Brett Cook & Liz Lerman: Reflection & Action

Curatorial Statement

When developing an exhibition, how can you make visible a public understanding of the artistic process, highlighting the invisible over the visible? From a curatorial perspective, bringing artists together based on what you cannot see, rather than what you can see, presents unique aesthetic and conceptual challenges. Senior Fellows Brett Cook and Liz Lerman requested that we face these challenges head on through their culminating project at YBCA. Rather than presenting disparate solo exhibitions that narrate a linear trajectory of their decades-long careers, Cook and Lerman chose to echo their own relational process in presentation, with a not-quite retrospective grounded in the here and now.

Each artist has taken the exhibition as an opportunity to reconsider previous works, develop new ideas, and explore how the presentation of artwork inside a gallery space can inspire visitors to become active participants. For Cook, this began with a group of paintings collectively referred to as The Congregation (1993–2014). This selection of Cook’s paintings, across years of his oeuvre spent in the Bay Area, New York, and New Jersey, have been uncovered because of relationship. Held in storage in Pennsylvania and out of public circulation for over twenty years, this is the first time these paintings have been shown together. As a group, they are visual markers of stories and connections Cook carries through his practice to this day. These works are in dialogue with Cook’s latest series, Gardeners of Belonging (2022), which similarly mark opportunities for collective thinking around people and memory. Gardners, commissioned for Oakland’s Life Is Living Festival and later brought to YBCA, inverts the tradition of mural painting by allowing the subject autonomy in the presentation of their personal story. Each artist was selected for their contributions to the Bay Area arts ecosystem, and in turn, picked their subjects. Together they were recorded in conversation to share their process and experiences. Although much of Cook’s work is designed to be site- and community-specific, in this exhibition he opens up the creative process to visitors through chalk walls, maps, and opportunities to make the work personal to everyone.

For Lerman, this exhibition presented an opportunity to create entirely new installations that allow the viewer inside the mind of the creator. Back Stage (2022), a new work, is simultaneously a fragmented journey through Lerman’s family history, the energetic cacophony

Brett Cook and Liz Lerman, Spell Altar, 2020–ongoing, installation view, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 2021. Courtesy Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Photograph by LexMex Art.

Brett Cook, The Congregation, 1993-2014. Courtesy the artist.

of being backstage in a performance, and a dreamscape. The Office (2022) is a fictional rendering of her actual workspace, where inside visitors can explore The Atlas of Creative Tools (2022), a computer-based expedition across Lerman’s career with not-so-hidden references to other artworks in the exhibition. Without losing the medium of dance, on which her career is based, visitors will find an immersive video room where they can surround themselves with the rigor of Lerman’s choreography across decades of work.

Her presentations in the exhibition offer another way for choreography to show up in the world, thinking about dance as akin to water in its multiplicity of forms. Spirit’s Nest (2022) is a multimedia installation reimagining the home of Clara Barton from Lerman’s Healing Wars (2014), a timetraveling reflection on the American Civil War and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Videos of the original performance are interwoven among branches, photographs, and lanterns guiding visitors through the nest. Lerman’s newest work, Wicked Bodies (2022), activates YBCA’s entire campus with both a video and zine installation in the exhibition and performances in our Blue Shield of California Theater on October 28–30, 2022.

Cook and Lerman’s artistic practices are guided by collectivity, self-reflection, and transformation. Knowing we could not tell their stories better than them, we asked the artists to annotate the exhibition under five guiding themes: A Retrospective in Forward Motion, When Spirit Shows Up, Art as a Verb, Alchemy of Relationship, and People, Always. These themes highlight the common ground between the two artists, and forefront the methodologies they have undertaken to move through and beyond the confines of their respective fields.

The Spell Altar (2021) is the only collaborative artwork between them. Initially designed as part of their Alchemy of Awakening program as senior fellows at YBCA, and later reimagined as an introduction to Lerman’s Wicked Bodies, the Spell Altar invites viewers to cast a spell using small mirrored panels and paint pens. The collection of written incantations creates a reflective feedback loop between participants and offerings, a pattern of reflection and action that echoes throughout the galleries. Together, people create space to inspire one another and see themselves in creative power.

Fiona Ball Manager, Curatorial Projects & Public Experience

Martin Strickland Director, Curatorial Projects & Public Experience

Liz Lerman, Wicked Bodies, 2022. Courtesy of Jacob’s Pillow. Photograph by Jamie Kraus.

As Senior Fellows

When two masterful artists like Brett Cook and Liz Lerman gather under the umbrella of an institution, one might expect that the colossal nature of their individual practices might set them up for existing in silo. Instead, their very first act as YBCA senior fellows was to become a duo, a pair.

Right away, both their work and their beings began to hum and ping off of one another for what ultimately grew into this exhibition. For them, being in relation is the soil out of which art springs—relation is what gives creative practice its deepest meaning and transformative potential.

As senior fellows, they asked us to examine and nurture the web of relationships that make up YBCA as an institution. That sounds big, because it is big. At YBCA, we often ask ourselves what role an arts institution serves in stewarding and supporting change. Brett and Liz offered an additional question: What kind of change can an arts institution ignite when it puts interconnection and relationship at the center of its work?

In practice, that looked like many things. Between January 2020 and today, they attended every board meeting, were privy to every financial report, and were able to get to know the institution with an intimacy that was unprecedented. Understanding that boards are bodies of people connected through a commitment to values and charged with governance that often sets the tone, Cook and Lerman spent time shaping the culture of the board. In many ways, we are a different organization now because of their attention to our board. Over many months, Liz taught both the board and staff her Critical Response Process, a method she developed to help anyone get and give useful, healthy, and constructive feedback.

Two years later, it still shows up in all sorts of gatherings, helping the organization weather the storms of transition in many shapes and forms. They have supported us with facilitation skills and creative exercises for transformational design, and during program endings, moments of challenge, and moments of celebration. They have been a rudder whenever we needed perspective. They will often say to us that their goal is to be of service.

Their next six months with us are not only the culmination of their time here as artists, but also as teachers and leaders, helping YBCA to live into a practice of world-building—rehearsing the world we want to see.

Enjoy their arts and look beyond it, to what it took to get here.

Meklit Hadero Head, Creativity and Impact

Angela Carrier Director, Artist Engagement & Impact

Public Programs

LIZ LERMAN’S CRITICAL RESPONSE PROCESS: Question Generator

Based on step two of Liz Lerman’s Critical Response Process (CRP)

When Liz Lerman devised CRP, she knew that if an artist asked an audience a question, everyone would learn something that helped a work in progress to grow and reach its potential.

In the process she made two discoveries:

• The act of generating a question is creative in itself and opens new channels of thinking; and

•

In a society that rewards confidence and certainty, people often don’t have much practice in asking questions about their own work.

She noticed, in fact, that when invited to introduce unfinished work artists would start, instead, with excuses or apologies. She found it helpful to say, “Dignify those impulses by turning them into questions.”

Out of these observations, Liz worked with colleagues to develop methods for formulating useful questions which you can sample here.

TO BEGIN, think about something “in process” in your life (a project, a problem to solve, a path to an outcome, etc.)

Apology

DoubtHope

Motivation

Intuition

Observation

NAME IT:

Write your apology, observation, hope, etc., here.

INQUIRE:

Turn it into a question.

(By articulating, you externalize the impulse and begin to manage it.)

ASSOCIATE:

What does that make you think?

(Now you are expanding the scope into your broader perceptions.)

(The question gives you a path forward:You can use it to get feedback,advance your own thinking, or suggestresearch to pursue.)

Brett Cook and Liz Lerman’s Senior Fellowship is stewarded by Meklit Hadero, Head of Creativity & Impact and Angela Carrier, Director of Artistic Engagement & Impact.

Brett Cook & Liz Lerman: Reflection & Action is curated and organized by Martin Strickland, Director of Curatorial Projects & Public Experience; Fiona Ball, Manager of Curatorial Projects & Public Experience; Yoni Asega, Co-Head Preparator; David Tim, Co-Head Preparator; and Bella Manfredi, Senior Preparator.

YBCA is grateful to our preparator team who made this exhibition possible: Stephanie Aderholt, Alina Çelik, Philip Garcia, Lauren Kenward, Ben Leon, Rachele Mechem, Christian Neill, David Prigge, Mae Ross, and Kelsey Westphal.

Brett Cook and Liz Lerman thank the following people for their invaluable contributions to this exhibition:

Evan Bissell

John Borstel

Mariah Castle

Emma Colón

The Crucible Jason DeAntonis

Erin Donohue

Farzaneh Hedayati

Orlando Lima/Yilli

Art Foundation

Karina Muranaga

Matt Nock

Miguel “Bounce” Perez

Thitiwat Promratanapongse

Anna Spelman

Ananth Udupa

Taylor Verrett

Darron L West Erin Yoshi

Brett Cook and Liz Lerman’s senior fellowship at YBCA is made possible through the generous support of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, and the Bernard Osher Foundation.

YBCA Programs are made possible in part by MacKenzie Scott and Dan Jewett, California Arts Council, #StartSmall, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, Tambourine, the San Francisco Arts Commission, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, Marilyn Conrad Trust, Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, William G. Irwin Charity Foundation, Kenneth Rainin Foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies, Walter & Elise Haas Fund, The Bernard Osher Foundation, In memory of Kevin King,The Sato Foundation, New England Foundation for the Arts, Gaia Fund, and YBCA Members.

Generous support provided by Blue Shield of California. Blue Shield of California is an independent member of the Blue Shield Association.

YBCA is grateful to the City of San Francisco for its ongoing support.

About YBCA

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA) is San Francisco’s center for art and progress. Opened to the public in 1993, YBCA was founded as the cultural anchor of San Francisco’s Yerba Buena gardens neighborhood. Our work spans the realms of contemporary art, performance, film, civic engagement, and public life. By centering artists as essential to social and cultural movement, YBCA is reimagining the role an arts institution can play in the community it serves. Our mission is to generate culture that moves people.