The sketch above is an artwork in progress by Argentine visual artist Magdalena Jitrik, who is known for her mostly-abstract paintings on canvas and her collective work as part of the Taller Popular de Serigrafía (a.k.a. TPS). This new work combines Magdalena’s interest in social and political history, explored through her paintings, and in the medium of propaganda that was actively taken up by TPS—which, in turn, is part of a longer history intertwining political activism and graphic arts in Latin America (TPS’s name is taken from the early twentieth century Taller de Gráfica Popular in Mexico).

To make this new work, Magdalena used as source image a group portrait of Native American Indians headed by Red Cloud. It was a photograph taken around 1860-1880. Red Cloud was a leader of the Oglala Sioux in Lakota (including then regions of Wyoming, Nebraska and the Dakotas in the USA), and known to be a major warrior, negotiator and peace-keeper. He was also a critical voice against the expansion of “white man” in North America. In his famous last speech, Red Cloud says, “Before the white man came to our country, the Lakotas were a free people. They made their own laws and governed themselves as it seemed good to them. The priests and ministers tell us that we lived wickedly when we lived before the white man came among us. Whose fault was this? We lived right as we were taught it was right. Shall we be punished for this? I am not sure that what these people tell me is true.”

Magdalena is one of four artists that I’ve selected for “Convergence Center,” an event-based, week-long exhibition that is part of the larger project Democracy in America: The National Campaign organized by Creative Time in New York. Her new work about Red Cloud, sketched above, will be a painting on canvas (118 x 117 inches), which will be hung as a banner between the entrance columns of the Armory Regiment Building in New York. This is where “Convergence Center” will take place from September 21-27, 2008. Aside from Magdalena, the three other artists in Foreign Correspondents, the international component of “Convergence Center,” are Erick Beltran (Mexico City/Barcelona), Luca Frei (Malmo) and Chu Yun (Beijing). I will also introduce their work here shortly.

This is the first in a series of interviews with young curators working inside and outside of institutions in China and Hong Kong. I’ve specifically interviewed curators that are foreigners there, each with a distinct relationship to the contemporary art scene in China, as well as to ideas of local community building and international cultural exchange.

This first interview is with Kate Fowle, International Curator at the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (UCCA) in Beijing, China, a nonprofit art space founded in 2007 by the Belgian collectors Guy and Myriam Ullens. Originally from England, Kate had been based in San Francisco since 2002, where she established and then directed the Curatorial Practice Graduate Program at California College of Arts. Today, she splits her time between New York and Beijing.

I interviewed Kate in May 2008, a little over a month after her first exhibition at UCCA opened, and still less than a year since her arrival at that institution. This interview touches on several subjects, but particularly curatorial processes that engage in the formation of artistic communities and new audiences, and specifically as it relates to Kate’s work in China today. (Click below to read the interview.)

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The shopping list included a variety of items, from a new notebook to some travel gifts to a variety of travel-size cosmetics to a lipstick, and I figured that at least one of these could be found at COMPANY, a gift, for example. Once there, it was difficult to contain myself. I ended up purchasing: a dried flower (this will be a gift, I explained myself); a grand opening banner (a portable artwork, I thought); and a red lipstick (I needed one anyway). The banner is an item from the first product line by Fawn Krieger, launched in November 2007 when the store opened; the other two items are part of her winter line introduced in January 2008. And still, I couldn’t stop. COMPANY was contagious. I decided to get a Performance Underwear Prototype (this will also be a gift, golden hanger included), one in a series of works that are part of a new product line commissioned by COMPANY to artist K8 Hardy.

COMPANY is an evolving and unpredictable art project by the curious and generous artist Fawn Krieger, a project that I curated while working at Art in General in New York, with Meghan DellaCrosse as curatorial assistant. It was certainly an interesting experience to re-visit COMPANY now as an audience member. Fawn’s project is sculpted as a store, and operates like one, too. It consists of an installation at Art in General’s storefront gallery that transforms a window-filled-little-white-cube into a three-leveled boutique-like space with a plethora of vitrines and cases displaying artworks of different sorts under the label of “product lines.” The artworks or so-called products are sculptures in every form, and all of them are unique and irreproducible just because Fawn’s mind is way speedier than her hands. At COMPANY, you can find anything from an oil barrel and a shoe, to a nervous system and some botox or a green card. There is also a TV (remote control sold separately), loose cigarettes, an airplane passenger, and a box of chocolates, gigantic dandruff flakes and dinosaur eggs. They are made in ceramic, wood, felt, paper, plaster, gold leaf, fabric, plastic and other materials. They range in sizes, structural make-up and surface textures. Some are realistic, others far from it. They are anything from funny, intense, absurd, disgusting and beautiful.

But Fawn’s COMPANY is not only an aesthetic endeavor. It also aims at being an economic project, proposing an alternative if slower kind of marketplace with and for artists, as well as unique forms of exchange and engagement with the public. The sales of the first product lines by Fawn were reinvested in COMPANY allowing for the commission of K8’s product line, which was launched in mid-March. And K8 has proposed herself another parameter involving the forms of sales for her work and impacting its actual form and distribution, too: the purchase of an edition of her Performance Underwear includes a performance by the artist at the buyer’s direction; the edition if of 10 including one garment, and is priced at $700 each.

The online art journal MUSEO published an interview that art critic Miriam Katz conducted to Fawn, and a radio interview with the artist was broadcast in San Francisco’s Pirate Cat Radio, available online. (Fast forward to the middle of the recording to skip the music and begin listening to the interview). COMPANY by Fawn Krieger continues until April 26 at Art in General, with current product lines by Fawn Krieger and K8 Hardy on display (and for sale).