How I Became 100 Artists

I'm a contemporary artist with a bit of an unexpected background. I was in my 20s before I ever went to an art museum.

I love contemporary art, but I'm often really frustrated with the contemporary art world and the contemporary art scene. A few years ago, I spent months in Europe to see the major international art exhibitions that have the pulse of what is supposed to be going on in the art world.

So I started thinking and listing what all it was that I thought would make a perfect biennial. So I decided, I'm going to start my own biennial. I'm going to organize it and direct it and get it going in the world. So I thought, okay, I have to have some criteria of how to choose work. So amongst all the criteria I have, there's two main things. One of them is I imagine explaining a work of art to my grandmother in five minutes. Then my other second set of rules – the three H's, which is head, heart and hands. Great art would have head: it would have interesting intellectual ideas and concepts. It would have heart in that it would have passion and heart and soul. It would have hand in that it would be greatly crafted.

So I started thinking about how am I going to do this biennial, how am I going to travel the world and find these artists. Then I realized one day, there's an easier solution to this. I'm just going to make the whole thing myself. So this is what I did. I thought, a biennial needs artists. I'm going to do an international biennial, I need artists from all around the world. So what I did was I invented a hundred artists from around the world. I figured out their bios, their passions in life and their art styles, and I started making their work.

I felt this is the kind of project that I could spend my whole life doing. So I decided, I'm going to make this a real biennial. It's going to be two years of studio work. And I'm going to create this in two years. And I have.

Now let me introduce some of my fictional artists to you. This is Kay Overstry and she's interested in ephemerality and transience. Her most recent project, it's called "Weather I Made." She's making weather on her body's scale. This piece is "Frost." And what she did was she went out on a cold, dry night and breathed back and forth on the lawn. So this is five foot, five inches of frost that she left behind. The sun rises, and it melts away.

The next artist, this is a group of Japanese artists, a collective of Japanese artists in Tokyo. They were interested in developing a new, alternative art space. And they needed funding for it, so they decided to come up with some interesting fundraising projects. One of these is scratch-off masterpieces. Each of these artists draws on a nine by seven-inch card, which they sell for 10 bucks, they drew original works of art. You buy one, and maybe you get a real piece, and maybe not. Well this has sparked a craze in Japan, because everyone's wanting a masterpiece. And the ones that are the most sought after are the ones that are only barely scratched off.

This artist is Gus Weinmueller, and he's doing a project, a large project, called "Art for the Peoples." And within this project, he's doing a smaller project called "Artists in Residence." And what he does is he spends a week at a time with a family. And he shows up on their porch, their doorstep, with a toothbrush and pajamas, and he's ready to spend the week with them. And using only what's present, he goes in and makes a little abode studio to work out of. And he spends that week talking to the family about what do they think great art is.

Next is Sylvia Slater. Sylvia's interested in art training. She's a very serious Swiss artist. And she was thinking about her friends and family who work in and developing countries, and she was thinking, what can I make that would be of value to them, in case something bad happens and they have to buy their way across the border or pay off a gunman. And so she came up with creating these pocket-sized artworks that are portraits of the person that would carry them. And you would carry this around with you, and if everything went to hell, you could make payments and buy your life.

This is by a duo, Michael Abernathy and Bud Holland. And they're interested in creating tradition. So what they do is they move into an area and try to establish a new tradition in a small geographic area. So this is in Eastern Tennessee, and what they decided was that we need a positive tradition that goes with death. So they came up with dig jigs. And a dig jig is where, for a milestone anniversary or a birthday, you gather all your friends and family together and you dance on where you're going to be buried. And we got a lot of attention when we did it. I talked my family into doing this, and they didn't know what I was doing. And I was like, "Get dressed for a funeral. We're going to go do some work." So what happens is you dance on the grave. And after you've done your dance, everyone toasts you and tells you how great you are. And you in essence have a funeral that you get to be present for.

The next artist is Hazel Clausen. Hazel Clausen is an anthropologist who took a sabbatical and decided, "You know, I would learn a lot about culture if I created a culture that doesn't exist from scratch." So that's what she did. She created the Swiss people named the Uvulites, and they have this distinctive yodeling song that they use the uvula for. And that's the symbol of their culture. And this is from a documentary called "Sexual Practices and Populations Control Among the Uvulites."

Next is an Australian artist, Janeen Jackson, and this is from a project of hers called "What an Artwork Does When We're Not Watching."

And after this one, there's 77 other artists. And all together with those other 77 you're not seeing, that's my biennial.

/Shea Hembrey TED Talks/

The original talk where you can see all the works of art mentioned (plus some more) is here: Ctrl +

Date: 2015-02-28; view: 790