WIGA 2011
For the second annual What Is Good Art Competition, artists were asked to meditate on the “sublime” and the “beautiful,” two ideas rooted in aesthetic philosophy. Must art harness the sublime—that sense of discomfort when faced with ideas beyond our comprehension—to convey an ethical message? Can we find beauty in the gruesome?
A distinguished panel of judges, made up of experts from both art and ethics-related disciplines at Duke and beyond, awarded $500, $300, and $100 to the first, second, and third place winners, respectively. During the opening gala on April 11, attendees voted for a fourth Gallery Choice prize as well.
The What is Good Art? Exhibition was open Monday-Friday, 8am-5pm, April 11 through May 15, 2011.
Panel of Judges:
Christopher Bass, Vice President at Oak Hill Capital Partners, L.P.
William Fick, Visiting Assistant Professor of the Practice of Visual Arts
Margaret Mertz, Director, The Kenan Institute for the Arts
Noah Pickus, Director, The Kenan Institute for Ethics
Kimerly Rorschach, Director, Nasher Museum of Art
Suzanne Shanahan, Associate Director, The Kenan Institute for Ethics
Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Chauncey Stillman Professor in Practical Ethics in the Department of Philosophy and the Kenan Institute for Ethics
Charles Thompson, Director of Undergraduate Studies, Center for Documentary Studies
The winners of the second annual What is Good Art? Competition were:
Sarah Goetz, “Intermittence” (1st place)
Marissa Bergmann, “Inverse Uni*verse” (2nd place)
Abigail Bucher, “Seal, It’s What’s for Dinner” (3rd place)
Chelsea Pieroni, “Manifest SMOKE” (Gallery Choice)
Below, read the full 2011 exhibition statement:
See the rest of the 2011 What Is Good Art? Exhibition below.
Abigail Bucher, Seal, It's What's for Dinner
Third Place
The Inuit hunter sliced open the stomach of the seal, effortlessly pulling apart the skin from the muscle. His bloody hand gripped the blade gracefully, and I watched in fascination as he tasted a bit of the liver. I snapped pictures so I could hide behind my camera because the scene was too overwhelming to witness directly, too shockingly beautiful to comprehend.Though I describe the scene as beautiful, it makes my vegetarian friend nauseous. Recently, Canadian animal rights activists have declared seal hunting to be inhumane, but they do so for the good of the seal, largely unaware of the importance of this longstanding Inuit tradition. After centuries of colonization and destruction of their culture, Inuit are yet again having to defend their daily lifestyles which enable them to simply survive. How is living off what the land provides unethical? Are they instead to eat the pesticide-sprayed fruits and hormone-injected meats imported into their communities from these same outsiders?Meanwhile, the more the developing world utilizes pesticides, the more polychlorinated hydrocarbons gravitate to the polar regions and accumulate in Inuit bodies. The more the developing world utilizes energy, the more climate change affects seals by disrupting populations of organisms lower in the Arctic marine food chain. Declining seal populations will alter the future of Inuit in unfortunate ways by increasing their dependency on expensive, outside sources of food, and stripping them of their traditional practices. The actions of developing countries like ours are silently stripping Inuit of scenes like this, practices which represent all that is natural and beautiful between humans and the earth.
For more information, contact Christian Ferney.