Given that artist Cauleen Smith and poet A. Van Jordan both had a love for the language of cinema, their collaboration on an installation was probably inevitable. The two artists opened I Want to See My Skirt, a collaborative installation inspired by the highly formal work of Malian photographer Malick Sidibé, on 5 November at Testsite in Austin, USA.
The contemporary art space, located in a central Austin private residence has gained a national reputation for its provocative approach in which artists pair with writers to create original, site-specific works. In this case, both Cauleen and Van were interested in the poignant relationship between Sidibé and his subjects. Likewise, Cauleen tells us, the piece became an investigation of the relationship between themselves as young, black, American artists and Sidibé, a francophone, Malian artist from a previous generation.
She tells us that suddenly the spaces "in between" became very important, and we note that that idea carries through the entire installation-- including a pile of bean bags each made in the shape of the trade route space between North America, South America, and Africa, and music that includes work made by a Dutch musician traveling in Mali. Hybridity, indeed. The media-rich installation also includes 2 projections, 4 monitors, and a portable DVD player, all featuring Van's poetry in oblique and direct ways. Van, who normally writes about 10 poems per year, wrote 8 poems in 2 weeks for the installation.
I Want to See My Skirt closes on 14 December.
