The Adventures of Cindy Li

Anslem Keifer exhibit at Smithsonian Hirschorn Museum

July 5 , 2006

Once upon a time..

Walking around D.C. with Dan, being the good tour guide, I stopped when I saw the sign for Anslem Keifer’s exhibit at the Hirschorn museum. In my freshman year in college I was assigned a collaboration project for my art class, WARP (Workshop Art Research project). Everyone was assigned an artist and they had to create a piece out of this project. Anslem Keifer, a German Expressionist painter and I continued to research his work. I learned that he internalized the maddess of the Nazis and so what would I do if I worked with him today?

Humor my flashback if you will...

The Gainesville murders happened in 1990. They were labeled “The Gainesville Ripper”.  I decided this was the local evil and proceeded in researching the murders. The Gainesville community was living in terror. They had passwords they gave their pizza guy to make sure it was really the pizza guy. Brunette women everywhere were scared. I figured that this was what we would have worked on if Mr. Keifer and I teamed up.

What I did

Researching the murders for an entire week before I even started to do the actual painting made me ill from the storied I read to the photos that I could find. I did a painting (since Mr. Keifer was a painter) and painted them. I used a knife to paint and eventually glued it to the painting(the weapon of choice from the “Gainesville Ripper"). I collected hair from 4 different brunette women representing the victims. I didn’t include the man because he wasn’t part of the killer’s MO. Mr. Keifer also tended to do mixed media in his paintings so I felt this was appropriate. I got an A on this project but man did it make me ill. Someone asked me why I didn’t keep it… I have a photograph of it but it was more the process of putting myself in the mind set of the murderer and the artist.

What’s the point?

Collaboration, process, empathy?
We are all asked to put ourselves in our audience’s shoes for a project, or even to put ourselves in our friends shoes so we can see what they see. Empathize with what they are feeling. Think about what you are doing and how it affects someone else, preferably try something to improve someone else’s life not make it worse.

Learn from the mistakes.. I guess that’s what history is about. ;)