The timing for this exhibition couldn’t be more appropriate as a call to adopt another attitude towards all of our differences. The essence of Post-Identity requires fluidity between the categorical norms society uses and an open-mindedness. Using empathy to see each other without judgement or expectation is the new norm of our aesthetic standard.
To uncover the meaning of this complex term “post-identity,” we must first dive (however briefly) into its root term: identity. Although we all have personal identities that we claim or that are placed upon us, there are larger societal identities that exist in the politicized context.
Post-identity can be defined as: taking on a perspective without focusing on cultural difference, specifically in regard to race, gender, and sexuality. To apply “post-identity” to the art world would mean to look at art and the creators of art without focusing on race, gender, and sexuality.
Among the most recognizable forms of art for many, landscape paintings in their simplest form are efforts to capture and represent the natural world around us on canvas or other mediums. The beauty of our natural surroundings offers both a comfort based on our own experiences and yet provides a wide range of subject possibilities including mountains, valleys, hills, rivers, forests, and the coastline and other familiar natural settings.
Today, landscapes seem to be everywhere, whether in the form of screens, idealized photographs, commemorative calendars, motivational posters, or pinging Twitter and Instagram feeds. The default desktop wallpaper on nearly every operating system has become a landscape, as if to showcase the superiority of technology in its ability to faithfully render nature in millions of pixels per inch.
Corita Kent’s teaching methods were unique as she was often seen with her students holding up small viewfinders on field trips while observing local street signs, supermarket shelves, and shop window advertisements. This allowed her students to focus on particular elements of a sign or advertisement rather than the entirety of everything that was around them.
Pop Art was the dominant movement in early 1960s American art. Short for “popular art,” it featured common household objects and consumer products like Coca-Cola and Campbell’s Soup cans, as well as forms of media—such as comics, newspapers, and magazines—recognizable to the masses. Artists often created Pop works using mechanical or commercial techniques, such as silk-screening.
The concept of transubstantiation within Catholic tradition holds that during the Mass, the bread and wine offered is transformed through the sacrament of the Eucharist into the body and blood of Jesus. This transformation of essence, not to be confused with symbolic transposition, is an artistically revolutionary activity and one that shares some commonality with the appropriative practices of Pop Art.
