Heji Shin's Kanye West's Kunsthalle Zurich Gallery Show: "I Knew People Would Hate This Exhibition"

Artist Heji Shin is no stranger to controversy, writes Tom Waite for Dazed.

“I knew people would hate this exhibition,” the artist says.

Shin is currently showing some of her newest works at the Kunsthalle Zurich gallery, with an exhibition featuring nine larger-than-life injet portraits of Kanye West. The two separate prints are pasted together and printed directly onto the gallery’s walls.

Why do people hate the exhibition, according to Shin? “This desire to have art to meet their moral and political standards has always existed. Today, more than ever, art is considered as the ultimate validation.”

The artist’s Kanye portraits express a rebellion to political correctness sweeping the art world.

After meeting Kanye in Chicago, she joined him in rural Uganda, with a generally detached attitude about the rapper’s comments about slavery, his idolizing of Donald Trump or his often incoherent tweets. The actual images were shot in 10 minutes in LA.

Shin’s disinterest in Kanye’s political attitudes changed quickly when I saw people getting really mad. I was interested in how the media portrayed him all of the sudden, “when he expressed his opinion.”

“Is that art?” one commenter on the Kunsthalle Zurich Instagram writes, while another exclaims: “We love it! Kanye is bigger than God!!!”

A scholarly tweet: “His work may be far beyond the scope of my art history and theory training I received while in school. As far as I can tell the purpose of this work is to simply elicit the feelings of contempt for every party involved in this work.” is followed by “Fuck this garbage.”

Kanye made Shin her own MAGA-inspired New York Yankees cap with ‘make New York gay again’ on the brim. Even that act crazed the digital culture and they attacked her. artNet writes: She says the hat is about making a stand against politically correct culture. “My work wouldn’t be possible if I restricted myself in these terms,” she says. “I don’t even understand how somebody can possibly think this is about gay rights. What has Trump got to do with gay rights?” (Hmmm . . . actually Trump has quite a lot to do with gay rights, and his vice president has even more to do with it!”

“He-Ji Shin raises the question of portraiture today, and therefore addresses the difficult business of intimacy and exposure as they are undergoing a radical reevaluation in the context of social media,” says the institution’s director and curator, Daniel Baumann.  artNet sums up the point of the Kanye West images this way:

Shin and West seem to be a good match, both willing to stir the pot and and unafraid to annoy their audiences. It all begs the question: is the art world as tolerant of taboo as it imagines itself to be?

German-Korean photographer Heji Shins solo exhibition runs through February 2, 2019.

Will Londone Myers and Models of Color Have Better Black Hair Support For Fall 2018 Fashion Shows?

Londone Myers by Alexi Lubomirski for Harper's US February 2018

Rising model Londone Myers must be thrilled with her femme solo editorial 'Global Style' in the February 2018 issue of Harper's Bazaar US. The images document what I feel is a significant rise in the positive presence of women of color on the runway, in ads and headlining fashion editorials. 

Fine, reports Londone, but we still have issues. 

Writing for Teen Vogue in early October, 2017, Tess Garcia connected with Londone after this Instagram post documenting her Paris Fashion Week backstage experience. "The post’s caption reads, “I don't need special treatment from anyone. What I need is for hairstylists to learn how to do black hair. I'm so tired of people avoiding doing my hair at shows. How dare you try to send me down the runway with a linty busted afro. We all know if you tried that on a white model you'd be #canceled If one doesn't stand we all fall. If it isn't my fro it'll probably be yours.”

“No explanation was given at all,” she said. “There isn’t really much confronting you can do with these hairstylists. I’m not going to chastise [them], but [they] still don’t know what to do with natural hair. The other black girls at the show spoke French, so I was kind of on my own. I simply asked around the room for who did black hair multiple times and was cast aside, until they sat me in this guy’s chair who tried to send me off looking unpolished, like the other [black] girls. One of the other black models saw all of the lint in my hair and was surprised.”

“I think at moments like these we need each other as POC [in fashion]. We need a good support system within our small group- and to give a helping hand when we can,” Londone explained. “Just like Naomi paved the way for us, we should help out other girls. Even if that means handing out some edge control to another girl or helping another girl pick lint if they see any on another girl.”

The issue of natural hair ineptitude or "discrimination" as Londone sees it confirms the reality that the fashion and beauty industries still have a long way to go when it comes to fully embracing the beauty needs of people of color.

“Sometimes it really does feel like the industry just likes to categorize us by skin tone and make us feel like there is only room for one black model at a time,” said Londone. “We need to get rid of that mindset because there is room enough for all of us.”

On a side-note, Yale University's Women's Campaign School reports that 25 years later, the median age for women attending the school has dropped from mid-40s to around 30. Also different now, says Patricia Russo, who leads the school, the majority of those who enroll in the school are women of color.

Simply stated -- and thrillingly so -- women of color are on the march all over America in the terrible time of Trump. So the fashion and beauty industries in New York, London, Paris and Milan had best get their act together to meet the needs of these focused, deadly-serious young women on the move in the fashion industry. ~ Anne

Queen Elizabeth II & Ghana President Nkrumah In A 1961 Diplomat Foxtrot Watched In Black & White

(L) The real-life foxtrot between Ghana's President Kwame Nkrumah and Queen Elizabeth II and (R) 'The Crown's' version of the splendid dance featuring actors Claire Foy as Elizabeth II and Danny Sapan as Nkrumah

Who knew! In season 2, episode 8 of 'The Crown' Dear Mrs Kennedy, the geopolitics of the Cold War collide with Queen Elizabeth's pondering her private insecurities as monarch with the rising popular evangelicalism of America's Reverand Billy Graham, the global popularity of The Kennedys and the crumbling of the British Empire.  

Queen Elizabeth meets Jackie Kennedy, who seemingly has every male in Europe trailing and fantasizing about her every move, and hears through the grapevine some very unflattering comments made about her averageness. Mrs. Kennedy -- who later apologizes and says she was under pep drugs at the time -- referenced Elizabeth's inability to inspire Britain, let alone an empire breaking away from her influence. 

Claire Foy is fantastic here, fully capturing the naive insights of a woman unused to making honest personal connections; then thinking she had made a connection with Jackie Kennedy in the privacy of her private quarters and corgis, and then Elizabeth's devastation on hearing about Jackie’s unkind comments at a later gathering.

An opportunity for Queen Elizabeth to redeem herself in her own eyes and those in-the-know about the diplomatic incident between the two women presents itself in the Ghanaian capital of Accra. President Kwame Nkrumah has announced his intention to lead his newly independent nation into a strategic alliance with Communist Russia, a harsh reality realized with Russia has outbidding the US in helping Ghana to build the Volta Dam.

Queen Elizabeth arriving on her hstory-making trip to Ghana.

It’s thrilling to see Elizabeth rise to the occasion, becoming an active, independent agent as opposed to a passive observer of her life, buffeted by events and people acting out of her control on the world stage. Defying her Prime Minister, her advisers, the British press and even her husband, Elizabeth travels to Ghana with a single-minded goal. The Queen will bring the Ghana back into the Commonwealth by any means necessary -- and that includes a foxtrot. Note that in real life, PM Harold Macmillan did champion Elizabeth II going to Ghana, believing she could be his "charm offensive."

In consenting to a foxtrot -- yes, it happened for real -- with Nkrumah, Elizabeth II achieves more in a few minutes than British diplomats dealing with the young nation have managed to achieve in weeks. The dance scene itself is quite dazzling, as Elizabeth finds her Jackie-O side. Comparing the images from 'The Crown' above and the real-life photos below,  there is more physical space between the couple in the real-life dance -- if these images don't distort the truth. And we must always remember that 'The Crown' is a fictionalized account of history, viewed through the lens of the British Empire and Britain's crumbling monarchy.  

In reality, the Akosombo Dam was completed in 1965, in a project jointly financed by Ghana, the World Bank, the United States and the United Kingdom. Few sources -- even those who write that 'The Crown' is racist ( well SURE it is, given that colonialism was racist) -- debate that this foxtrot between Elizabeth II and President Kwame Nkrumah -- The Lion of Africa --was a diplomatic success on multiple fronts.

Here we have actual footage from the Queen's visit to northern Ghana. Note that there is hardly a woman in sight, except for Elizabeth II.