With Liberty and Big Macs for All

By Teri Thomson Randall The New Mexican

Ask Erin Currier why she incorporates trash into her paintings, and she'll tell you first and foremost that she believes in recycling. Then she'll tell you she wants to continue in the age-old tradition of making art with materials readily at hand.

Somehow those answers don't quite satisfy. Out of common trash, Currier makes uncommonly powerful art. The artist packs her paintings with cogent commentary about human and civil rights, materialism and globalization. From the plight of women in the Tfiird World to the vacuous consumerism so prevalent in Western culture, there's a lot riding on Currier's trash,

Liberation Series, an exhibit of Currier's work, opens Saturday April 26, at Parks Gallery in Taos and runs through May 20. The work addresses the theme of liberation on two fronts: the oppression of women in Third World countries and in Western culture; and the heroic lives of civil rights leaders. Concurrently, Parks Gallery in Santa Fe shows works from Currier's earlier Women Warriors series of female activists from. around the world.

Curriees inspiration for her Liberation Series came during her extended travels through Asia in 2000 and 2001. A longtime student of Eastern philosophy and Buddhist iconography, Currier said the trip finally prepared her to unite in her work her political and spiritual beliefs. Or, as she put it during a recent telephone interview, "to find that place where the internal and the external - the individual and the collective - meet."

One of the first paintings she created upon her return was a portrait of Angela Davis as Green Tara, the Tibetan Buddhist deity that symbolizes active compassion.

Many of the paintings in this series depict groups of women from developing nations gazing straight back at the viewer. Though their mouths are covered, each woman exudes a singular identity in her eyes and expression. "Their lips are sealed, yet they are not nameless, not faceless and not powerless," Currier wrote in her artists statement. "The women have strength in the simple fact of their individuality, and in their collectivity. While the forces that seek to oppress are tireless, so, too, is the feminine spirit."

Currier said that an unforgettable experience in Asia shaped her intentions for these paintings of women. While staying in Hyderabad, a mostly Muslim community in India, she spotted in the distance a dozen or so women, dressed from head-to toe in black burkas, shopping and going about their day "The image, just seared in my head because all of these women were so distinct from one another, which just shocked me," Currier recalled. "You'd think with them all in black, with just their eyes showing,they would look alike. The attempt to cover them has backfired so much that it actually frames their personalities."

Currier begins each work with an immaculate drawing. Though each piece contains a considerable amount of paint, her primary material is paper trash that shes collected on travels about the world. Chinese newspapers, Arabic election posters, U.S. celebrity and movie star paraphernalia, designer labels, birth-control packaging, ancient texts, religious tracts, diet plans, CD liner notes
and fast-food wrappers - all lend an undercurrent of commentary to the art, both serious and witty. Currier layers the trash to create the illusion of three-dimensional bulk, similar to the effect of notices pasted one on top of another on a kiosk, some partially stripped away.

Behind the women in Zapatistas 11, you'll see the album cover of The Beatles' Sergeant Pepper~ Lonely Hearts Club Band, bought by Currier years ago at a garage sale. She painted ski masks over the faces of the crowd so that they would blend in with the faces of the crowd so that they would blend in with the women in the foreground. On the shirt of the closest woman, Currier adhered a political poster front Prague, with the marfs face also covered.

Workers, which depicts a group of Chinese women wearing surgical masks, seems spookily prescient in today's SARS crisis. Currier made the painting in January, of this year, before news of the highly contagious illness entered global consciousness. Instead, the artist said she was reflecting on the practice of women in Beijing wearing scarves or masks over their mouths to protect them from air pollution.

With the excepti(m of White Zombies and White Trash, Currier selects pieces of trash based on her color palette. if her subject is wearing red, she works with red trash ."That sounds boring and not very esotefic," she "but ifs a lot of fun because all these accidents happen."

For instance, in Sati, an image of a group of indian women dressed in red saris, she used a postcard from gay nightclub in Prague with the word "Lollipop" on it. "I liked how it looked, and
there was red on it, so I used it," Currier said. Then she realized there was a flame on the postcard which ties in with the works title, Sati - the traditional Hindu practice of a widow immotating herself on her husband's funeral pyre. (Though the British govemment banned the ritual in 1829, it took massive social reforms by Gandhi and others to stop it. There have been a few instances of sati in modem times, including one in Madhya Pradesh in 2002 that caused considerable controversy and social turmoil.)

Toward Sati's bottom right, on a woman's thigh, Currier used the packaging for devil's food cakes, creating another interesting .accident." Women in India have few rights, Currier said, largely because they are viewed as temptresses and are blamed for men's transgressions. The phrase "the devil made me do it" contains a loaded meaning here, with devastating consequences for women.

The trash in White Zombies is a whole other story. Currier chose her trash carefully - not just the color but also the message - for her two bikini-clad babes with silicone breasts and bleached-blond hair. Packaging for sugar, cream cheese, gourmet lollipops and Baby Ruth bars blends with the fake tans. "Wholesome, Delicious, Satisfying," reads a label on one woman's belly. "If this box is empty please ask for more."

"I chose the worst kinds of fast food and decadence for their bodies," Currier said. "They are product. They are an unobtainable ideal, for both men and women, that doesn't really exist in nature. In my travels, I saw a lot of people all over the world look to that as the standard of beauty.

I feel that Western women are oppressed,maybe not in such an overt way as women in the Third World, but we are oppressed by product, by consumerism, by the belief that the purchase of something will bring happiness, or relieve stress, or bring beauty or contentment. And the purchase of one product leads to another. We are-bombardeav;uh this constantly," Currier said.

"All the other women [in this series] have their months covered because I feel they still don't have a voice in the world - but you can see their tr th ' their eyes. The 'white zombies' have a voice, but [with dark ,sunglasses on], they can't see what is really going on."

Exploring the theme of liberation from another angle, Currier paints civil rights leaders as Hindu and Buddhist deities. Septima Clark, who founded the Highlander Folks School in the 1950s, was responsible for teaching thousands of blacks to read and write. Currier paints Clark as the Buddhist goddess Prajnaparamita, the symbol of wtsdom.

Bob Moses, a founder of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, coordinated a campaign to register blacks in Mississippi to vote. Today he's involved in education reform. Currier paints him as the Medicine Buddha.

In 1893 Dr. Daniel Hale Williams was the first doctor to perform open-heart surgery. successfully. He also founded Provident Hospital in Chicago, the first integrated hospital in the country. Currier. paints Williams also as the Medicine Buddha. In his left hand he holds a heart.

"Martin Luther King Jr. said, 'The arc of the Universe is long, but it bends towards justice,' " Currier wrote in her artists statement, "I believe this to be true; that justice will prevail over corruption, peace over war, human rights over militarization, inclusion over marginalization, truth over lies and deceit. As an artist, I feel a responsibility to help facilitate the above through artistic expression."