"Education as Resistance" By La Escuela at MoMa PS1

    

Miguel Braceli’s large chalkboard stage

    

Studio Lenca's postcard workshop 

    

Laura Anderson Barbata’s naturally dyed flags

“Education as Resistance” is an installation by La Escuela, an artist-run project led by Siemens Stiftung and Miguel Braceli that uses art as a tool for social learning in public spaces across Latin America. For its first U.S. exhibition, the program transforms MoMA PS1’s Homeroom gallery into a collective classroom, framing education as a form of resistance against social injustice and colonial erasure. The exhibition highlights Latine activism through works by La Escuela’s collaborators.

Among them, Laura Anderson Barbata’s naturally dyed flags, which are colored with pigments extracted from cochineal, rust, nuts, spices, and flowers. These materials invoke Indigenous knowledge passed down through colonial trade. Her process also links ancestral techniques to contemporary themes of gender, labor, and ecology.

In adjacency, Studio Lenca offers a hands-on postcard workshop that invites visitors to reflect on the ideas of belonging and displacement. Both themes are central to his ongoing series Rutas. This participatory activity presents the migratory narratives derived from his broader practice.

Anchoring the space is Miguel Braceli’s large chalkboard stage, a flexible platform for gathering, writing, and sharing resources. It operates as both sculpture and furniture, emphasizing learning as an embodied, communal act grounded in everyday practice.

Presented as a functioning classroom, “Education as Resistance” creates a space for dialogue, co-learning, and collective expression. While the themes of the exhibition are clearly articulated through the works on view, some installations leave visitor participation ambiguous. More explicit invitations or prompts could clarify how audiences are meant to engage, which would strengthen the exhibition’s main intention.

 

 These works share many similarities. Structurally, they all

demonstrate a kind of diffused state, yet visually they

converge at certain focal points. The first image, with its

urban landscape, immediately reminds me of materials

used in rock climbing. It suggests that the artist may be

exploring an opportunity to merge naturalistic elements

with a commentary on social conditions. To me, this piece

reflects on the “spectacle” of society—an existential

revelation of how we inhabit and perceive our

environment.

In the second group of sculptures, numerous human faces appear. This motif exists across many

cultural histories, yet the facial forms here evoke the aesthetics of the Americas—something

primal, an original beauty. The artist shapes the clay into smooth, refined surfaces, producing a

sensorial tactility. When displayed collectively, these figures remind me of Bizet’s Carmen—a

kind of silent theatricality. The work also brings to mind the ceramic pieces I saw at Marian

Goodman, though I believe this artist’s sculptures extend beyond references to agrarian

civilizations. They feel like a postmodern form of primal art. Moreover, by using different types

of clay, the artist introduces a sense of “union,” as though hinting at the gathering of different

peoples and cultures across the world.

The black sculptural work conveys a quality of black linear tension. This artist, represented by

David Zwirner, has long treated space itself as a canvas, playing extensively with negative space.

However, from a technical perspective, negative space alone does not fully account for the

work’s effect. While the materials and fabrication methods are not immediately clear, what is

directly perceptible is the piece’s persistent sense of instability—teetering yet stubbornly

resilient. Coming from my own Chinese cultural background, I associate this work with the

aesthetics of Go. It feels incredibly playful. Compared to the other pieces, this is the one I find

most compelling. The artist seems to create an internal set of rules, generating countless

variations from limited elements and forms. What emerges is a kind of silent poetry—an artistic

form of literature expressed through spatial rhythm and restraint.

 

   The work titled On the Hunt begins with an apparently calm textual study, placing more than a century’s worth of personal ads alongside surveillance-like imagery of hunters and animals, forming a powerful and thought-provoking metaphor. By examining the qualities men and women sought in each other from 1895 to 2019, the artist reveals both the changes and continuities in social values, gender expectations, and the structure of intimate relationships. When these texts are set into double-sided frames—one side showing the “hunter’s space” of elevated stands, the other presenting nighttime images of animals being watched and captured—the viewer can hardly ignore the sense of “pursuit” that often appears in human emotional life as well: who is searching for whom? Who is active, and who is being observed? With a restrained yet incisive approach, the work raises deep questions about desire, power, gender roles, and the consumerist nature of modern intimacy. It leads the viewer to constantly shift perspectives between reading and looking, as if oscillating between the roles of hunter and prey. In this way, the piece becomes not just a visual presentation but also a mirror that exposes the hidden structures within intimate relationships—sharp, honest, and revealing.

Detritus: Tom Friedman

From Tom Friedman's Detritus 

This painting captured my attention immediately through its strong contrast between density and calm. The lower half of the painting is a chaotic landscape composed of meticulously rendered fragments—geometric shapes, broken toys, wires, packaging, and unidentifiable debris. Each object is painted with obsessive detail, creating a kind of visual overload that feels both playful and suffocating. Aesthetically, this dense accumulation becomes unexpectedly beautiful; the colors, textures, and rhythms of the objects form an overloaded scene that mirrors the cluttered interior landscapes we carry within ourselves.

What transformed the work for me, however, was the tiny flying above it all. Against the vast, unbroken blue sky, the fly's delicate looping trail feels dreamlike, a thin path of freedom drawn across stillness. This tiny gesture shifts the entire emotional register of the painting. While the debris below feels heavy and earthbound, the fly suggests movement, escape, and an almost fragile clarity. It offers a way out—not by erasing chaos, but by rising above it.

Looking at the painting, I couldn't help but see my own mind in the contrast between the two halves. There are days when my thoughts feel messy, loud, and tangled, like the debris field. And there are moments when I want is to be like that fly—lifting myself out of the noise, drifting into a space that is quiet, clean, and open. The power of Friedman's work lies in this tension: he finds poetry in disorder, and within that disorder he plants a small, luminous sign of possibility. WC 256

Sunday Without Love, Ragnar Kjartansson

Sunday Without Love

Ragnar Kjartansson

 

Sunday Without Love is a single channel video showing a scene of people in folk costumes performing a slow song about living without love. The inspiration behind this piece was an old postcard that Kjartansson had portraying a similar scene. The song was inspired by a comedic German song called “Ohne Libe Leben Lernen.”

 

When I walked into the Luhring Augustine Gallery, the first thing that caught my attention was how the only piece of work was a projection on the wall. The atmosphere felt intimate with soft conversations in the background, in a way contributing to the artwork. There was no pressure to focus entirely on the art, as the environment allowed for viewers to experience the work at their own pace. Sitting down to watch the video, I found myself enjoying this a lot more than other works of art I have seen. The song that was being played by the people in the video created a sense of stillness that was calming and entrancing. This piece of work also had a humorous quality, with people in folk costumes, in a grass field, performing a song about how you must learn to live without love. We arrived just in time to see the ending, when the performers finished performing and paused, making the scene looked like a painting. I left the gallery wondering whether this piece was a painting, a video, a song, or an installation, or something in between.

                

(Draft 2)

Sunday Without Love is a single channel video showing a scene of people in folk costumes performing a slow song about living without love. The inspiration behind this piece was an old postcard that Kjartansson had portraying a similar scene. The song was inspired by a comedic German song called “Ohne Libe Leben Lernen.”

 

When I walked into the Luhring Augustine Gallery, the first thing that caught my attention was how the only piece of work was a projection on the wall. The atmosphere felt intimate with soft conversations in the background, in a way contributing to the artwork. There was no pressure to focus entirely on the art, as the environment allowed for viewers to experience the work at their own pace. Sitting down to watch the video, I found myself enjoying this a lot more than other works of art I have seen. This piece was influenced by an old postcard the artist had on his fridge, it is random, and a little silly, with people in folk costumes, in a grass field, performing a song about how you must learn to live without love. We arrived just in time to see the ending, when the performers finished performing and paused, making the scene looked like a painting. I left the gallery wondering whether this piece was a painting, a video, a song, or an installation, or something in between.

Untitled III from The Figures Portfolio, 1982

Jean-Michael Basquiat

    Coming straight from Basquiat’s early-mid period, this awesome piece stood out to me as soon as I walked into the room. Considering the use of paper as opposed to the work he did on canvas, one could entertain the idea of this being a study Basquiat did, especially since it’s from his early career when his artistic style was still in development. Then again, maybe Basquiat wasn’t thinking of this piece as a preliminary piece at all. In almost every piece of artwork of his that I’ve seen, it’s almost impossible not to pick up some sort of theme, message, or representation of some type within the work. Either in text, gesture, or rendering of an object, Basquiat always finds a way to tell a story with his work, but only ever enough to allow some sort of interpretation from the viewer which I find to be a delightful characteristic. Even when his pieces do get filled with meaning, it’s never forced upon the viewer which offers a welcoming “vibe” to appreciate his artwork for the silliness that has whilst also directing the viewer to consider it just a bit further, invoking curiosity as well as an appreciation of what his work really stands for. In the past, I’ve seen many of what I consider to be better pieces of his, usually because of artistic appreciation for their gleeful and funny visual appeal. But this one I really liked because of the white canvas (a rarity of his) and the simplistic colors and shapes!

Homage: Queer Lineages on Video

Dineo Seshee Bopape’s a love supreme (2005-6)

    Homage is a video based show displaying a total of eight works through seven artists. The show highlights avant garde work that represent different aspects of the queer community. The galley had a very dim moody lighting, obviously this was to see the works clearly, but I also think the way the darkness was lit was intentional in creating a unique atmosphere. Two works played as the center pieces of the room. 

    Dineo Seshee Bopape’s a love supreme (2005-6) is the first work seen as you enter space. At first glance it is seen a streak of vertical abstract lines slowly being added through subtraction. You may leave this work to look at the rest of the gallery but the images are very striking and also confusing, leaving the work to wander in the back of your head as you continue to experience the rest of the show. As you leave the  galley you will come across this work again, curious to discover what it really is.

Kang Seung Lee’s The Heart of A Hand (2022)

    The second central work is Kang Seung Lee’s The Heart of A Hand (2022). This work is a lengthy interrupted dance on a large screen. This piece is very grounding as you consistently interact with it visually and auditorily as you move through the space. It is quite a long video making it feel natural to experience it in small increments between other works. It was not until I had seen everything else that I actually sat down with the work, acting as a wonderful closing moment. These two works structure the whole show working as a base for six other works to play off of and it was this central flow that really made this show stick with me.