Question 5: “Art today is Constituted by cultural Nomadism” writes

Argentinian anthropologist, Nestor Garcia Canclini. He points out that

identities are not simply bound to a nation, or one specific category, but
are “polyglot, multi-ethnic, migrant, made from elements that cut across
various cultures”. Write about at least three artworks which exemplify
Canclini’s ideas on cultural nomadism.

Ailbhe Reilly Tuite – R00202114

Tutors: Sarah Kelleher and Lucy Dawe Lane

Word Count: 1623

[Date of Submission: 15/11/21]

Néstor García Canclini’s book Hybrid Cultures: Strategies for entering and leaving modernity

discusses the concept of modern society, particularly in Latin American states, as a hybrid of

traditions that have not yet disappeared and a modernity which has yet to fully arrive.1 He

defines this hybridization as a ‘socio-cultural process in which discrete structures or

practices, previously existing in separate form, are combined to generate new structures,

objects, and practices.’2 In this context, he argues that uncertainty in the meaning and value

of modernity is found in separations between nations, ethnic groups, and classes, as well as

new sociocultural hybrids of these groups within the amalgamation of traditional and

modern.3 The juxtaposition of sociology and anthropology – in other words, modernity and

tradition - is central to this theme of work. Mass media and a globalised economy in recent

times have treated culture as if it were autonomous, while anthropology and the study of

tradition emphasises ‘diversity and plurality’ between cultures.4

Anthropologists, sociologists, analysts of policy and theorists of the last century have

discussed the results of this phenomenon in great detail. They have addressed the threat

caused by globalisation to the ‘integrity of authentic and indigenous cultures’, as well as the

belief in nation-states that ‘differences either have to be assimilated, destroyed, or assigned

to ghettos’. Many artists and poets also look at these themes, often from a personal

perspective. In this essay I will look at three artworks by artists Francis Alys, Gabriel Orozco,

and Do Ho Suh.

1
García Canclini, Nestor, Hybrid Cultures (London, University of Minnesota Press, 1995), p. 1
2
García Canclini, Nestor, Hybrid Cultures (London, University of Minnesota Press, 1995), p. xxv
3
García Canclini, Nestor, Hybrid Cultures (London, University of Minnesota Press, 1995), p. 2
4
Rosaldo, Renato, Forward to Hybrid Cultures (London, University of Minnesota Press, 1995), p. xii
Figure 1: Wellesley College Public Affairs. 2011. Francis Alys Exhibit Opening.5

Francis Alys is a Belgian born, Mexico based artist who comments on social practices, border

divisions, and the patterns of urban life. His main media are video and photographic

documentation. As someone whose identity is spread across various cultures and locations,

he frequently revisits the movement of the individual in the act of walking, travelling, and in

work rituals. Figure 1 above depicts the opening of an Alys exhibition which featured

photographic documentation of an action in Paradox of Praxis.

5
Wellesley College Public Affairs. 2011. Francis Alys Exhibit Opening.
https://library.artstor.org/asset/SS7732055_7732055_12610702.
Alys’s piece The Nightwatch (Figure 2) from 2004 is a video documentation of a fox as it

roams through the national Portrait Gallery in London. This piece brings to light the

dysphoria of placing a being that does not belong to any specific culture into a highly refined

and administrated cultural setting. The fox in this place is the nomad, wild and independent

of any sociocultural background. The only effect it’s homeland has had on its identity is the

ways it has learned to hunt and survive. Even still, it is lost in the gallery, and indifferent to

artworks displaying the culture and changing norms of aristocrats and the bourgeoisie. The

placement of this fox inside the National Portrait Gallery of London is Alys’s attempt to

‘reconstruct the central processes involved in social control’6.

Continuing from his studies in Venice during the mid 80’s, Alys acknowledged that

colonization and the development of the ideal urban environment - the clean, orderly and

scientifically monitored world – had resulted in the eradication of animals from modern life.

For him these animals became a symbol of the suppression caused by modernisation,7

which quells the traditional idea of culture. In The Nightwatch, the supressed fox

unknowingly poses as a part of the multi-ethnic identities that Canclini spoke of in Hybrid

Cultures. In Alys’s piece we see the fox as a hybrid between the wild and the cultivated,

monitored and observed in every step. His fox juxtaposes modern utopia with nostalgic

praxis. Alys has created an imaginary world, replacing the bureaucrat with the artist,

creating a fable to both observe and escape our reality.8

6
Medina, Cuauhtémoc et al., Francis Alys. (London, New York: Phaidon Press LTD., 2007) pg. 58.
7
Medina, Cuauhtémoc et al., Francis Alys. (London, New York: Phaidon Press LTD., 2007) p.58-61
8
Medina, Cuauhtémoc et al., Francis Alys. (London, New York: Phaidon Press LTD., 2007) p.61
Figure 2: The Nightwatch, 2004. FrancisAlys.com9

Another artist who explores the ideas of nomadism and multi ethnic identities is Gabriel

Orozco. Orozco was born in Veracruz, Mexico, and has studied, lived and worked in Mexico

City, Madrid, Berlin and New York City. His work includes drawings, installations,

photography, sculpture and video; inspired by conceptualism and the work of Marcel

Duchamp.10 His piece Yielding Stone (1992) consisted of a plasticine ball, rolled around the

streets of New York and documented through the process.11 This piece merged sculpture,

9
Screenshot taken from public video The Nightwatch, 2004. FrancisAlys.com. Accessed 14 November 2021
https://francisalys.com/the-nightwatch/
10
“Collection Online: Gabriel Orozco”. Guggrenheim.org. Accessed 14 November 2021
https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/artist/gabriel-orozco
11
“Gabriel Orozco: Yielding Stone Image”. ICAboston.org. Accessed 1 November 2021
https://www.icaboston.org/art/gabriel-orozco/yielding-stone-image
performance and photography to symbolise the body as it moves through our world. As the

ball weighed roughly the same as Canclini’s body, its presence is standing in for the artist.

Through photographs we see the stone in different stages of the journey, very clearly

picking up the textures, leaves and dirt of the pavement as seen in Figure 3 below.

Figure 3: Image taken from Moma.org. “Site Search: Gabriel Orozco: Audio” Moma.org12

Canclini said of this piece that the ‘vulnerable stone’ shows its history through ‘imprints

from reality’ which give us a clear image of ‘the body in action’13. This concept remains open

to interpretation by any person who has been imprinted on by their past travels and

experiences. Yielding Stone is a work that can be universally understood by all cultures. It

12
Image taken from Moma.org. “Site Search: Gabriel Orozco: Audio” Moma.org. Accessed 1 November 2021
https://www.moma.org/audio/playlist/240/3087
13
Quote taken from audio clip. “Art and Artists: Gabriel Orozco, Yielding Stone” Moma.org. Accessed 1
November 2021 https://www.moma.org/collection/works/142595
moves through time and space, collecting parts of the world around it, and identifies with a

sense of individuality not taken from heritage or tradition, but instead from a personal

history. If any place is relevant to the forming of the stone’s identity, it is due to

circumstance, and it can only build a limited amount of impressions and experiences into its

body before it rolls on. Orozco’s work here shows very clearly how identities are spread

across cultures as we move through modernity.

The 2010 outdoor installation Bridging Home commissioned by Liverpool Biennial was

completed by Korea born artist Do Ho Suh. Suh is an artist currently living in London, who

creates drawings, films, sculpture and installations based around the central themes of

memory, displacement, space and individuality.14 His work is well known for its exploration

of these common themes through ethereal, calculated, and highly impersonal aesthetics.

Bridging Home is a scale model of Suh’s childhood home in Korea, lodged at an angle

between two apartment buildings in Liverpool. The house is completely juxtaposed with its

surroundings and wedged awkwardly in space between two concrete blocks of buildings.

This juxtaposition makes it impossible to ignore, pulling the viewer in to think about this

house’s story. We come to assume it was lived in, lost and forgotten before it arrived here.

The presence of the building’s inhabitant, the artist, is also quite strong here. There is the

knowledge that the artist made this home, that he found an empty space to hold it, and that

he brought his home into this space, and left it there. The house becomes an identity,

morphed by its abandonment, and given a new life by its displacement. The cultural clash of

an intricate Seoul home and the Liverpool block apartments is a part of this installation’s

14
Artists: Do Ho Suh, Biography”. LehmannMaupin.com. Accessed 15 October 2021
https://www.lehmannmaupin.com/artists/do-ho-suh/biography
identity, and for every person who understands this joining there must be a similar story of

an identity; turned into memory, lost and dragged back to the surface.

Figure 4: Bridging Home, 2010. “Exhibition: Artists: Do Ho Suh” Biennial.com15

Bridging Home rises thoughts about the ‘immigrant’ finding a place to call home in an

unfamiliar culture. The empty space between these two buildings would not have been

noticed before, but in this case it is an opportunity to squeeze a home into. Suh’s home now

occupies the space as if it had been thrown in, with little care for functionality. A home

above all else should be functional, fulfil the needs of shelter and food. The positioning of

this house means it is no longer functional, and therefore it is no longer a place to live.

Instead the concept of this home is based on memory, the unpredictability of circumstance,

15
Image taken from Biennial.com. “Exhibition: Artists: Do Ho Suh” Biennial.com. Accessed 15 October 2021
https://www.biennial.com/2010/exhibition/artists/do-ho-suh
and the personal associations of the viewer and artist. It creates a sociocultural hybrid

between traditional and modern, between ‘here’ and ‘there’, that can only be formed and

understood by a person who’s identity is also constructed of these various elements.

Canclini’s ‘polyglot, multi-ethnic, migrant’ identity has a very strong presence in this piece.

These three artworks are very relevant explorations by artists into the ideas that Néstor

García Canclini put forward. From these three examples, it is clear that contemporary artists

are creating works that are very much ‘constituted by cultural nomadism’. These artists and

their works put ‘polyglot, multi-ethnic, migrant’ identities on public display. They

respectively dive into the implications of administration, travel, and displacement on the

human identity, all of these things facilitated by the modernisation of urban environments,

and the globalisation of economies and politics between nation-states.

 Bibliography

Figure 1: Wellesley College Public Affairs. 2011. Francis Alys Exhibit Opening.
https://library.artstor.org/asset/SS7732055_7732055_12610702.

Figure 2: Screenshot taken from public video The Nightwatch, 2004. FrancisAlys.com.
Accessed 14 November 2021 https://francisalys.com/the-nightwatch/

Figure 3: Image taken from Moma.org. “Site Search: Gabriel Orozco: Audio” Moma.org.
Accessed 1 November 2021 https://www.moma.org/audio/playlist/240/3087

Figure 4: Image taken from Biennial.com. “Exhibition: Artists: Do Ho Suh” Biennial.com.

Accessed 15 October 2021 https://www.biennial.com/2010/exhibition/artists/do-ho-suh

“Art and Artists: Gabriel Orozco, Yielding Stone” Moma.org. Accessed 1 November 2021
https://www.moma.org/collection/works/142595

“Artists: Do Ho Suh, Biography”. LehmannMaupin.com. Accessed 15 October 2021

https://www.lehmannmaupin.com/artists/do-ho-suh/biography

“Collection Online: Gabriel Orozco” Guggrenheim.org. Accessed 1 November 2021

https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/artist/gabriel-orozco

“Exhibition: Artists, Do Ho Suh”. Biennial.com. Accessed 15 October 2021

https://www.biennial.com/2010/exhibition/artists/do-ho-suh

“Gabriel Orozco: Yielding Stone Image”. ICAboston.org. Accessed 1 November 2021

https://www.icaboston.org/art/gabriel-orozco/yielding-stoene-image

García Canclini, Nestor, Hybrid Cultures: Strategies for entering and leaving modernity.
London, University of Minnesota Press, 1995

Medina, Cuauhtémoc, Russel Ferguson, Jean Fisher. Francis Alys. London, New York:
Phaidon Press LTD., 2007

Morley, David, Home Territories: Media, Mobility and Identity. Oxon: Routledge, 2000