The ICA Goes Global

The interplay between the individual and society, between self-definition and collective identity, and between cultural standards and human norms has long intrigued social scientists and philosophers. Three new exhibits at Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) showcase artists’ attempts to make sense of the distinction between what is personal, what is cultural and what is universal.

The largest and most engaging of the exhibits is that of Dutch artist Rineke Dijkstra, whose photographs are a striking combination of documentary form and individual portraiture. Rather than defining her subjects through candid snapshots or in personal settings, Dijkstra uses universal locations or themes to document how individuals define themselves in similar contexts.

“Beaches,” for instance, is a collection of photographs of children and young adolescents on beaches in Europe and the United States. The prints are exactly the same size, the subjects are all standing the same distance from the camera, and the lighting is such that variations between the beaches themselves are hidden. This uniformity of setting and technique both highlights and obscures differences between the subjects. Seemingly universal trends, such as the awkwardness of adolescents in their developing bodies, emerge alongside cultural variables superficially evident in swimwear, hairstyles and accessories.

The most interesting, and perhaps most revealing, of the cultural differences is the way subjects from different countries approach the activity of being photographed. The American and western European youngsters exhibit a high degree of familiarity with the medium of photography, with the boys often posturing themselves to appear tough and strong and the girls shyly and self-consciously attempting to stand like models in fashion spreads.

The eastern European subjects, on the other hand, appear less packaged and less burdened with notions of what the finished photograph should look like. All of the photographs capture a certain charming naiveté and vulnerability, characteristic of those on the cusp of maturity.

Dijkstra adds the effects of time on conceptions of the self in a beautiful series of four photographs, taken of the same Bosnian refugee in the Netherlands over a period of six years. The girl, Almerisa, sits on a chair facing the same direction in all four shots, though the chair and the room change in each picture.

The first photograph shows a tiny girl with a blank, almost intrepid stare ripe with meaning and emotion. The subsequent portraits show Almerisa slowly shedding both the exterior trappings of her homeland and of childhood. In the last photograph, she is coyishly defiant, slouching slightly on the chair with her legs apart and a very knowing expression on her face. She no longer looks the part of a refugee, and she is no longer a child.

Her relationship with the camera has fundamentally changed, and it is clear that she is no longer merely being photographed, but is creating an image of herself.

Also on display are photos from Dijkstra’s “New Mothers” series, which documents both the intense joy and sheer exhaustion of women who have recently given birth. The series is painstakingly honest, showing the fresh beauty of newborn babies alongside the harsh physical realities of childbirth for their mothers.

The second exhibit, a collection of ink drawings by Marlene Dumas, a South African living in Amsterdam, explores the interplay between historical notions of feminine beauty, photography and art. The drawings—displayed checkerboard style in an almost dizzying array—mix traditional and contemporary figures of female beauty with androgynous faces based on photographs from a book depicting insanity. The line between the beautiful and the grotesque is blurred not only by androgyny, but also by the side-by-side placement of figures as disparate as round, curvaceous Ruben-esque women and today’s waifish models.

Another display, entitled “Rejects,” shows some of Dumas’s less interesting drawings, shredded or otherwise mangled in an effort to depict the agony and alienation of being ugly in a world obsessed with superficial beauty. One gets the clear sense from Dumas’s work that in addition to being a cultural construct, female beauty is also a very loaded and emotional concept.

The final exhibit, featuring the work of 2000 ICA Artist Prize winner, Laylah Ali, is slightly more obscure and ambiguous in its aims. Drawings of cartoonish, round-headed figures aptly called “Greenheads” depic confrontational situations that appear slightly amusing until closely inspected. The figures, which seem alien-like at first glance due to their green heads, soon come to resemble human beings in compromising positions. Morbid scenes of violence show lynchings, detached limbs, captivity and fear. Ali’s fine-grained gouache techniques allow her to emphasize disturbing minute details, like Confederate flags on the belt buckles of figures resembling Klu Klux Klansmen, and to depict race issues without using black and white.

The ICA’s current exhibitions, though perhaps only weakly related aesthetically, share the theoretical mission of exploring the connections between individuals and their surroundings. More than merely providing aesthetic satisfaction, the exhibits give one ample fodder for contemplation of the relationships between the personal, the cultural and the universal.

Rineke Dijkstra’s “Portraits,” Marlene Dumas’ “One Hundred Models and Endless Rejects” and Laylah Ali, “2000 ICA Artist Prize” will be at the Institute of Contemporary Art through July 1, 2001. For more information, please see www.icaboston.org, or call (617) 266-5152.