In honor of Gun Violence Awareness Month, we participated in the month-long NYC Arts Go Orange initi

In honor of Gun Violence Awareness Month, we participated in the month-long NYC Arts Go Orange initiative to promote greater awareness of gun violence and gun safety. This initiative brings cultural institutions together to draw attention to the issue during the summer, when gun violence often increases in the United States. ‘Going Orange’ at the Brooklyn Museum allows us to look at our global collections, making wide-ranging and unexpected connections between our national conversation on gun violence, and similar struggles across time and space. The installation DISARM, the product of a collaboration between the Contemporary Art and Arts of Africa Departments, and the Libraries and Archives, showcases artworks made of actual weapons and artists’ books depicting guns.Gonçalo Mabunda is part of a Mozambican collective that aims to collect some of the estimated 7 million weapons left in the country following the end of its civil war in 1992 and transform them into new creative forms. His Harmony Chair uses these decommissioned handguns, bullet belts, and other munitions to speak to Mozambique’s specific history of conflict and resolution, while also referencing a coastal East African tradition of high-backed chairs that were symbols of power and prestige, discussion and debate. Similarly, Pedro Reyes’s Disarm (Xylophone III), a functional xylo­phone, is made from some of the nearly 7,000 decommissioned guns given to the artist by the Mexican government following their seizure and public destruction in Ciudad Juárez, a city plagued by gang violence. Thinking of creative approaches to disarmament as well as the transformation power of music, Reyes collaborated with a group of musicians to turn the guns into a range of musi­cal instruments, which were then played as an ensemble.Artists’ books frequently address issues of social concern, including in this case, gun violence. The books made by artists on view in this installation include Cold Tea at Three by Robert The, He’s Got a Gun! by David Thorne, Guns by Robbert&Frank Frank&Robbert (Belgian artists Robbert Goyvaerts and Frank Merkx) and Pink Guns and Roses by James Prez. All these objects speak to the impact of guns, often destructive, on our communities and the world at large.Posted by Deirdre Lawrence, Rujeko Hockley, and Kevin D. Dumouchelle -- source link

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