SHHH… Arts and Literature Laboratory, Madison WI, February 3 - March 3, 2018
The exhibition presents a collection of American WWII posters alongside the work of 24 contemporary artists whose work critiques conventional social, political, and economic principles. The artists invited to exhibit use ”propaganda” in some way to reframe their subject in order to advance a position of political critique, satire and rage. Contrasted with the war posters dire war rhetoric, intense thematic control and anachronistic cultural portrayals, Shhh... artists employ individual applications of a variety of materials and techniques to sound the alarm. Video, drawing, film, sculpture, collage, and photography are among the mediums used to carry a range of romantic, rational, protest and histrionic themes. The war posters were used to persuade, guide and educate the American population on the threat to Democracy posed by the Nazi regime. The collection is an example of how the power of propaganda was used to shape and unify the American collective conscious toward a single purpose. But what happens when the threat to democracy comes from within the government and the oval office itself?
Thorsen Kursél, Guest Curator
Guest Curator; Thorsen Kursel, “Shhh… ”, Exhibition Video Document, Screen Saver Image: “Dont Give Up The Ship” Whitney Lynn, Arts and Literature Laboratory, Madison Wi, 2018
