Arnheim Gallery
April 12-28
Opening Reception:
Wednesday April 13, 6:00-8:30 pm
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PERSONA(E)
External Manifestation of the Conscious Mind
Curated by the Art Education Exhibitions Class
Featuring works by:
Claudia Quigua
Rosie Ranauro
Donny Morin
Joseph Geary
Molly Withers
Eileen Fairley
Joe Huang
Daniel Sherman
Doug White
Evan Heidepriem
Chris Maliga
Alicia R. Thomas
Kerri Coburn
Danielle Freiman
Ashley Smith
Julianne Jensen
Matthew Oates
Erika Duran
Aaron Zinman
Persona is not a topic that we consider on a daily basis, yet it is something that infiltrates our everyday. We encounter, respond to, and create personae, often without even realizing it.
Persona—or, what Merriam-Webster calls a “social façade”—is easiest to spot throughout pop culture. Performers take on a stage presence that we all know is different from that of their private lives. Some build careers using this fabricated identity—Lady Gaga, Madonna, Prince. We could identify countless instances of personae that we accept, no questions asked.
But this same façade that performers and celebrities use to adapt to superstardom is one that we all use every day. The person you are in the privacy of your home may be drastically different from the one you are while waiting in line at the grocery store, or on a crowded train. What’s more is that this is socially accepted—and even expected. How awkward would it be if we did not adapt a front to fit a particular social condition, but instead remained the same in every situation? It would be funny, or strange, or at times even dangerous.
We experience the tangible effects of misplaced persona whenever we encounter someone in one environment that we usually associate with another. Think of a time when you were at, say, the video store (think way back), and you bumped into an old school teacher. A very specific and unusual shift happens. You take on the role of student, and yet you are just one person talking in public to another. So why are you also a student talking to a teacher in a video store?
In organizing this exhibition, we found various approaches to persona. Andy Warhol’s celebrity silkscreens examined the (overly) manufactured persona, one that, in its colossal scale, squashes any possibility of a more nuanced (and authentic?) identity. Is Marilyn Monroe anything more to us than a well-equipped classic beauty and mediocre actress? Maybe not, but no matter. We can call Warhol’s approach Persona Examined.
Other artists use personae for the purpose of activism. The Yes Men perform various roles—from corporate spokesmen to news anchors—in what they call “identity correction,” a subversive approach commonly referred to as culture jamming. The Guerrillas Girls, too, employed a similar tactic when they began hanging their statistically-backed, in-your-face feminist propaganda posters throughout New York in the mid ‘80s. Their personae, women in gorilla masks who go by the names of great (dead) women artists—as well as that of the Yes Men—we can call Personae as Tool.
In what is surely not the last facet of persona, Personae Lived, we might discover the most complex and yet everyday approach. We could say that, while Warhol exploited celebrity personae throughout his artistic career, he also very much understood the control one could have over one’s own projected self. From his early name change, to his platinum blonde makeover, to his most famous quote: “If you want to know all about Andy Warhol, just look at the surface of my paintings and films and me, and there I am. There’s nothing behind it.” Warhol was a master of persona.
How do we shape ourselves to (appropriately) fit various contexts? Philosopher Judith Butler might say that who we are is a result of repeated performances of identity. Although her essay, Performative Acts and Gender Constitution, focuses on performances of gender, Butler’s idea that identity is formed through repeated acts of performance can be applied to any aspect of one’s identity, including class, race, and age. The artists in this exhibition explore the multifaceted use of the projected self in our everyday in a quest to understand the seemingly simple yet inexplicably complicated human act that is: PERSONA(E).”