Contemporary Art
Moment Specific: Art which speaks on a specific political situation or place.
Body Specific Art: Works created with a heavy emphasis on the artists' physical bodies. Whether through the use of the body as the art object, or the bodies use as a tool for making.
Identity Specific:
Art work which speaks on the identity the artist and their personal reality
Ja'Tovia Gary - Givenchy Document
In this film the artist uses juxtaposing images of police brutality and references to Monet to speak about the intersection of art and race. As a African American filmmaker and women, Gary speaks about both communities in the mode of film.
Hito Steyerl - FUCKING DIDATIC Steyerl addresses our modern reality of hyper survaliance specifically in the hands of government powers. Specifically about the censoring and disapperance of one of her friends in Turkey. In this way the film relies on the artists personal life and experiences and the format of visual communication through film.
Marina Abramović - Rhythm O 
Abramović stood silently while the audience used a variety of objects to interact with her. The open ended nature of the performance art allowed viewers to reveal their intention and desires for what the piece should be and highlighted the blurred line between artists and their art. She gave up agency over her being and surrendered her physical form over to the audience.
Sun Tunnel - Nancy Holt This art is specific to an open desert in Utah. The concrete tunnels allow viewing around and through the work and use the open space to hone perspective of the structures to each other and the greater surroundings.
Rirkrit Tiravanija - Untitled Pad Thai Using a mixture of experimental film and culinary art, Tiravanija, a Thai artist, feeds a gallery audience a dinner of Pad Thai. This art work creates a setting of intimacy through the mixing of the world of the domestic and fine arts, highlighting a shared cultural experience .
Beware the Lily Law - This film speaks about the trans experience within the American prison system. Although the filmmaker is not a trans individual herself, she speaks on issues of identity in a site specific piece, which plays inside an old prison cell, giving the viewer a better sense of the feeling of incarceration.
Carole Schneeman - Interior Scroll
After disrobbing and removing a scroll from inside herself, Schneeman reads the statement on the paper Schneeman's work directly relied on her body, as the statement physically came out of her. Conceptually, the piece is in conversation with the feminine form and societies relationship to it.
Kara Walker - Speaks on the history of slavery in the United States as well as the art history of silloutes. As an artist and a woman of color, her identity is tied up in both elements of her work.
Cassils - Becoming an image
In this performance, the artist uses their body to physically shape a large pile of clay. Through the viewing of the process the body is turned into a tool although also shown as a force of strength.
Both the identity and physical body of the artist are highlighted in these works in a similar way although the identity often has to do with a historical reality while the body has a modern current emphasis. All the art works in these categories relate to identities and physical bodies.
Medium Specific : Art which relies on the medium in which it's created. Whether continuing or rejecting the history of the medium or reliant on the physical characteristics of the material.
Paul Sharits - TOUCHING. Using Using film and audio in a piece of experimental film, this work relies on the time and sound the viewer experiences to produce a hypnotic experience.The inclusion of self mutalation and violet undertones also speak to the war at the time in Vietnam.
Roberto Lugo - 40 cooler 4 This piece references a history of drinking vessels as well as modern consumptions of alcohol. The ceramic piece additionally references Luges personal identity. In these ways the piece relies on its medium, a history ad the artists personal identities.
Betty Woodman - Pillow Pitcher This piece speaks on a history of pottery and ceramics. Woodman discusses the false stratification which considered pottery a lesser form of art. Painting, often considered a fine art form, is brought onto the surface area of a ceramic vessel to discuss this segregation.
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Both women are commenting on racial issues in America although in very different mediums.
Betye Saars work discusses her experience of racism in America. Using mixed media the artist includes racist imagery to reject stereotypes and subvert them.
James [Yaya' Hough - I Am the Economy In this watercolor work, Hough comments on the prison. industrial system and its reduction of individuals into working bodies used for financial profit. As someone whose experienced incarceration, Hough's physical body experienced lack of agency.
Radical Openness by Bell Hooks discusses identity in turns of a larger instituion.
Frantz Fanon's Fact of Blackness describes how an identity of blackness is a lack of identity in the context of colonialisation and anti-blackness.
Vilém Flusser's essay Form and Material discusses the changing role of material in the art world and specifically the notion of post-matireal art.
Meghan Jone's writing on the Tea Bowl includes the extensive history of the tradition and its interactions with modern tea bowls.
Marking Time by Fleetword begins a discussion of art made in incarcerated states and the inevitable effects on the artist and the art produced.
Sculpture in the Expanded Field by Krauss discusses how expanding material selection and creation expands the term of sculpture but in distinct ways still connected to the larger history of sculpture.
In the essay, Framing Performance, Taylor discusses the role of the artists body in their art specifically focusing on the role of the body in performance based art.
The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House
by Audre Lorde looks at the role of the art institutions and the way they shape our perspectives on art and art history.
Mary Miss -PERIMETERS/PAVILIONS/DECOYS This outdoor work uses structures ad negative space in a site specific work which references the war in Vietnam.
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Portrait of Mnoja by Mickalene Thomas uses unconventional materials within the medium of painting to depict a women in a position of strength and regality. Sequins and glitter are used to elevate a history of craft