JOSEPHINE MECKSEPER, installation
Like some bizarre hybrid Of Lucky and Mother Jones, Josephine Meckseper’s installations place protest imagery and artifacts into mock magalog layouts and boutique displays. In her recent show at Elizabeth Dee Gallery, Constructivist manifestos mingled with Palestinian head scarves and homemade Super-8 footage of the September 2005 antiwar rally in Washington. “Her work dovetails with a renewed interest in art that’s made politically, as opposed to political art,” says White Columns director Matthew Higgs. The 41-year-old German-born artist, who’s currently preparing a large-scale installation for the Museum of Contemporary Art in Léon, Spain, says she’s neither an activist nor a detached observer at the demonstrations she films. “I’m an artist and documentarian. It’s a reflective role— active but not ideological.”