope it honors the women who created the craft and the beauty I find in their work.