MATERIALS & METHODS (Works)
Flattened food packaging + rivets = a charging bull with a message about imported diets.
Who is Michel Tuffery? (Pisupo Lua Afe / Corned Beef 2000)
Thousands of saffron-colored fabric gates were designed to trace this pre-existing feature of Central Park.
What are the walking paths? (The Gates)
Neon + TVs + US map = an artwork about America entering this era.
What is the Information Age? (Paik, Electronic Superhighway)
In both Rebellious Silence and Olympia, the subject does this to confront the viewer.
What is a confrontational gaze?
Term for a temporary work designed for a specific space that surrounds or situates the viewer.
What is installation?
Mass-produced-looking handmade objects that were individually crafted, then piled into a huge field.
What is Ai Weiwei’s Sunflower Seeds?
A crack across the floor of the Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall becomes a metaphor for exclusion and division.
What is Doris Salcedo’s Shibboleth?
Dutch wax fabric in The Swing (after Fragonard) points to colonial trade and this idea.
What is cultural hybridity (and colonialism)? (Shonibare)
Mehretu’s Stadia II feels like maps + diagrams + marks stacked so thick they resemble this natural structure.
What are layered geologic formations (like fossils buried in layers)?
Low-quality, mass-appeal aesthetic (often sentimental, shiny, popular) used knowingly in contemporary art.
What is kitsch?
A “book” you can’t read: thousands of characters that look legit but communicate nothing.
What is Xu Bing’s A Book from the Sky?
This installation was literally built like a functioning neighborhood business—chairs, products, culture, masculinity.
What is Pepón Osorio’s En la Barbería no se Llora?
Racist 19th-century imagery becomes silhouettes to force viewers to confront stereotypes that still circulate.
What is Kara Walker’s Darkytown Rebellion?
Lawrence Panel 49 and Shibboleth both use a strong central “divide” to emphasize this theme.
What are societal divisions / segregation / exclusion?
Art where the earth is the medium; the site is part of the work.
What is an earthwork?
Video installation filmed at extremely high frame rates, then slowed down until it becomes spiritual.
What is Bill Viola’s The Crossing?
This war memorial is non-figurative, made of polished black granite, and forces the viewer to descend.
What is Maya Lin’s Vietnam Veterans Memorial?
Hybrid female/cyborg-like figure critiques how women’s bodies have been constructed by art history/media.
What is Wangechi Mutu’s Preying Mantra?
In Stadia II, bright shapes + movement lines can suggest flag-waving crowds and this force.
What is nationalism (propaganda/pageantry)?
3D work made by combining found/varied objects and materials into one piece.
What is assemblage?
Bottle caps and copper wire become a shimmering, cloth-like “tapestry” that hangs like fabric.
Who is El Anatsui? (Old Man’s Cloth)
Rome museum with dramatic interior flow: hard geometry + curving ramps/stairs = signature spatial drama.
What is Zaha Hadid’s MAXXI?
A “kitsch” sculpture pairing a cartoon character with glossy perfection is most associated with this artist.
Who is Jeff Koons? (Pink Panther)
Earth’s Creation connects Aboriginal ceremonial practice + a Western movement known for atmosphere/light/color.
What is Impressionism? (Kngwarreye)
Abstract painting approach where the physical act (drip/splatter/gesture) is the main expressive “subject.”
What is action painting?