Appropriation and ideological critique

Contemporary artists use copying and other visual methods to deconstruct the myths that inform our daily lives.

1980 - present

Beginner's guide

videos + essays

We're adding new content all the time!

An-My Lê, <i>29 Palms</i>
An-My Lê, 29 Palms

An-My Lê's photographs and films examine the impact, consequences, and representation of war, framing a tension between the natural landscape and its violent transformation into battlefields.

An interview with Alfredo Jaar
An interview with Alfredo Jaar

Is culture a prison? Alfredo Jaar discusses how two Italian thinkers influenced his work Infinite Cell

Stephanie Syjuco, <i>The Visible Invisible</i>
Stephanie Syjuco, The Visible Invisible

American-prairie style and Civil War Antebellum style dresses made out of green screen material conjure images of specific time periods in American history, as well as the tropes of womanhood, Western expansion, and Puritanism

Raúl de Nieves, <i>Beginning & the end neither & the otherwise betwixt & between the end is the beginning & the end</i>
Raúl de Nieves, Beginning & the end neither & the otherwise betwixt & between the end is the beginning & the end

With gaffers tape, paper, and color gels, de Nieves creates a stained-glass narrative that begins with personal struggle and self-doubt, but ends with "a celebration of life."

Damián Ortega, Alias
Damián Ortega, Alias

Ortega explains the process of translating, recontextualizing, and appropriating as an opportunity to reexamine knowledge and ways of thinking from different perspectives

Kara Walker, <i>A Subtlety, or the Marvelous Sugar Baby</i>
Kara Walker, A Subtlety, or the Marvelous Sugar Baby

Watch a former sugar factory turn into a monumental installation, including a colossal sugar-coated sphinx and a series of life-sized, sugar and resin boy figurines

Minerva Cuevas, <i>Crossing of the Rio Bravo</i>
Minerva Cuevas, Crossing of the Rio Bravo

Minerva Cuevas looks back on "Crossing of the Rio Bravo" (2010), a work in which she painted a bridge across a riverbed that divides Mexico and the United States.

Krzysztof Wodiczko, <i>Monument</i>
Krzysztof Wodiczko, Monument

An 1881 Civil War monument comes to life with video projections of refugees

Tania Bruguera, <i>The Francis Effect</i>
Tania Bruguera, The Francis Effect

Would you sign a petition to Pope Francis that requests Vatican City citizenship for all undocumented immigrants?

Richard Misrach, <i>Border Cantos</i>
Richard Misrach, Border Cantos

Photographer Richard Mirach recounts his work, from his early political aspirations in the 1970s to his current series about left-behind artifacts along the U.S.-Mexico border wall.

Postcommodity arts collective
Postcommodity arts collective

Interdisciplinary collective Postcommodity creates site-specific installations and interventions that critically examine our modern-day institutions and systems through the history and perspectives of Indigenous people

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, <i>Border Tuner</i>
Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Border Tuner

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer embarks on his most ambitious project to date: an enormous intercom system at the border between El Paso and Juárez that allows participants from both sides to speak and listen to each other via radio-enabled searchlights

Selected Contributors