WE ARE MATIK has a shiny new site on which you can meet the MATIK kids and learn about the MATIKfesto: “We believe that another word for creativity is courage: the courage to initiate change, the courage to enter uncensored territories, and the courage to keep a playful heart in an overly serious world.”
Most recently in March 2011, WE ARE MATIK’s Shinichiro Fujita, Sarah Kang (two prior Art Center grads), and Brooke Woosley (another Art Center grad recently spotted in the NY Times) collaborated with artist Onya Hogan-Finlay to install her MFA Thesis show, titled “My Taste in Men,” at the Ed Roski Master of Fine Arts Gallery of the University of Southern California’s Roski School of Fine Arts. The exhibition was based on Hogan-Finlay’s study of the collections of the ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives, which is the oldest organization to document the history of the LGBT community through the records and materials of activists and ordinary citizens, as well as political, social, educational and cultural organizations. Until this installation, the contents of the Archives were not accessible to the public and rarely exhibited.
Along with Hogan-Finlay, WE ARE MATIK was tasked with processing a large volume of paintings, manuscripts, photographs, memorabilia, graphics, ephemera, and other historically significant materials in order to produce an exhibit that clearly told the story of the One Archives and the people who populated it. WE ARE MATIK’s inspiration began with the basics: the vessels in which the records of the Archives were stored and preserved. As the exhibit intended to intrigue the viewer and encourage further exploration and interest in the Archives, in addition to paying homage to its contributors, WE ARE MATIK designed the exhibit so that the viewer would feel like he or she was also a participant in uncovering the stories the Archives had to tell.
WE ARE MATIK achieved this effect through strategically mixing the art, records, and memorabilia on display with fastened vellum sleeves that lent an air of mystery and intrigue to their contents. Also present were closed archival boxes, which enticed the viewer and created the desire to unseal them and discover what was inside. Nestled in one corner of the exhibit was a researcher’s archival madness motif. There, a projector screen showed excerpts from an interview with Lisa Ben and Donna Smith that stood before a desk supporting an ancient Underwood typewriter bearing pages of Lisa Ben’s Vice Versa. Inhabiting the floor space were archival boxes from which intriguing contents poured, while decades-old, hand-made banners and placards from past protests for social justice emerged from foothills of memorabilia. Lining the wall was a relief depicting half-shelved archival boxes that served as the cool-textured backdrop to the scene.
In another portion of the exhibit, WE ARE MATIK took an ordinary gallery wall and transformed it with custom-designed wallpaper highlighting the publications and life experiences of Reed Erickson, one of the Archive’s important historical figures and benefactors. WE ARE MATIK designed the wallpaper based on images from the late 1960s and 1970s cover art of the pro LGBT-educating pamphlets authored by Erickson and old photographs of the wild subjects present in Erickson’s daily life. The gallery wall and the perimeter of the exhibit hosted a number of oil paintings and works of art in other mediums by various artists, including a regal portrait of one of the Archives founders, specially installed so that from his perspective, the entire exhibit could be viewed.
As the Archives hold over 60,000 records, effectively distilling its essence into one exhibit was a daunting task, but WE ARE MATIK was able to successfully express the Archives through Hogan-Finlay’s vision and desire to preserve the diversity of LGBT history.