The Tamesis
Earlier this winter, I visited the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles to see the wonderful “Monuments” exhibition, which pairs decommissioned Confederate monuments with contemporary art. One of the most striking new works in the exhibition is Love is dangerous, A sculpture by Chicago artist Bethany Collins composed of tiny rose petals fashioned from the granite base of the old Stonewall Jackson statue. The pink petals look soft and delicate, like cupped little hands, and knowing that they come from such opposites, both physically and symbolically, appeals to me.
Apparently a little too close. When we spoke a few weeks later, I told Collins with some embarrassment that I had been reprimanded by a museum guard. It turned out that this kind of thing also happened to her. “They have tough security there,” she said. “I was like, ‘Well done, you’re doing what you’re supposed to do.'”
It’s perhaps not surprising that Collins’ work requires increased supervision: her conceptual work has long required careful observation and then deep reflection. Collins uses paper, ink, graphite, sheet music, stone, performance, and other media to examine the relationship between language and race, whether blindly stamping clippings from the Civil Rights Movement or selectively erasing Antigone or odyssey, Compare versions of the national anthem, or cast new sculptures from fragments of monuments to Confederate generals. It’s deconstructive art, digging into the muddy history that foreshadows our current moment.
“I’m always trying to make sense of the present, and the way I know how to do that is to look to the past for echoes,” Collins said. The work is deceptively quiet but intoxicating, full of bold visions of the future.
Clearly her message resonated. In the past two years alone, she has lectured at the Prospect 6 Triennial in New Orleans, the Seattle Art Museum, the Peabody Essex Museum in Massachusetts, the Morgan Library and Museum in New York, Patron Gallery in Chicago, and MOCA in Los Angeles. Just last week, her work was on display at Frieze LA in the booth of New York gallery Alexander Gray Associates.
Now, she’s added another institution to her list: Denver’s Museum of Contemporary Art will open “Bethany Collins: The Flood” on Thursday. The exhibition contains several works, each pointing to waves of resistance found in historical struggles, whether from literary history or our own struggles in the United States.
