“06880” culture correspondent Robin Moyer Chung writes:
MoCA\CT’s 250th anniversary exhibit, “Looking for History,” is thought-provoking, masterful — and kind of stressful.
The Newtown Turnpike museum chose 3 accomplished artists for the show: Michael Borders, Ellen Harvey and Rick Shaefer. (Should it matter that Harvey is British, and Shaefer grew up in Europe?) Borders’ exhibit arrives August 13.
According to the website, the exhibit “challenges the traditional American narrative. Rather than a purely celebratory look at the American past, this show is a striking reflection on memory, loss, and community identity.”
I agree: It’s more striking than celebratory.
Rick Shaefer at MoCA\CT, with one of his works. (Photo/Hanyue Wang)
It’s also an interesting exercise in opposing dialogues about toxic nostalgia.
According to Harvey, “nostalgia can be flattened and used to manipulate people.” The happy memories of a privileged few is harmful when propagandized to a larger society.
In Harvey’s “The Disappointed Tourist” exhibit, over 300 of her vintage postcard-like paintings are pieced together like a quilt. Each pays homage to someone’s favorite place that no longer exists.
These are not simply happy recollections. They are deliberate antidotes to toxic nostalgia.
Harvey believes that “nostalgia belongs to everyone,” and everyone deserves a special memory of their own.
While she embraces the positivity of nostalgia, Shaefer’s adjoining exhibit, “Colossi,” forces us to confront the toxic underbelly.
With political overtones, frenzied lines and sly wit, “Colossi” is thrilling in its scope and detail. The brutalist images mix cultures, temporalities, historic tropes and deities.
“The New Colossus” depicts a group of white older men (using likenesses of titans Walt Disney, Robert Moses and Albert Speer) consulting specs for an enormous wall amid a mass of construction equipment, airplanes, and swirling … angels?
Rick Shaefer’s “The New Colossus.”
MoCA\CT executive director Robin Jaffee Frank says, “So you’ve got to ask yourself: What’s the purpose of the wall? Who are we walling in? Who are we walling out?” It seems the answer to the latter is everybody but white men.
Alongside Shaefer’s canvas monuments to industry and power are massive drawings of refugees, seething with urgency and trepidation. These desperate and doomed figures will certainly be denied entrance to the titan’s wall. and the privileged narrative within.
Yes, it was fun locating Harvey’s Westport paintings: The Remarkable Book Shop, Cedar Brook Café, Bloodroot and Allen’s Clam House. I got a kick out of someone pointing out Shaefer’s own image in one of his works.
But I’m a fun seeker. And that’s not always the point.
Ellen Harvey’s “Remarkable Book Shop.”
(Robin Moyer Chung covers culture for “06880.” If you enjoy her work — or anything else on this hyper-local blog — please click here to support our work. Thank you!)
