Identifying Meaning: Rethinking Artist Statements

art-21 did a segment, "Identity," in 2001 asking how contemporary art addresses the idea of identity. Among the images was "Allora & Calzadilla's "Hope Hippo" from the 2005 Venice Biennale, with a quote from the artists about very large conflicts effecting everything, including what we identify with.

Looking at the image, without the artist's quote, identity issues do not come to mind, which for me points to the issue of how much an artist must say to identify meaning in their work.

I like the mud hippo as an image and form. I would like to have seen the installation, even if for me, it brings to mind theme parks, rather than conflicts. It's a great big sleepy turtle like hippo, more turtle than hippo. Sleepy danger? Hippos are dangerous. Respect the size, if nothing else. The real ones in the wild looked mild enough ignoring us as we stood a few feet away from a group of them in Ngorongoro Crater. Our guide, however, warned they could charge anytime. It did not seem to us like they would, and we snapped out pictures, like one does at a theme park or zoo. The mud hippo in the image looks benign, with no energy to charge, especially with the person sitting on him reading the newspaper, ignored in the same way that birds and flies don't appear to bother real hippos floating in water pools.

All of this has me reexamining my own intentions, or at least whether I am accurately verbalizing those intentions. It can be hard to put a precise word to what one is doing. Hard, not impossible. Sitting is sitting, running is running. I've looked at my work as being about loss and retention of identity through translation, transition, and transformation, about using imprimaturs of identity of one media in another media, about how identity of an object or installation changes in a new context or arrangement of the same elements. So, identity fits as an arch, but I am doubting that the viewer looking at my work thinks or says, "Aha, identity."

I am not even sure "identity" translates when I explain the work in connection with "identity" as a concept. I myself like embedding in the context of my work "identity" -- aka historical meaning -- that really is just a construct from artifacts that survived the passage of time. But there's a difference between motivation for me in creating and communication to the viewer when experiencing the art. Many viewers seem to appreciate learning the historical story (baggage), if they have not recognized the reference carried by an element incorporated into my work, but that may be more appreciation that there is a history, and less reflective of any additional understanding of my work that the information offers them ... much the same way that the quote connected to the mud hippo did not particularly help me then see the work as relating to conflict or identity.