Who is the artist?

Haley Haas, Photos by Friansa Rangga and lilartsy

What is art? I wonder how semiotics would answer that — or someone with synesthesia. Never mind that’s not the point.

The other day, I attended a gallery opening here in Austin. At first glance, I admired the joy and warmth that flowed out of the photographs on the walls. At first glance, I saw the work of a talented photographer. At second glance, I came to realize the images were not taken by the artist, rather they featured her younger self.

I slowed down.

She didn’t take these pictures?

Where is her art?

I explored the gallery, spending longer than 90 seconds at each work (every art history student has heard that the average person spends less than 60 seconds in front of a work in a gallery or museum space and therefore isn’t able to fully see it). I followed the path created along the walls through the exhibit. Some of the frames were filled with poems, some with digitally manipulated images, some with self-portraits. They were beautiful and I appreciated the art (the sign and the symbol) in each piece. 

But when I arrived at the cluster of family archives scattered in a fragmented design on the wall, I didn't and still don’t get it.

The piece is curated like a memory that has been forgotten, some of it blank and empty and some of it interlocked. However, these are images of the artist as a baby. Does she even have memories of that day? Was it all taken on the same day? Well, she definitely didn’t take these images. She did not make the work. She did not take the picture. The scatter of images is random. How is this art? She is definitely not the artist.

The images are beautiful, warm, family portraits. I see the way they fit with the theme and story of the exhibition. But I don’t think the photographs are a piece of art. 

If you were to argue that they are a piece of art, what would you say about the images on my phone? The photos on the wall were not taken by an "artistic" camera, by an "artist," or with an artistic "intention." They were taken in the moment, with seemingly no consideration for composition or colors, line or shape. In the moment, someone snapped a shot of the scene. I could’ve done that on my phone. I probably have done that on my phone. Are the images on my phone art? All of them? Even the picture of the receipt I forgot to send my dad or the sticky note with my to-do list? What defines a photograph as art? The artist? The  composition? The intention?

Well, DuChamps would say that these are art, and they are the art of the artist that is being showcased in the exhibition. He would say that he did not make the urinal featured in The Fountain, but it’s his piece of art. Isn’t that the same thing happening here? DuChamps would say that the same way he flipped the urinal over, these images are clustered a certain way. He would see the equivalence and determine that these images are art.

I think DuChamps has a point, but I’m not sure how applicable his theory is to these particular images. These images, unlike the urinal, were not created for utilitarian use. They were taken to preserve a moment, to capture a scene. Though they are both redefining the original purpose of the object, there’s something else, something further inhibiting the artist's claim over these photographs. To me, it’s the fact that someone else took the pictures with a different intention. The pictures were not taken to be exhibited in a gallery, but they were taken to preserve a moment and share that moment with people of the future who were interested. We as the audience look at the images as a glimpse into the life of the artist, to celebrate her ancestry with her. This seems too similar to the original intention to take credit away from the original photographers. I might even go as far as saying that there’s some sort of intellectual theft going on. But I won’t go that far.

Well, maybe it’s manipulation and contribution to the exhibit theme that makes it art. I think there is art in curation as a practice and in effect. The way the piece fits into the storyline of the exhibit might be the art and might be the way the exhibit’s artist is claiming artistic regency over the photographs. But is that enough to claim that curation itself is a piece of art?