Machete: Art in Times of Political Crisis

What can–or should be–the role of artistic practice in situations of political crisis? How are we to best understand and theoretically explicate the political contributions of the cultural world? To address these and related questions, the Machete Group proposes to explore a trans-cultural constellation of flashpoints in the global struggle of the arts:

-Participatory art in Latin America that merges with left social movements and works to denounce state and economic terrorism.

– The international political economy surrounding Guernica and the struggle against Nazism, which challenges the well-known critique of Picasso’s political impotence developed by Sartre and Adorno

– Omid Shekari’s paintings that embody an Iranian gaze that confronts Western viewers with the harsh realities of conflicts within the Middle East that have been sublimated and distorted by mainstream media.

Join Machete members David Dempewolf, Sebastien Derenoncourt, Jennifer Ponce de León, Gabriel Rockhill and Yuka Yokoyama for a challenging collective discussion concerning the role of cultural producers in the darkest of political times.

Friday, 10 March 2017, Marginal Utility Gallery, Philadelphia, 7:00-9:00pm. For more information, and to download the pre-circulated texts, click here.