Yom Iyun the Ten Plagues

7/28/2019 Yom Iyun the Ten Plagues

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The Ten Plagues

For the exhibit today, the AP Art History class and Mrs. Wiener chose torepurpose a printer into the ten plagues. This project, you could say, is

a partial summary of what the class has been learning this year.

One of the first artists we learned about was Wade Guyton, who usesgiant printers to print out enormous canvases, otherwise known asprint jobs.

Our discovery of Wade Guytons work led us to wonder whether it wasreally art and what art really is, something you may be wondering as

you look at our printer. However, Wade Guyton has shown us we canmake art out of printers, so we felt we were safe in doing so. One of thefreedoms of the contemporary art world is that anything and everythingcan be art. Making art now requires an eye that liberates an object fromits original purpose so it can be reshaped into what the artist wants it

to be.

The Art History class also learned this lesson early on, when we studiedMarcel Duchamp, whose influence on our work is clear. Duchamp isfamous for this work, Fountain:


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Duchamp took a urinal and, by turning this ready-made piece upsidedown and renaming it, repurposed it into a work of art.

Duchamps influence can also be seen in our depiction of the firstplague, blood. We intended that part to look more like the work of theAbstract Expressionist Jackson Pollock:


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However, what emerged is what you see here. No matter. We went withit, and Duchamp, a member of the Dada group of artists, who believedthat all is random and that theres really no point to anything, would

have approved. Take a look at his work, The Bride Stripped Bare by theBachelors, Even:

Never mind what the artwork means (yes, it does actually havemeaning!). Whats important is that if youll notice, the glass of thisartwork is cracked, and that happened when the artwork was being


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transported. However, Duchamp, in true Dada fashion, said to leave thecracked glass, as it broke by chance and chance is one of Dadas mostcherished values.

In homage to Duchamp, we said, Never mind that the blood didntemerge as wanted it to, but were using our Dada moment in an ironicway, as irony is another one of Dadas values. We want to show thatchance is notchance in our artwork but that everything God plannedthe plagues deliberately, in order to show His hand in the salvation ofIsrael. In other words, as you see on our control panel, which represents

God, who is in control of all, .

So the control panel represents Gods hand, you can see the Nile turnedto blood, and the cartridge holder has been transformed into anabstract frog. The remainder of the plagues rest in the gutted printer, in

what to us looks like one of the models Egyptians used to place in theirgraves. Here are some we saw when we went to the MetropolitanMuseum of Art:


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On the left is an Egyptian garden, the middle is a granary and, on theright, is a brewery.

Of course in our model, the Egyptian landscape, depicted with textiles,scraps of fabric, is turning apocalyptic.

On the left is an Egyptian covered on his torso with kinim, lice, and, onhis lower body, with shechin, boils. Surrounding him is a fabric thatreminded us ofarov, small, flying things that are swarming the manshouse.

In the center of our model is dever, the plague decimating the farmanimals, and above them is the arbeh, an abstract row of locusts. Therepurposed CDs, now jagged, are barad, and they are raining down onthe model and have hit the ground.

The most fearsome plagues are on the right. In the top right corner,

which has been painted black, is darkness. We rained down black tonercartridges into that corner to fully depict that nightmarish plague (and,by the way, anyone who has touched toner cartridges and has comeaway with inky fingers and smudges all over everything they touchknows what a plague it is to work with that medium).


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Finally, for makat bechorot, we found a printer part that resembled ahead and thought the cut wires do a good job of symbolizing a bodythat had been cut off from life.

Around the printer is text we found from books and magazines thatreminded us of the Ten Plagues and their awesome power. Finally, wefound a portrait of a family at a meal, one that represents us at a seder,to remind us that the plagues and the Exodus are not some abstract taleor a story with strong aesthetic appeal but rather an integral part ofour lives as Jews:

Documents

Yom Iyun the Ten Plagues