Analysis Of Santiago Sierra's 160cm Line Tattoed On Four People

“In contrast to government-commissioned public art, street art is illicit and subversive in nature. Therefore, most street artists, including Banksy, use pseudonyms to avoid legal prosecution for vandalism.”(Chung 27) Banksy’s street art does not focus on competing with rival artists, but focuses on engaging with a broader audience in a deeper level. He provokes his audience by deeply expressing out various social practices that helps viewers to reflect and confront certain aspects together as a community. (27) The underlying message of Banksy’s art can lead towards an active involvement of street art within the community.

In his novel Tattoos on the Heart, author Father Gregory Boyle S.J. shares his experiences as a pastor in the gang capital of the United States, Los Angeles, in an attempt to persuade his readers to look at gang members with a more humane perspective. To help his readers relate to the gang members, Fr. Boyle recounts personal anecdotes about the many gang members he works with and their journeys towards changing their lives. Through his use of colloquial language and informal diction and his narration of personal stories, Fr. Boyle creates an intimate tone accomplishes his purpose of discrediting the stereotypes associated with gangs and depicting a human face worthy of respect and sympathy. Though Boyle published this novel in 2010, his insight and wisdom on the state of gang violence still hold true today, and he continues to inspire his readers to recognize the tragedies many gang members face in their everyday lives.

“Artists today explore ideas, concepts, questions, and practices that examine the past, describe the present, or imagine the future.” Contemporary artists use a dynamic combination of media and technologies, methods, concepts, and subjects to create works that reflects The Human Condition in modern culture and society. Three contemporary artworks that utilise these artistic practices to express The Human Condition are Michael Parekowhai, Tracey Moffatt and Vernon Ah Kee. Each artist has used artistic devices to express the contemporary significance of The Human Condition by creating works that reflect back to their own experience and the history of their nationality.

However, the “live” is still typically absent. As the audience for this kind of art, we are always complicit in its meaning. This ringing especially true to any sort of “live” performance. With artworks such as this, one has to allow for themselves to be changed in response to the stimuli. O’Grady pushed the limits when it came to identity in her pieces, she went against the norm and decided to be different. Others chose to intervene into public spaces such as the street, or in this case a parade, to instigate a conversation between the viewer and performer - as one, they work together to allow for later viewers to understand the motif and the

Over the years, I have flirted with visual art. It started with pencil drawing, continued as an affair with marker illustration, then a dalliance with lettering, and I now have a relationship with photography. However, my favorite art will never be displayed in museums or galleries. It is not static and immutable. Rather, my chosen medium is fluid, living, volatile. No matter how well rehearsed, it will never be the same again. That’s the beauty of performance art.

In Tattoos on the Heart, by Gregory Boyle, he describes the insecurity of gangs, violence, father wound, and crisis that the prisoners went through when they got out of jail. Boyle runs Homeboy Industries that's located in the Boyle Heights neighborhood in Los Angeles, which was made to help gangs, and fresh out of prison parolees who want to improve their lives. They are not able to get jobs because their appearance gained financial and family insecurity. “Just assume the answer to every question is compassion” (Boyle 62). Having compassion was a way to have faith and not give up regardless of all the disgrace a person went through. Boyle addresses the problem of growing up around violence and not being able to attain

This piece was created during a time of political and social change. Increased political awareness and a focus on celebrity demanded art that was more

This essay describes the job of a tattoo parlor and the tattoo artist, and the interaction between the artist and the customer. The description is of a normal day where I visit Blue Moon Tattoo, watch a lady being tattooed, and receive a tattoo of my own. I describe the complete day in the parlor, from watching a woman find the perfect tattoo, to watching her getting the tattoo. Along with the description, the main point of this essay is to explain how people can actually be comfortable with a tattoo artist and be comfortable with needles being poked into their body. A small amount of interaction between the artist and the customer makes the tattoo have a bit of personality, and a memorable experience.

There is no doubt that this book is a critique of pure market capitalism. The alienation of the worker or the unemployed is very evident. The ethics are ‘dog eat dog '-a total lack of regard for the dignity of the human person. The struggle of Labour to regain its dignity is best exemplified in Steinbeck 's ‘In Dubious Battle '.

Capitalism has been the subject of ethical criticism since it was first introduced into society. I defend the morality of capitalism because it gives people incentive to work, establishes a web of trust between them, satisfies their material well-being, and generates a wide spectrum of prosperity.

The realm of human commodification has been complicated by the consideration of the connotation of “labor.” Human beings have been converted into faceless commodities, bought and sold in order to improve the profit margins of impersonal corporations. Thus, countries like the Philippines have evolved into a global labor market. Human beings are now being imported and exported to serve the whims of a capitalist market. The commodification of human beings has resulted in an impersonalization of social relations, which have now come to hold economic terminology. Human creativity and potential has been reduced to a wage-regulated transport of labor. While those at the top of the capitalist food chain enjoy the pleasures of a materialist world, those at the bottom loose their status as feeling, thinking human beings.

Capitalism started up as a system of investing and sharing money in order to increase the value of resources in the future. Capitalism was just an economic system, but then soon turned into a complex system of ethical practices. Harari defines capitalism as, “a set of teachings about how people should behave, educate their children and even think” (Harari 314). This economic system evolved along with the people that were endorsing it. Capitalism enables the rich to get richer, while the poor continue to get poorer. There are many benefits to capitalism, but there are downfalls as well, and these downfalls tend to be masked because of the rapid speed capitalists grow at. Harari first presents a definition for capitalism, and soon goes into great detail on why capitalism, while fast paced and unforgiving, is able to stand unwavered while other productions fail.

Any art medium can be utilized to tell a story or evoke emotion in a viewer. Artistry is unique in that it is purely visual and can be left to interpretation if the artist chooses to stay ambiguous in the message they are trying to convey. As an artist, I am always trying to analyze the meanings behind famous works of art, whether those meanings happen to be incidental or purposeful. So, when contemporary artist, Enrique Chagoya expressed his adoration for the social commentary expressed in Francisco Goya’s Los Caprichos sketches, I was intrigued.

Marina Ambramović’s concept of performance art interrogates the traditional forms and practices of what most people would consider to be the “norm”, that derive from personal preferences generated from different aspects of society. Abramović is known for her durational performance work that tests the endurance and limitations of her own body and mind. Performance art may be understood as a practice where the body of the artist is central or the medium itself involving objected based art materials such as paint and canvas. Abramović challenges this traditional sense, and introduces new concepts of “pushing the body to its limits” and cutting down the distance between artist and audience by making her own the body the medium. In this paper, I will be critiquing Ambramović’s use of performance art to the ways she provokes cultural politics by ultimately aiming to silence the question “what is art”. Upon watching her documentary “The Artist is Present”, I have found that in her performances she presents the public with challenges, shock, and emotions that can be understood as a controversial act; however the effect her performances have on people can differ based on the perspective of which performance art is viewed.

The tattooing of criminals sustained through the Middle Ages and spread across Europe, making the social practice of marking bodies go hand-in-hand with delinquency, deviance and social outcasts. The practice of marking bodies was later used during the colonization projects in Africa and Asia, and like the branding of criminals, it was used as a means to exert ownership and power over the locals (Fisher, 2002). With such a dark history, how then did the act of tattooing become intended and commoditized?