Craft Contemporary Presents Linda Sibio's WALL STREET GUILLOTINE At A Solo Sonic Art Performance

Craft Contemporary presents the World premiere of Interdisciplinary artist Linda Sibio's solo sonic art performance, Wall Street Guillotine.

This special performance will further investigate  themes in her solo exhibition, Economics of Suffering, Part IV, on display now, drawing parallels between forms of torture from the Holy Wars of the Middle Ages and our current wealth disparity. 

The event will be staged on January 7, 2024, at 3:00pm, which is also the closing date of the exhibit. The performance is not suitable for visitors under 18, but those under that age are allowed with parent/guardian at their discretion. The museum is located at 5814 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90036 (323-937-4230). Admission is free but requires registration here: events.humanitix.com/wall-street-guillotine.

For more information on the performance, please visit craftcontemporary.org/programs/linda-sibio-wall-street-guillotine-gallery-performance. For more on the exhibition, please visit craftcontemporary.org/exhibitions/linda-sibio-economics-of-suffering-part-iv.

With musical direction by Shawn Mafia, this solo performance incorporates a soundtrack collaboration with NYC-based experimental guitarist-composer Reg Bloor. “My piece, Wall Street Guillotine, is a strange vocal event with multiple layers of visuals,” Sibio professes.

In this 60-minute sonic art performance, the artist focuses on people who were tortured in long-ago wars and how that plays out in today's stock market. Through the use of provocative costumes and body paint, Sibio has created individuals who represent innocence and has contrasted them with characters that personify evil. She juxtaposes a time during the Middle Ages when humans were severely tortured with a singsong-like rhythm designed to bring out the same psychological terror that many poor families, and individuals, are experiencing in today's financial climate.

Surrounded by the almost 200 pieces in her current exhibit, Sibio declares, “On the closing day of Economics of Suffering we deal with the emotions and psychology behind that work.”

 

In Economics of Suffering: Part IV, which opened at Craft Contemporary on October 1, 2023, Linda Sibio explores the psychological toll of rampant capitalism and diminishing resources on those most vulnerable – the mentally disabled, the elderly, people living in poverty, and other disenfranchised populations suffering from homelessness, hunger, racism, and violence. As the artist describes, “I am interested in how money controls the masses, and forces poverty on people. In this series of works I look at the psychological effects of forced poverty that causes people to age prematurely, have heart attacks at a younger age, and die early; and how low wages cause depression, suicide, and post-traumatic stress syndrome.”

The exhibition includes a range of works: large paintings, multimedia installations and interactive works, and many of Sibio's ink drawings which embody the conceptual development of her ideas and document the system of “glyphs” Sibio has constructed to form her own, unique visual vocabulary. Having been diagnosed with schizophrenia at the age of eighteen, Sibio has developed her design process from research into the perceptions of the insane, a philosophy she has termed “The Insanity Principle.” Sibio transforms what are considered symptoms of insanity—such as fragmented thinking, non-linear time sequencing, dismemberment, delusions, and hallucinations—into a method for enhancing her creative process and making experimental art. This results in Sibio channeling her thoughts and emotions into highly intricate, saturated works with a distinct mode of narrative construction and visual overlaying.

A core component of the exhibition are five incredibly detailed and labor-intensive paintings that Sibio developed over the past four years. Sibio renders these works with a fine brush, creating hundreds of minute images and patterns that congeal into complex, layered stories. The paintings include a triptych exploring the economic motivations for genocide and how world powers often turn a blind eye to, or even sanction, war and mass murder for access to land, resource extraction, and wealth generation. In the triptych, Sibio depicts leaders from former G8 countries as monsters scavenging The Remains of people murdered in several genocides throughout human history. In Genocide Rwanda (2021-'22), Sibio depicts Vladimir Putin and Jacques Chirac as hybrid creatures—part side of beef, part digging machine—tearing into a human breast filled with the victims of the 1994 Rwandan Genocide. The breast, a source of sustenance, is stripped of its life-giving abilities and becomes a graveyard. The UN and international community did nothing to stop the violence in Rwanda and up to one million ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus were murdered by their fellow citizens.

Another large painting, Busboy (2019-'20), depicts Sibio's brother, who worked as a busboy for decades and also had schizophrenia. His image is cut and multiplied into smaller and smaller bodies which transition into large legs and feet, representing the millions of restaurant, factory, and other laborers who sustain the nutritional needs of this country with minimal pay or security. As the figures fracture, they peer into a full stomach, not able to access the nourishment it contains. The bottom border of the image is composed of souvenir plates from the poorest states in the U.S.

The exhibition will also include several interactive pieces including Sibio's installation, Wealth Disparity. Composed of digital and hand-painted wall graphics and rope, the piece investigates the shrinking of the American middle class and redlining, the systematic practice in which financial lenders deny services to entire communities based on the race or national origin of their residents. Sibio will provide markers so visitors can mark their own economic status within her graphics. Additionally, Sibio will incorporate lyrical poems, a soundtrack, and paintings on straightjackets enclosed in moveable structures that can be pulled by visitors around the gallery space.

Sibio blows apart the American myth of “pulling yourself up by your bootstraps” and its implications that people live in poverty because of laziness or personal choice. Her work dissects the complex web of government and corporate policies that ensures wealth stays concentrated with those that hold power. Simultaneously, she offers tools and ways of thinking so the most vulnerable in society can navigate and survive these systems.

As Sibio notes in her artist statement, “The fragmented thinking of the schizophrenic is actually a window into the placement of our culture. We are living in a deconstructed world no longer thinking linear thoughts. Our perceptions are continually interrupted by television, Internet, video surveillance, the media – we no longer have a single thought. We think in a multi-layered complex pattern. In order for our culture to go forward the darkness of the dismembered body needs to come into the light. We need to fragment in order to become whole again.”

Linda Carmella Sibio was born in 1953 in Montgomery, West Virginia, and currently lives and works in Joshua Tree, California. Sibio was diagnosed with schizophrenia while studying painting at Ohio University where she got her BFA in 1977. In the 1980s, she studied acting in Hollywood with Eric Morris and performance with Rachel Rosenthal. She has received numerous grants and awards including a Lannan Foundation Grant, Rockefeller MAP Fund Award, Wynn Newhouse Award, and the Tree of Life Award. She has performed at numerous venues including the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Franklin Furnace in New York, and Highways Performance Space in Los Angeles. Solo exhibitions of her work have been held at Track 16 Gallery in Los Angeles and Andrew Edlin Gallery in New York. In 2001, Sibio founded Bezerk Productions, a non-profit organization where she developed Cracked Eggs, a series of art workshops for neurodiverse individuals, and educates the public on the interdisciplinary work of these artists. Sibio is currently working with the San Bernardino County Department of Mental Health and Innovation Division on a pilot program of Cracked Eggs within the County's program.

Reg Bloor is a solo guitarist/composer based in New York City, known for her experiments in atonal harmony, dissonance, angular melodies, and dizzying meter taken to new harshly distorted extremes. She mixes the up-tempo immediacy of punk, the skronk of no wave, the harshness of metal, the angular melodies of progressive rock, and the atonality of the avant-garde in a dense harmonic weave that is an onslaught to the senses. Bloor has worked with music artists that include her late husband, Glenn Branca, as well as David Bowie, Page Hamilton, Thurston Moore, John Patitucci, and Annie Clark/St. Vincent; visual artists Tony Ourlser and Linda Carmella Sibio; and performed on soundtracks for the films The Mothman Prophesies and Terror Firmer.

Shawn Mafia is a singer, songwriter, musician, composer, performer, and poetry/prose writer whose career has spanned more than 20 years. He is often referred to as the poet laureate of Joshua Tree, California. His dark tales of Mojave Desert denizens, and the seedier side of the human condition, are showcased in his four studio albums, which include Tales From A Street Corner Confessional, along with several single releases, and has written articles for numerous publications. He has performed throughout the world and was a featured poet at the Palm Springs Art Museum's Live Out Loud! poetry series in 2007. Wall Street Guillotine sees him reuniting with Sibio and marks his debut as a music director. They had previously worked on her production, The Profit of Doom in the Banana Republic, where Mafia provided the artist with songwriting assistance.

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