The newly released Monument Lab’s audit of the United States’ commemorative landscape, in partnership with the Mellon Foundation, answers important questions like: “Who are the 50 individuals most frequently represented by a public monument in the US? What percentage of those 50 are white and male? How many are women? And what are the dynamics that helped shape who is—and who is not—on that list?”.
Justin Laing reflects on the methodology and reflections on the experience of leading an evaluation of an arts diversity initiative in which a funder was evaluating the impact of a multi-year initiative intended to help arts organizations. “All but one of the organizations was predominantly White American led. I collaborated with the participants to define key questions, data collection, and data interpretation and applied Critical Race/Critical Pedagogy/socialist frameworks.”
What is the meaning of struggle? Is there inherent value in a seemingly never-ending task? Is Sisyphus happy? These are some simple enough questions that have orbited around the myth of Sisyphus and the creative endeavours that have dove into this captivating myth across history. And the latest to take up this burden is Montréal multidisciplinary artist Victor Pilon, who in his performance piece Sisyphus intends to spend the month heaving a massive pile of sand from one end of the Montréal Olympic Stadium to the other.
For those unfamiliar, the Greek myth of Sisyphus begins with the said former king of Ephyra cheating death on two accounts and ends endlessly with Sisyphus sentenced by the gods to roll a boulder up a hill evermore for his trickery. Every time he seemed to reach the top, the boulder would roll its way back down to the bottom. Thus did the myth of Sisyphus become a symbol of monotony, the rat race, and all seemingly pointless endeavours in the modern world, depicted in countless artworks and most famously explored in Albert Camus’ essay The Myth of Sisyphus.
Victor Pilon starts at a logical conclusion within Sisyphus’ eternal punishment. If every single day this boulder careens down a hill, inevitably, it will break apart—hence the choice of a sand pile to represent the task. In a conversation with CTV News Montréal, the artist focuses in on “the experience of the absurd” in Sisyphean tasks. With the performance consisting entirely of him strugglingly shovelling sand from one side of the Olympic Stadium to the other, he has placed a microphone in the shovel for audiences to hear his gruelling efforts, and also intends to offer the shovel to any others who would be “willing to become Sisyphus.”
A major influence on the decision for Pilon to take on Sisyphus is the recent death of his partner Sylvain, as he states through the project summary:
“The tragic death of my partner Sylvain led me to this project. We all have to mourn the fact that life is absurd in order to be able to arrive at a form of freedom, even happiness. As in the popular expression work work work, day after day, Sisyphus pushes his boulder to the top of a mountain, from where it always ends up coming down. This project is an effort to understand the eternal restart, to grasp the absurdity of existence, a desire for clarity, a quest for the why that dwells in all of us.”
In his deep dive into life, art, and grief with Sisyphus, Victor Pilon is evoking some of the true essences of existence. Through accepting and facing the absurd, we channel new meaning into our lives, into the actions we choose to take. There is an honest beauty in his choice to take on the role of the eternal struggler, supplanting punishment with a willful decision of completing this absurd task in a tangible rendition. If there was ever an artist one could say put their blood, sweat, and tears into their work, it would be Pilon.
For the month of October, GIA’s photo banner features work supported by The CIRI Foundation.
This is the text The CIRI Foundation submitted for this Spotlight:
The CIRI Foundation (TCF) is an Alaska Native organization with a mission to promote heritage and education among Alaska Natives (especially among Cook Inlet Region original enrollees and their descendants). TCF has offered Heritage and Education Project Grants to support nearly four-hundred cultural and educational improvement activities around the state.
In 2016, TCF expanded grant making to include theJourney to What Matters: Increased Alaska Native Art & Culture (JWM) grant program which aims to encourage programming that enhances intergenerational arts knowledge sharing in communities across Alaska. Since launching, the JWM program has supported more than one-hundred projects in rural communities and urban centers across the state ranging from regalia and weaving projects, to tattooing, boat building, tool making and mask carving activities. We have seen from this work that engaging in customary arts activities is a powerful method for transferring cultural knowledge while building community, creating cross-cultural learning platforms and increasing economic opportunities for artists.
TCF funded projects examine Alaska Native arts from a holistic point of view to appreciate the cultural context that surrounds making and using Alaska Native art forms. The arts activate song, story, language and dance and bring people together to solidify family and communal ties. By working to retain customary arts knowledge TCF’s grant programs help to maintain connections to the past while moving forward in a future rooted in knowing who we are and where we come from.
The CIRI Foundation joined Grantmakers in the Arts in 2021.
You can also visit The CIRI Foundations’s photo gallery on GIA’s Photo Credits page.
Image: Cedar bark headband, Yakutat Culture camp. / Bethany Goodrich, Sustainable Southeast Partnership
Trish Adobea Tchume writes in Nonprofit Wakanda about four frameworks for living liberation “everywhere I am and everywhere I go”: transformative organizing, just transition, creating liberated zones, and “making myself ‘Politically at home’”.
We’ve exhibited a lot of gratitude for the slow return of some of our favourite pastimes over the past year and a half. Art galleries reopening, theatre companies able to perform once more, and even being able to sit in a theatre and watch a movie. But what if it was a longer wait than a year or two? What if it was three whole decades? That’s how long it had been since a movie was screened in Somalia, but this past week the National Theatre of Somalia played its first films to the public in thirty years.
Situated in the capital of Mogadishu, the National Theatre of Somalia has had a tumultuous time since civil war erupted across the country. It ceased all screenings in 1991, has been targeted by suicide bombers and used by warlords, and was even bombed by 2012 following a brief reopening. With this timeline of events, there are entire generations of Somali citizens who have never experienced a movie in theatres, let alone at the National Theatre of Somalia. While the civil war is still ongoing, the theatre was able to operate in some extent of its capabilities for this event.
Kaif Jama, the filmmaker on presentation at the theatre, was originally from Somalia but moved to Cairo at a young age, so this night was a sort of homecoming for her. Her two films, The Date From Hell and Hoos, were both directed by fellow Somali filmmaker Ibrahim CM. And the two are making history as the first Somali filmmakers to ever be screened in the National Theatre of Somalia.
While the turnout for the event was good and the reaction was strong, the theatre was nowhere near its 6,000 person capacity. It’s understandable, given the violent history the locals have associated with the location for so many years. Despite high security and tense worry from those abstaining from the screening, it’s clear that this historic night meant a lot to both the team of Jama and CM as well as the people of Mogadishu.
It’s by no means a return to normal for the National Theatre of Somalia—in many ways, the normal has become its shuttered state in the face of wartime struggle. But the ability to share in artistic endeavours during the harshest of times is what can keep the human spirit aloft. Even if there’s no regular screening come out of the theatre for a long time, there is still something to be said that an audience was able to come together in that cinema and share a viewing experience, even for a night.
As part of The Redford Center’s investments in storytelling strategies that respond to the urgency of today’s crises, the center introduced a new category of impact grants as part of their expanded grantmaking strategy.
For the first time, The Redford Center is awarding impact campaign funding as part of an expanded grantmaking strategy. This additional commitment supports completed films in their efforts to inspire public dialogue and mobilize action around specific issues related to environmental justice. Impact campaign grants will be used to move audiences from awareness to action through initiatives such as educational screenings and community partnerships.
Impact campaign funds are going to existing grantees who previously received development grants and completed their films in year-one and the center expects impact campaign grants will be continued in the next cohort’s offerings.
Rooted in Vibrant Communities (RVC) will host a webinar on October 21 about equitable grantmaking and steps grantmakers can take to meaningfully address systemic injustice and turn their goals and values into actionable strategies.
Vu Le (founder of RVC and NonprofitAF.com), Ananda Valenzuela (Co-Executive Director of RVC), Regina Elmi (Co-Founder of Supporting Partnership in Education and Beyond), and Juliet Le (Satterberg Foundation) will discuss, among other topics, the landscape and growing need for investment in BIPOC communities; strategies and practices funders can use to bring greater equity into their funding models today; and specific opportunities funders can support to make meaningful change.
A blog post published by the Wallace Foundation explains “Five Things State and District Leaders Need to Know Now” about the American Rescue Plan, the federal government’s third major COVID-19 relief bill that “provides nearly $2 trillion to support the nation’s efforts to reopen and recover from the coronavirus pandemic. Included is more than $126 billion for K-12 schools and additional funding for early childhood and higher education.”
A new toolkit, “The Arts Organizations at a Crossroads Toolkit: Managing transitions and preserving assets,” published by the National Coalition for Arts’ Preparedness and Emergency Response (NCAPER), seeks to guide arts leaders through significant transitions they are likely to face during their organization’s life: structural shifts, loss of key staff/leadership, and creation of artistic and physical assets which deserve preserving.