| Living Room Art (LRA) Catalogues
VBB’s living room art (LRA) catalogues allow local and inter/national audiences to re-experience our productions and further engage with the issues we explore. Each catalogue features photography and links to videos from actual events along with additional commissioned essays from artists and scholars involved in the productions.
On October 6, 2013, VBB launched our first living room art catalogues, Women Under Siege and Homes and Histories.
Click here to purchase a copy online, or visit the Hirsch Library at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston to check out a copy of Homes and Histories!
Co-editor Dr. Maria Gonzalez notes in her introduction that Borderlines: Volume Two, renders, vividly and from a range of positions, the experiecnes of stateless workers and communities upon whose labor virtually every country depends, but who are without official status or civil protections in the countries where they live and work. These pieces are explosive in nature, emotional by definition, and powerful in their words and images as they explore the conditions that relegate many boundary crossers to perpetual vulnerability and exploitation in nations unwilling to acknowledge those who work, live and die within their borders.
Contributors: Nandita Bhavnani (India), Arlene Bowman (Canada), Selfa Chew-Smithart (US/Mexico Border), Michelle Garcia, Tayeba Begum Lipi (Bangladesh), Naila Mahmood (Pakistan), Emmy Perez (US/Mexico Border), Harbeer Sandhu (Houston), and Noor Zaheer (India); interviews with Shirin Herman by Sehba Sarwar, Yescka from the ASARO Collective from Mexico by Christina Sisk, Mercedes Herrera by Michelle Garcia; and stories from participants in Sarwar's workshop for South Asian women/children in Gulfton.
As co-editor Dr. Margot Backus notes in her foreward, the pieces in Borderlines: Volume One share a common focus on things that went wrong for certain groups when a new border was imposed and sensitively describe what happens to cultural, national, or linguistic identities that a new border stigmatizes, garbles, or renders untenable. The authors and artists employ an array of strategies to re-assert or reinvent cultural identities disrupted by politically expedient but socially disruptive borderlines, Their inventive re-conceptions of self, culture and community offer valuable inspiration to keep seeking ways to listen and exchange ideas across borders, and to co-create new, border-disruptive expressions, spaces and collectives.
Contributors: Chintan Girish Modi (India); Sadya Mizan and Hafiza Nilofar Khan (Bangladesh); Tehmina Ahmed (Pakistan); Minerva Laveaga (El Paso); Mónica Arreola and Adriana Trujillo (Mexico); Sehba Sarwar, Bapsi Sidhwa and Shreerekha Subramanian, (Houston, Texas/Pakistan and India); and interviews with Daniel Bustamante by Monica Villarreal and with Frank Aguilar by Robinson Block and Jimmy Castillo.
VBB's Borderlines publications are edited by Dr. Margot Backus, and Dr. Maria Gonzalez.
Homes and Histories further expands VBB's Fall 2012/Spring 2013 living room art production, which was held on the streets of Freedmen's Town, Houston with digital links to Lyari, Karachi (Pakistan) as well as to villages outside of Karachi. Freedmen's Town was founded and built by enslaved peoples immediately after Emancipation in the 1860s, while Lyari is one of the oldest neighborhoods in Karachi and home to a large Baloch community whose roots are in east Africa. The catalogue features essayists who explore issues related to both communities; academics who discuss the history of Freedmen's Town and the African diaspora; and writings by curators involved in VBB's production. The publication also includes interviews with Freedmen’s Town residents: Jackie Beckham, Lenwood Johnson, and Edward Braziel; and with members of Pakistan’s black Diaspora: Akbar Baloch, Rafique Baloch, Iqbal Hyder, Gul Mohammad, and Pir Buksh.
Contributors: Anne S. Chao, Stephen Fox, Haris Gazdar, Aslam Khwaja, Kairn Klieman, Babette Niemel, Sehba Sarwar, Michael Woodson; and interviews with Robert Pruitt by Autumn Knight, with Lenwood Johnson by Gordon Anderson, and with Jackie Beckham and Edward Braziel by Sehba Sarwar.
Women Under Siege revisits our Spring 2012 productions, which explored women's health, education, and "security" issues in Houston and Karachi, Pakistan. By juxtaposing freedoms in Houston and Karachi that are often taken for granted, artists from both cities transformed a residential Houston home through installations, visual art, and performances. The catalogue features essayists who are actively working towards women’s rights in Houston and Karachi; poets who grapple with their own struggle for equality; writings by curators involved in the production; and interviews with Miriam Kass + Melaney Linton, two pro-choice pioneers in Houston, Texas.
Contributors: Ahsan Bari, Attiya Dawood, Autumn Knight, Larissa Lindsay, Hilda Saeed, Sehba Sarwar, Jacsun Shah, Rebecca L. White, Zohra Yusuf; and interviews with Miriam Kass by Sehba Sarwar and with Melaney Linton by Ana Laurel.
All VBB art catalogues are visualized by VBB Artistic Director/Founder Sehba Sarwar, and are supported by Ana Laurel. The catalogues are designed by Joshua Turner, with assistance from Angela Martinez.
|
