Philagrafika @ Moore College

I got to the school last week to see the entrance all blinged out with this beautifully executed Mandala made entirely from corporate logos (Tastykake, Target, and Wawa to name a few). Artist: Gunilla Klingberg.

In Mexico City, tires on public transportation vehicles are used well past the absence of any tread, which causes many of the city’s automobile crashes. For her project at Moore, Betsabeé Romero reclaimed these used tires that have caused so many disasters and carved into them, retreading them with images of species of birds native to various countries. The birds take symbolic flight across the walls and ceiling of the gallery on an imprint of the tread that extends from each tire on long sheets of translucent paper that span the height and length of the gallery.

In Regina Silveira’s Mundus Admirabilis and Other Plagues, vinyl is incorporated along with screenprinting on porcelain and embroidery on fabric. The installation invokes the mythology of biblical plagues. Instead of locusts, hail, or pestilence, Silveira uses a domestic setting invaded by common pests to suggest that the plagues in our own time are the images that contaminate our everyday existence: crime and violence, degradation of the environment, corruption, and other ills that invade our lives and psyches.