Bert Benally and Ai Weiwei: Part II – Pull of the Moon

07.24.14
original article from CFile

Ai Weiwei

Public Art | Bert Benally and Ai Weiwei: Part II – The Performance of Pull of the Moon

This the second part of a report on the collaboration between Navajo artist Bert Benally and Chinese artist Ai Weiwei as part of TIME (Temporary Installations Made for the Environment), a program of New Mexico Arts. You can read part one here. In this case the performance on the night of June 28, 2014 was not the public part of the event. It was witnessed by a small group that included CFile Chief Editor Garth Clark. The public program includes an exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Native Arts (Santa Fe, July 16-October 15, 2014) of the 3D modeling digital landscape created by xRez Studio of Pull of the Moon, which shows a fly-over view of Coyote Canyon featuring Benally and Ai’s art installations. Also, there was a showing of a film produced by xRez (nothing to with reservations) in a 50-foot diameter dome screen at Museum Hill in Santa Fe on July 18th and the 19th. You can read the interview with Ai Weiwei and Garth Clark about the performance here.

Among the first of many transcendent moments during Ai Wewei and Bert Benally’s performance (June 28 2014, Coyote Canyon, Navajo Nation) Pull of the Moon was when the cliff edge on which I was seated seemed to lift and gently float forward. Seeing as I and several others of the 30 or so witnesses to the performance were seated a couple of feet from a sheer 40 to 50 foot drop, the feeling was initially disconcerting and I saw some, alarmed, scoot back from the edge.

Of course nothing actually moved. It was an optical illusion caused by the growing darkness that merged between the cliff top and the canyon floor. However, the sense of suspension, of floating while viewing Ai and Benally’s sand drawings below, never quite left me.

The sand drawings by the two artists were related, but were not an actual collaboration. Ai’s was a mandala of interlocking bicycles. It was drawn with crushed white porcelain from Ai’s studio (from recent work but not ancient shards) atop a circle of black sand found in another part of the canyon and trucked to the site. It was executed with perfect precision by Benally and staff of the Navajo Nation Museum in Window Rock and until the sunset faded the porcelain glowed as though it was neon. (To read about Ai’s thinking behind this piece read his interview with Garth Clark here.)

Ai Weiwei
Ai Weiwei’s bicycle mandala.

Benally’s drawing was simply gouged into the sand itself and then detailed with wood and sticks. He decided to include some points of connection to both Ai’s career and drawing. He viewed the symbolism of the interlocking bicycles (from Ai’s Forever series, named after the leading Chinese bike manufacturer) as the industrial machine that powered China with the energy coming from those who pedaled. And that caused him to wonder what machine represented his own people’s labor. He came up with something more benign, weaving and silversmithing, (the Navajo Nation has no manufacturing industry to speak of) and so patterns and symbols from those crafts were laid out inside the drawing with sticks.

A few minutes before the sun dropped below the Western rim of the Canyon, Benally began his performance. The moon was nearly dark, just a pencil-thin crescent of light showing. Away from any light pollution the setting was powerful; the velvet black bowl of sky shimmered with stars, the most dazzling display I have ever seen (even in my years in Africa). The night was still, virtually no breeze, and silent. As if on cue, insect, bird and animal noises abruptly turned off.

In the middle of Benally’s drawing was an enormous pot made of woven rushes from the canyon and plastered with clay. Symbolically, it stood as the container of all the depressing and erroneous stereotypes about the Navajo that Benally had encountered in his travels. Fire began rising out of this giant pot, slowly at first, just an interior glimmer and then it quickly flared, high to sky like a beacon burning with extraordinary intensity.

The pot soon began to sag and crater inwards and as it did two things happened. A metal sculpture of a corn stalk was revealed, standing for the true Navajo identity with, cleverly and subtly, the ears of corn made from coiled bicycle chains. Second, the fire now began to spread at ground level into the four quadrants of the drawing, heading toward a pyre at each compass point, which burst into flame. As flames traveled across the stick patterns, weaving and silver stamp marks came to life in the low-flickering firelight.

Ai Weiwei
From the performance of Pull of the Moon.

Given the drama of Benally’s performance (music was a part as well but I will speak about that in a moment) I worried about Ai’s drawing. Would it just lie there inert, motionless and passive? The fire took care of that. At the beginning when the flames were high, Ai’s drawing was pulled in by the light and became a witness- a voyeur almost- to what was happening alongside. Stylistically it was an alien counterpoint, so absolutely precise and mechanical adjoining Benally’s more organic expression, two worlds but one light.

As the pot burned down, the angle of light striking Ai’s drawing began to fade and then something remarkable and serendipitous happened. The porcelain sand used to draw the bicycles was in relief, about three inches higher than the ground. It was also shaped into a triangle, flat on each side and sharply peaking in the middle. It looked like a prism and responded to the fire.

At this point the drawing began to lose structure and cohesion as light came from different directions, flared and fell. Soon the drawing appeared to be warping, twisting. It lost its bicycle imagery. Indeed, toward the end what it most closely resembled was the randomly scattered remains of a giant skeleton. (I kept that observation to myself that night; the Navajo have an aversion to death and death symbols.)

The masterful music by Benally wrapped everything in sound. It covered everything like a blanket. The observers, the performance on the canyon floor, the canyon itself, and the sky were all gathered into an intimate embrace. The artist wove a soundscape drawn from different indigenous music sources across the world. It issued forth from the canyon wall opposite us and the acoustics were perfect. Every tremble, murmur and note was clear.

Often heavy on pulsing bass, the music moved through chant into feral sounds and melodic surges. The transitions were slow, carefully metered and blended so that one was never aware of a shift in sound until one was already into the next movement. One’s ear became the mediator between eye and mind and then the music ended, slowly fading in volume. I was left in absolute pregnant silence, floating on my rock in nature’s cathedral, breathless.

Garth Clark is the Chief Editor of CFile. He is reporting from The Penland School of Crafts, high in the Appalachian Mountains, North Carolina until July 30 as the 2014 recipient of the Andrew Glasgow Writer in Residence Fellowship, an honor he is thrilled to receive.

Featured image: Ai Weiwei’s bicycle mandala lit by the fires of Bert Benally’s installation during the Pull of the Moon performance.

Any thoughts on this post? Share yours in the comment box below.

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Process photographs showing the construction of Pull of the Moon.
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Ai Weiwei wearing a gift from the Navajo Nation.

Public Art | Bert Benally and Ai Weiwei: Part I – Shí kéyah (My country)

07.24.14
original article from CFile

Bert Benally

Public Art | Bert Benally and Ai Weiwei: Part I – Shí kéyah (My country)

This the first part of a report on the collaboration between Navajo artist Bert Benally and Chinese artist Ai Weiwei as part of TIME (Temporary Installations Made for the Environment), a program of New Mexico Arts. You can read part two here. In this case the performance on the night of June 28, 2014 was not the public part of the event. It was witnessed by a small group that included CFile Chief Editor Garth Clark. The public program is an exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Native Arts (Santa Fe, July 16-October 15, 2014) of the 3D modeled digital landscape created by xRez Studio of Pull of the Moon, which shows a fly-over view of Coyote Canyon featuring Benally and Ai’s art installations. Also, there was the showing of a film produced by xRez (nothing to with reservations) in a 50-foot diameter dome screen at Museum Hill in Santa Fe on July 18th and the 19th. You can read the interview with Ai Weiwei and Garth Clark here.

What follows is a description of the project from Bert Benally:

Bert Benally
Process photograph of Benally’s piece for Pull of the Moon.

The total area of the piece is 40 feet in diameter, with a centerpiece that is 15 feet high with a 6-foot diameter. The centerpiece is a Navajo-style utilitarian clay pot, that was plastered onto a wooden frame weaved from saplings. A corn sculpture welded from metal and bicycle parts was placed inside the pot and was revealed when the clay pot burned and crumbled.

The area surrounding the clay pot was divided into four quadrants in correlation with the four directions. There were two lines separating the four quadrants, made from painted 4-inch PVC pipe cut in half and filled with water. The four quadrants have images made from lines which are on fire. On the outside perimeter of the circle there are four smaller circles, each with a fire in the middle and a design made with shadows.

Bert Benally
Benally’s rendering during the process of its installation in Coyote Canyon.

The pot that burns and crumbles follows the lead of Ai Weiwei’s artistic protest of breaking historically significant pots in his own country. In this instance, the pot represents the general stereotypes and misunderstandings of the outside world’s view of the Navajo people. The pot crumbling and revealing the corn sculpture is the breaking down of those views and showing the world the beauty of the Navajo philosophy, culture, language and people.

The corn sculpture, which remains after the pot has burned down and crumbled away, symbolizes the Navajo both culturally and spiritually. The colored lines made from PVC pipe filled with water represent rainbows. They are painted red and blue. For Navajos rainbows represent protection and also beauty.

Bert Benally

Again using Ai Weiwei’s image as a source, four images were developed using what I see as his idea of people as industry. In this piece the industry was a traditional one, the industry of rug weaving and silver-smithing. Using the Navajo philosophy of the four directions, images were developed for the quadrants and for the outlying circles. Two of the quadrants have designs that came from rug-weaving traditions and the circles on the perimeter came from silver-smithing stamps. In the quadrants, the east has a rug design that came from the eyedazzler era and it has a complex, geometric pattern. The south quadrant had a bear and a mountain, images which were derived from the stories told to me by the local residents about the origin of their clan, “Tsinajinnie.” The west had another rug design from chief blankets. The last quadrant, the north, had another design derived from the origin stories of the “Tsinajinnie Clan;” it was of a thick forest. The four circles on the outer perimeter had shadow designs of old silversmithing stamps, of the early days of silver work by the Navajo.

All the materials used for the artwork were collected right from the canyon. Particular attention was paid to artistic traditions of the Navajo as well, such as sand painting, weaving, silver smithing and clay pottery. Each tradition was reinterpreted and used in a more contemporary fashion. The piece was made with a Navajo audience in mind and contained many elements that were only perceivable by a person with knowledge of Navajo history and culture. The piece was accompanied by a collage of sound made from samples and loops of indigenous cultures from throughout the world mixed with traditional sounds and music of the Navajo.

Bert Benally is an art teacher, installation, sound and music artist living in the Navajo Nation.

Featured image: Bert Benally, Pull of the Moon, 2014. Part of the Pull of the Moon performance with Ai Weiwei.

Any thoughts about this post? Share yours in the comment box below.

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Bert Benally, Pull of the Moon, 2014. Note the observers for scale.
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Benally’s and Ai Weiwei’s pieces side-by-side.