Art21: 5+ Inspirational Artist - Sarah Ferreira

Art21: 5+ Inspirational Artists 

Art21 Logo

1-Who were the 5 +artists you chose videos about?

• The videos I had chosen were: 
  Guadalupe Maravilla & the sound of Healing 
  Sarah Sze: Designing a Subway Station 
  Barry McGee: Tagging
  Zanele Muholi: Mobile Studios
  and my own choice from the youtube channel:
  Abigail DeVille: "Light of Freedom"
  
  

2-What were 5+ of the themes the artists addressed about making work? 

• Maravilla makes his work autobiographical and relates his work often to events in his life like war and cancer. He uses his own ancient and indigenous knowledge to create new rituals for healing and using his performance to heal the community.
  Sze's work is public as she was tasked to design an installation for the Second Avenue Subway in NYC. She uses this station as a way to bring people from all walks of life together as she states that it's "Democratic in nature" to use a subway. She includes all aspects of New York City life into her work to bring further citizens together that would walk by the installment on their day to day lives.
  McGee's work is often seen as a crime as tagging is associated with graffiti culture, lining up every wall with your own signature or design for people of the streets to pass by. He uses this criminal knowledge to get a thrill out of creating work and plastering up on walls to have a sense of "getting away with it", his name is known within the skating and graffiti communities. 
  Muholi is an activist who photographs members of the LGBT community in South Africa with her "mobile studio". Immersing themselves into the world of this marginalized group to show beauty and access to these members.
  DeVille creates a work of art consisting of a pile of blue mannequin arms that burn in inspiration over the Black Lives Matter movement. Together came demonstrators hooked arm-in-arm with one another against the racial injustice.
  
  

3-What were 5+ challenges the artists faced in making their work?

• each artist faced difference challenges throughout the creation of their work wether it was recovering and conquering from ones own traumatic past as well as limitations with each public work that required spacing. Depending on their country of operation it became life or death when creating their work and attempting to go around their own laws for the sake of art and justice.

4-What were 5+ inspirations you drew from the artists?

• If I am being quite honest I mostly just admired each artists tenacity and ability to fight in a world filled with so many injustices, using their artworks for the sake of art and knowledge. The type of art i find more enjoyable is more shallow than that, I prefer game design, visual development, animation and character design. I couldn't take any inspirations as this type of art just isn't my cup of tea. 

5-What were 5+ things you would like to Incorporate into your own work after watching these videos?

• What I wish to incorporate into my own work is a sense of style and fun as people look at my designs and stories that I'm able to create. I have already started doing these practices with my own work, especially with metaphors and with over all storytelling. I'm just not as performative as the artists that were featured in each video as I find my work and myself to be a person that works better in a team and in the background. I want to just be part of the process, not take credit for the whole of it. Maybe become lead art director in a film or game but nothing more than that, I'm just working very differently than the people featured.