In 1987 Chilean-born artist Alfredo Jaar installed a sequence of projections, A Logo for America, on a Spectracolor lightboard in the heart of Times Square. Three images flashed above Broadway: an outline of the United Sates appeared with the words This Is Not America written across it, then the same words were written across an image of the US flag, and then the loop concluded with an outline of North and South America with the word America in big bold lights.
Twenty-six years later, the Arizona State University Art Museum is taking a cue from Jaar’s seminal video by titling their current exhibition This Is Not America: Resistance, Protest and Poetics. Also in three parts, the Museum is pulling work from its collection to initiate “a dialogue around current issues related to protest and poetic gestures within the aesthetics of resistance.” Part Two of the exhibition (Nov 16, 2013-March 15, 2014) features the work of 28 artists with works created from 1930-2013. Artists include Facundo Arganaraz, Sandow Birk, Los Carpinteros, Juan Capristan, Enrique Chagoya, Binh Danh, Kota Ezawa, Eamon Ore-Giron, George Grosz, Ana Teresa Fernandez, Jon Haddock, Alfredo Jaar, Michael Lucero, Carrie Marill, Sanaz Mazinani, Ranu Mukherjee, Georgia O’Keeffe, Gina Osterloh*, Raymond Pettibon, Michele Pred, Ken Price, Jerome Reyes, Paul Rucker, Rene Francisco Rodriguez, Fernando Rodriguez, Lorna Simpson and Adriana Varejão.
*Gina Osterloh, “Untitled (Turquoise Room #1).” Photo: ASU Art Museum.