Shifting Perspectives

Hear from an artist who works at MoMA about the ways Alfonso Ossorio’s work reminds him of home.

MoMA Educator Francis Estrada immigrated to the US from the Philippines when he was 13; he wasn’t able to return until 22 years later. “There was a longing and a need for me to go back home,” he says. “A need for me to reconnect, not just with my family, but with the culture that I grew up with.” Going to the Philippines every few years is one of the ways Estrada finds connection to his culture. The other way is through art.

Estrada is a visual artist who works across mediums to explore ideas of history and memory. For him, art is a way to “confront our understandings of culture.” Reflecting on his early art education, he describes scouring library books and museum walls in a constant search for other Filipino artists. The first time he discovered the work of another Filipino artist, “it resonated with me the same way that this piece by Ossorio resonates. I just saw all these images, all these little vignettes that I could latch onto and relate to…. It’s important to find these narratives...because you want to find someone whose stories are similar to yours.”

Hear from an emerging artist about the inspiration they find in Betye Saar’s career.

Multimedia artist and student Taneisha Bailey is a spiritualist who has always been drawn to the divine. She felt drawn to the eyes in Betye Saar’s The Divine Face and Hand, seeing them as fragments of a watchful presence protecting the viewer. “That’s kind of how the divine works,” she says.

Saar herself functions as divine inspiration for Bailey, who notes the similarities she finds between Saar’s story and her own. “I take my everyday spiritual experiences and I put that into my own creative works,” she states. “It’s just very interesting to see that [Saar] showcased that too. Because a lot of people shy away from it...or just don’t have a clear understanding of what [spirituality] can be. Everyone has their own personal connection to the divine, whatever that may be.”

Bailey was amazed at the artist’s travels, her dedication to learning about other cultures, and the journeys it took to get in touch with her spirituality. Looking at this print, Bailey wonders if Saar’s black handprint is a way of representing this expansive spirituality: “It makes me think that she created her own chart here...her own sense of self.”

Listen to a tattoo artist reflect on Shambhavi’s work and the ways art can build community.

Art, whether on the walls of museums or inked on our skin, tells important stories about who we are, where we come from, and where we belong. This idea is at the core of Tann Parker’s work. A nonbinary African American tattoo artist, Parker is the founder of Ink The Diaspora, a platform dedicated to challenging colorism in the tattoo industry. By highlighting the work of queer and trans tattoo artists and images of tattoos on people with dark skin, Parker pushes for the representation of people who otherwise don’t see themselves reflected in the industry. In their own words, “It’s about community.”

Parker was drawn to the colors and textures of Shambhavi’s Cosmic Seeds Light / Beej Brahmaand Ek, noting how the sheets appear fragile, but also powerful, like our skin. Seeing connections between the experience of viewing art and sitting for a tattoo, they said, “It’s for me, always like a gift to myself. It’s [the] one time where you can sit and be in your body.... It just forces you to be still and [present].” While Parker encourages us to slow down, they also describe the ways that art can give us a sense of community: “It’s a go-ahead. It’s an affirmation to say it’s okay to do something...or to be who you are.”