In the Gallery

Some of the material in this exhibition derives from artist-produced parades and marches. Artists Francis Alÿs, Jeremy Deller, Sharon Hayes, and Paul McCarthy took widely different approaches towards orchestrating their own performative, often participatory street activities. The resulting artworks explored themes of patronage, recognition, protest and proclamation, and the construction of history through public activities. Other projects in the exhibition have been featured in parades sponsored by other entities, such as Katie Grinnan’s Rubble Division (2005 – 2006), commissioned by the Aspen Art Museum for a local Fourth of July parade, as well as selected pieces from New York City’s annual Art Parade, produced by Deitch Projects gallery with Creative Time and Paper magazine. In these cases, parades are used as platforms for presenting artists’ works, many of which were expanded or displayed in other versions elsewhere. Also on view in the exhibition are videos, installations, and works in other media by Michele Magema, Dave McKenzie, and Amy O’Neill. As source material, these artists draw film footage and other imagery from political street pageantry in Zaire, the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, and the Pasadena Rose Bowl Parade. These projects each offer a different view of historical parades and marches through the lens of public and private memory. Finally, On Procession presents artworks produced in association with a parade in Fountain Square, Indianapolis. Works on view include FriendsWithYou’s Dream Maker (2008), a large mobile on view in the Efroymson Entry Pavilion, Allison Smith’s collaborative performance and installation The Donkey, The Jackass, and the Mule, drawings and ephemera relating to the choreography of Haeg’s East Meets West Interchange Overpass Parade (2008), and several other projects conceived for presentation in the Indianapolis parade.

In the Streets: East Meets West

As an extension of the On Procession exhibition, the Indianapolis Museum of Art produced a parade in downtown Indianapolis including commissioned artworks and open community participation. In the parade exhibition format, the audience literally marched alongside artworks, putting a new spin on the traditional subject-object, audience-performer relationships that one expects in both galleries and parades. Producing a parade event as an expanded exhibition platform was intended to allow participation in temporary, event-driven art of a sort that is usually presented through documentation (in videos or ephemera) in museum exhibitions.

Artist and architect Fritz Haeg was invited to serve as the artistic director of the IMA-produced parade in downtown Indianapolis. In this role, the artist devised a site-specific choreography that involved two parade brigades – separated into "East" and "West" sides – marching towards and around each other, in contrast to the traditional format of a linear progression. Participants on each side were photographed in front of large banners which now hang in the gallery. Haeg gave his choreographic plan the title East Meets West Interchange Overpass Parade.

Haeg has stated that his background in architecture trained him to apply one question to each and every project: "What can uniquely happen here that cannot happen anywhere else?" In looking at the selected parade route along Virginia Avenue in Fountain Square, Haeg was interested in the juncture of Interstates 65 and 70, one of the intersections begetting Indiana’s nickname, "The Crossroads of America." Haeg considered the ways that the highway had historically cut off the Fountain Square neighborhood from downtown Indianapolis. Building out of discussions with area participants, the parade was conceived as an event that might, for one day, "stitch together" a community that had been divided. A range of projects produced for the parade are presented in the galleries, including artist-duo Silevy's video montage worn as military garb, the Big Car Collective’s live sound art performance, flags from The Johnny Appleseed Color Guard, and costumes taken from artist Patrick Gillespie and the Cincinnati collective Arthole.

Allison Smith developed her project The Donkey, The Jackass, and the Mule for the parade during a year-long collaboration with the Herron School of Art & Design and the Freetown Village Living History Museum. Smith, who has used the iconography of historical reenactment in previous works, built a fable of her own making in the form of three equestrian sculptures. On parade day, the sculptures became a mobile backdrop for a performative protest led by the actors of Freetown Village, a living history museum that depicts the lives and stories of post-Civil War African American settlements in Indiana. The group produced a reenactment of a reenactment originally performed during Jesse Jackson’s presidential campaign. Here, a historical rally to give women the right to vote was juxtaposed directly against current events. For both Smith and the re-enactors of Freetown Village, the interpretation of history is used as a device to elucidate the present.

The theme of public procession in this exhibition reveals broader issues about civic engagement with public art. Throughout the production of the On Procession exhibition and parade, open forums, project workshops, online discussions and other conversation series with participants focused directly on the process of working in public space, including the nuances of institutional sponsorship, access to participation, and the invention of social rituals. The exhibition and accompanying procession hopes to encourage diverse audiences to appreciate the joys, curiosities, challenges and whimsy of real-time collectivist and community-driven directions in contemporary art.

Rebecca Uchill
Associate Curator of Contemporary Art
Indianapolis Museum of Art