The first lecture I went to this semester was back in February, when artist Willie Cole came to talk about his featured exhibition, Willie Cole: Works on Paper. It is one of the best lectures I've been to since I came to this school. The exhibition is still showing at the Brooks through May.
Cole started out giving a brief overview of his starting projects. His first major project was a series of cardboard cutout bodies with Xeroxes of Nelson Mandela's face posted on them all. It was an installation, and it had a track of, I think it was Nelson Mandela's speech, playing over and over again, he said. Mind you, this was done back in the 1970s, during the Apartheid epic unfolding in South Africa. Cole has a broad avenue of interests, and although he went to art school and majored in 2D media, he has made works in sculptural media and work using digital technology as an aid. He also made a digital video, which he talked about at the lecture, is called Sumsara (2010), featuring eight actors on three different screens, crying, in a repeating cycle. He said that the repetition is based on the Buddhist concept of birth, death, and rebirth. I think the word "sumsara" is the name of this concept.
Although Cole uses digital tools, his work is mostly 'analog' media. The highlight of the exhibit are his works featuring irons, the "Works on Paper". In his compositions he explores the concept of the iron as a representative figure. The poster advertising the exhibit, for instance, shows his photograph of himself wearing African tribal garb; the garment being made of iron plates that were Photoshopped onto his print. But as aforementioned, the phase of iron-driven design is not his only set of 2D work, and the exhibit is definitely worth seeing.
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