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PRISCILLA ALEMAN
2009 YoungArts Winner in Visual Arts
Selected: Lucy Lippard
Interpretation by: Priscilla Aleman
My project for the Do it (home) exhibition will be a cultivated community landscape situated and performed within a series of sports stadiums throughout Miami. The performance will be the assemblage of a devotional outdoor figure overtaking a recreational public sports field for the duration of 2 hours. I will utilize the existing environment and incorporate portable sculptural elements to the sports fields to create a temporary installation viewers can approach or view from a distance. Sculptures will be arranged in both a systematic and seemingly organic layout throughout the field, allowing viewers to walk through and encounter the figurative symbols pulling from Afro-Cuban and South American cosmology. The life size portable devotional figure will be surrounded by a tessellation of ceramic fruits and hand symbols. The temporary installation is intended to be accessible and for both the neighborhood and commuters. The outdoor installation will serve as a protective emblem and portal to the cosmic field for the community. In these circumstances when we are especially confined, the idea of public space isn no longer intellectual; it is every person's day to day yearning. I want to engage and explore the idea of public space with an eye towards inclusion and expanding what is thought possible with sculpture, performance and recreational fields.
ADAM AMRAM
2012 YoungArts Winner in Visual Arts
Selected: David Lamelas
When I came upon David Lamelas' contribution to the Do It artist instructions, I felt deeply connected to its sentiment. It's very possible I misinterpreted what Lamelas had in mind, though I left the direction with equal parts understanding and wonder. I wondered the relevance of the moon, why one should make room for it in their minds after clearing out all the other chatter in their world. I also understood the moon as an artistic refuge from the world, perhaps a floating and distant metaphor of a physical space in the universe where one can see the inner workings of the creative mind—silent expansive terrain occupied by little craters left from ideas once excavated. This drawing came into existence through considering what it may look like to witness a thought take form and come into being—an act that relies on the health of one's imagination.
HANNA ANDREWS
2018 YoungArts Winner in Writing
Selected: Nairy Baghramian
The result of my final piece came together as a sort of micro-essay formation under some constraints of Stein’s signature impulses, leaning into an anti-linear, spatially-driven mode, with my own personal narrative under the conditions of (at home) infused. I was attracted to a variety of source texts which I embedded into the verse, including Stein’s “Identity a Poem,” (1935) from which emerges my own little dog making an appearance as Dante's Virgil, feeding me my lines, an agitator to my own helplessness and divulgence into the self; Stein as Alice as the narrator of her own life from The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, an exercise in self-mythology and autobiography by proxy; and finally Derek Jarman from his own diaries in Modern Nature, an authority on gloom and bloom like no other, after which the poem takes its title. The poem is contained by scene to one room, but seeks to thread bodily, material, and virtual spaces, and the uncanny valleys between the three.
TIARRA BELL
2016 YoungArts Winner in Design Arts
Selected: Carrie Mae Weems
Interpretation by: Tiarra Bell
This vessel is symbolic of facing the daily force. Each and every human being is a vessel and within each of us is contained a unique purpose. We all have certain gifts, talents, and passions that are meant to be used to complete our divine assignment. However, by conforming to this world's standards, we will never recognize what is hidden within us. All the forces of this world distract us from pulling out those precious dreams. These forces make us lose sight of the very reason why were place on this earth. This vessel is symbolic of every human being discovering the dreams placed inside of them and using their time to pull those dreams out to thus manifest them to the world.
AMANDA BLANCA
2019 YoungArts Winner in Visual Arts
Selected: Christian Boltanski
[1] Get your neighbors photo album: I’ll ask my neighbor to pick an album of theirs that they believe to be the most memorable (can be in a positive or negative sense). I implore annotations on the side of photos with important colors, patterns on fabric from loved ones, time periods and important locations. In doing so I make this collaborative project more immersive for my neighbor. They are actively engaged in their own history and having an intervention with these memories after many years.
[2] Give the neighbor yours in exchange: I follow the same guidelines I assigned for my neighbor.
[3] Enlarge these pictures to 8 x 10
[4] Frame them some simple fashion and hang on the walls of your apartment: I choose images from my neighbors’ album that provide patterns and colors and blow them up 8 x 10 and I create a collage out of them (size tbd but to be assumed that this will be a large scaled piece). With these abstracted images of colors shapes and patterns seen on these photos I will create a large-scale tufted piece (similar process to tufted rug making) to create an immersive wall ornament to hang in my home. Interacting with the album and the words written by my neighbor I aim to tell a story with color, shape, and composition.
[5] Your neighbor should do the same with your album: Knowing that my neighbor is a seamstress and works with fibers I believe providing her with these instructions she will create a piece using the materials accessible to her. Her aim as well as mine is to tell a story based off of words and images. She can decide to be inspired by color and pattern as I intend to do, or she may choose to stick to the phrasing and text I include. Scale will be same for both and will be hung somewhere on a wall in her house.
DEMETRI BURKE
2017 YoungArts Winner in Visual Arts
Selected: Carrie Mae Weems
Interpretation by: Demetri Burke
I was struck by Carrie Mae Weems’ directions because it highlights two concepts. It is the call to hope and yet the admittance of anguish. This duality I see present in my own work with my depiction of arches. Holding an ever changing context, I see the form in doorways, in altars, in black boys’ hoodies, in basketball courts, in graves. The narrative that I find with it is ever compassing, triumphant, and debilitating. I think Weems’ instructions are in effort to set everything out on the table and move forward. I think about her series From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried, and I think about the tragedy of telling it and the triumph of being able to do so. With this prompt, I want to showcase what's been collecting at my table, in my desk, under my bed, and construct it into a prayer. With the tools found at home, I want to use the imagery as something reflective, meditative, and transformative like the nature of clouds and sunsets...
VICTORIA ESCOBAR
2017 YoungArts Winner in Design Arts
Selected: Jonas Mekas
Interpretation: Victoria Escobar
My response to the Do It (Home) prompt, created by MEKAS, Jonas Instruction (1996), involved drawing with a different finger every day for 1 minute. The results were very insightful, allowing me to really explore and see the different levels of control each individual finger had. While completing the prompt, I even thought “its amazing, we can create such beautiful images with our hands, but single out a finger and things become much more challenging.” I had expectations about how each finger would perform and assumed that it would be a lot easier than it was, but wow was I wrong.
GLENN ESPINOSA
2016 YoungArts Winner in Visual Arts
Selected: Pascale Marthine Tayou
Interpretation by: Glenn Espinosa
I took on Pascale’s instructions and sought out to make a film from 10 videos in my phone I no longer remembered were there. With a library of 743 videos (to be exact) you can imagine there were quite a few to choose from. True to the instructions the process of selecting and editing led to actual moments of recollection and recovery of some lost not so distant memory.
KIERRA GRAY
2018 YoungArts Winner in Voice
Selected: Shilpa Gupta
Interpretation by: Kierra Gray
For my creative work, I wrote a song based on Shilpa Gupta’s artist instructions. In the writing process, I realized that there are two sides to my interpretation of “Look Straight Don’t See.” On the one hand, it’s self-assessing your current reality, then imagining a better one. On the other hand, it’s imagining someone else’s current reality in a “Looks can be deceiving” kind of way, then dreaming a better future for them also. Both sides get you to look past your sight and empathize with your heart. I also engineered, produced, and mixed the song.
DARA GIREL-MATS
2019 YoungArts Winner in Visual Arts
Selected: Etel Adnan
The artist's instructions have been a valuable avenue to explore and play. This process made space outside of my traditional illustration practice in which I was allowed to be present as an artist, grateful, creating without expectations. Being a part of this conversation through the use of artist instructions from artists from around the world, spanning decades, has been a fulfilling practice that should be more common.
AARON GREENBERG
2017 YoungArts Winner in Theater & U.S. Presidential Scholar in the Arts
Selected: Shilpa Gupta
Interpretation by: Aaron Greenberg
I chose a prompt that read "Look straight. Don't see." as inspiration for this project. Instead of taking those words literally, I thought of "straight" as meaning heterosexual. As a Gay man who attended middle school in the United States, I often think about whether things look or sound "gay". I often find myself in the habit of wanting to "look straight", and otherwise wanting people to just not see me. I positioned the camera at claustrophobic angles to make the audience feel like a hidden eye watching a man's every move, which he eventually decides to confront.
LORI HEPNER
1998 YoungArts Winner in Photography
Selected: Torkwase Dyson
Interpretation by: Lori Hepner
Lori Hepner - Video Process
I was in Pristina, Kosovo working on a project in early March 2020. I had to leave the country on less than a day’s notice, due to COVID-19 travel restrictions, while ill. The process of rapidly traveling back to the United States didn’t leave me any time to process my weeklong experience in Pristina, nor the uncertainty about whether or not I had become sick with the virus myself.
To process my experiences in Kosovo, I will create a series of 13- 99 second drawings, one for each of the 13 days that I spent there from my home in the United States. I will perform drawings of my remembered walking paths from my time in Pristina, using LEDs to create light paintings of these paths. The LEDs will have photographs loaded into them of my own photographs from Kosovo and will use a real-time system of light-painting that will record the LEDs as digital drawings.
MOLLY HORAN
2008 YoungArts Winner in Writing
Selected: Precious Okoyomon
Interpretation by: Molly Horan
As the piece begins, the first actor delivers a monologue on their fear. Maybe a small one, the kind that doesn’t distract you often, but can sometimes sneak up on you in a pause between podcasts. Maybe something crushing. They hold up the paper where they wrote the fear down, which they then destroy. Some will destroy their paper with fire (home-setting permitting), some will rip it up, some will crumple it. They will then place the remains in the dirt of a flower pot. They prepare to plant, you seem them get a small garden tool, then they disappear and are replaced with a photo full of color and joy. The process is repeated until the screen is no longer full of squares of anxious people, but a beautiful garden.
HSING-AY HSU
1999 YoungArts Winner in Classical Music
Selected: Geta Bratescu
Interpretation by: Hsing-ay Hsu
Geta Bra(h)tescu wants to summon two essential characters: the Dot and the Line. The task is to actualize their movement and become musical.
I explored how one might vary
The magnitude of the movements, or intervals as we say in musical terms
The pacing of the movement
The dynamics, meaning the volume
And the I decided on a primary contour of the anchoring dots
And improvised the curves around it.
My improvisation ended up being in 3 parts:
1st, varying curvatures
2nd, plotting the anchor dots on one big curve
3rd, using thicker Lines of note clusters and Dot groupings traveling in a Line
to introduce color possibilities as I personally experience
dark wood, sprouting green, and rusty red.
RODNEY JONES
2009 YoungArts Winner in Photography
Selected: Christodoulos Panayiotou
Brooklyn sky is way to bright to see a starry night, so I made my own. I’ve been watching a lot of Pussy Valley which made me think of the color scheme.
AARON KLEIN
2019 YoungArts Winner in Theater
Selected: Meriam Benani
Interpretation by: Aaron Klein
For the 2020 do it (home) Exhibition, I wanted to produce the “Meriem Bennani’s Untitled (2020)” instruction. I plan to depict the aforementioned instruction through film, theatre and dance. My initial idea was to film this instruction as a short film. It would simply show a college-aged student who has an aspiration to become a social media influencer. Her self-absorbed nature of wanting to ‘make it’ would be abundantly clear. She would be searching on YouTube T-Pains’ 2007 hit, “Chopped ‘n’ Screwed” (per the instructions) along with clips of her attempting to learn the dance to the best of her ability. There would be spliced cuts of her rehearsing as well as getting distracted by her television or cellphone. She finally captures the video and submits it to TikTok then constantly refreshes her phone until one person finally ‘likes’ it. Her obsession with social media and the momentary self-fulfillment that flees soon after she puts down her phone. The whole short film would be framed through a rather comedic lens, given the witty nature of the instruction’s tone.
LAUREN LAM
2018 YoungArts Winner in Design Arts and Visual Arts
Selected: Christodoulos Panayiotou
This work captures the essence of gazing at a starry sky. The dark lighting represents the nighttime sky, while the reflective glitter superimposes the stars onto the woman.
ADAM LARSON
2009 YoungArts Winner in Jazz
Selected: Marjetica Potrc
Interpretation by: Adam Larson
"For my instruction I wanted to create a piece that reflected different types of breathing. Our breathing does not remain the same at all times; at times our breaths are slow and steady- other times they are labored, intense and chaotic, even. We can express emotion in how we breath, of which you will hear plenty in this piece; including a cameo by my oldest son, as I recorded him laughing and integrated that soundbite. To literally "blow away a wall" as the instruction suggests, force is needed. Also required- imagination." *this piece uses extensive use of layered sounds, vocal distortion, and live instruments (saxophone).*
SASHA LAZARUS
2017 YoungArts Winner in Dance
Selected: Meriam Benani
Interpretation by: Sasha Lazarus featuring Darius Hickman
In this video, we played with the ideas of isolation and loneliness vs the feeling of unity and togetherness. We reacted to how the songs by Moses Sumney made us feel organically in the moment. The world has had a lot of time to reflect on these concepts during the isolation periods of the covid-19 pandemic. The feeling of loneliness is portrayed inside the house contrary to the feeling of bliss and freedom portrayed in the fields. There is an underlying theme of longing for human interaction.
ALEX MEDIATE
2016 YoungArts Winner in Photography
Selected: Carrie Mae Weems
Dreams are unstructured forms of imagination. We say this because we can never actually solve problems in dreams, we can only explore them. The phenomenal space dreams exist in is something we can never think critically about when dreaming, we kind of just accept it as it is. For this project, I tried to best visualize my dreams by recording them in a journal and then attempting to recreate them by photographing the physical world. September 26, I had a dream I was watching my body from the outside. I was dressed up as a devil for Halloween and no one could figure out what my Halloween costume was. September 29, I had a dream I was with my roommate running away from the police, and we found the best hiding spot by the ocean, it was a moment of bliss fueled by adrenaline. October 2, I had a dream I was at an amusement park being chased by a person dressed up as a monster, it wouldn’t stop until I forced myself to wake up. I realized in these dreams the three aspects of self: awareness, identity, and body weren’t fully identified. Emotions played the biggest role in these dreams and it made me realize that these subconscious thoughts can’t really teach me anything. It’s all plots, storylines, and people I know and are well aware of already.
LUMIA NOCITO
2016 YoungArts Winner in Photography
Selected: Shilpa Gupta
I recently read the text What is a Photograph? by Geoffrey Batchen. In this text, Batchen establishes that a photograph,
today, is something “to be looked at, not through.” This lack of “throughness” covers the “straight” aspect of the prompt. With photography, the viewer not only looks straight onto the photograph, but, more importantly, the viewer receives solely what they are given by the photograph.
Batchen’s text discusses the history of photography, with a particular focus on a time in which photography was not regarded as an art form, but rather, was used within the realm of science. Batchen quotes Roland Barthes discussing the context in which photography is subversive, during this time photography was regarded as science. Barthes states that photography is subversive “not when it frightens, repels, or even stigmatizes, but when it is pensive, when it thinks.”
Batchen analyzes Barthes statement, explicating that “by declining to allow the viewer a passive reception of an elsewhere once seen by someone else, ‘photography’ [when it was regarded as a science] forces us to think about the activity of seeing taking place in the here and now, thereby confronting us with our own perceptual agency. These are photographs that turn the act of viewing back onto the viewer.” The photographs that Batchen is referencing are scientific experiments in which light was exposed onto light sensitive paper — therefore making the subject matter of the photograph nothing other than itself. “The photograph [is] in the piece of paper but it also [is] the piece of paper.” The photograph “is not of something; it is something.”
The most remarkable aspect of the manner in which these photographs are subversive is their power to subvert the viewer’s way of seeing. When viewing these scientific experiments, these ‘photographs,’ the viewer had to give to the photograph, which ultimately caused the viewer to confront their own “perceptual agency,” or way of seeing. Within the context of contemporary photography, we do not create these types of ‘subversive’ photographs. Contemporary photography gives to the viewer, and therefore it is unnecessary for the viewer to ponder their own method of seeing. Viewing a photograph that does not ‘think’ is a passive act - the viewer does not need to ‘see’ when viewing photographs as we know them today — the photographs (which are ‘of ’ something) already give the viewer what they need. The photographs do the work for the viewer, rather than the viewer doing the work for the photograph.
In today’s context, the photograph gives. The viewer does not.
Therefore, for this exhibition, I will create a photograph that gives to the viewer, ultimately placing the viewer in the position to look ‘straight’ and not ‘see.’
AMEYA OKAMOTO
2018 YoungArts Winner in Visual Arts & U.S. Presidential Scholar in the Arts
Selected: Uri Aran and Lynn Hershman
Interpretation by: Ameya Okamoto featuring Jace Weyant
For this piece, I created a time-lapse of myself drawing a single line of chalk down the street. This video follows me, as I attempt to create a singular, never-ending, non-stop, continuous, nonlinear ‘doodle’ line that seems impossibly far. The line was created with the single instruction and plan to “go as far as possible” and is inspired by the current times and culture that demand individuals — especially young people — exhaust themselves. This piece is about a society that demands explanation, attention and energy from anyone and everyone, even when time is not deserved and explanation unnecessary. What does “impossible” mean? Where do “lines” show up in our lives? How does one know when they’ve reached their physical limit? Where do (we) draw the line? Where is our physical, emotional, social boundary? How does trauma/pandemic/violence/terror impact the lines in our lives? These are questions I seek to explore with this piece.
BHARGAVI SARANGAPANI
2019 YoungArts Winner in Dance
Selected: Ngyugen Pban
Interpretation by: Bhargavi Sarangapani
In this piece, I demonstrate how a seed is planted and how it grows. In the first scene, I make the seed ball and plant in in the ground, as described in the instructions. Throughout the next few scenes, the seed sprouts into a plant and then withers after a period of time. This embodies the cycle of success and failure; life has both its moments of success and happiness, but can also have periods of doubt and loss. In the final scene, I use the seeds from the fruit of the withered plant, make a new seed ball, and place it in the ground, waiting to see what happens. This demonstrates how taking something from a failure and moving on can eventually lead to growth and development.
The varying tunes in the music used in this video symbolizes the different emotions present during each scene.
KEVIN SHERWIN
2012 YoungArts Winner in Classical Music
Selected: Tracey Emin
Interpretation by: Kevin Sherwin
For “What Would Tracey Do?” I would like to use the 27 bottles of different sizes and colors to create a new musical composition, inspired by the visual impression of the bottles, and the different pitches of the various sized bottles that are created. The different bottles that I select will serve as percussion instruments, and they would have different pitches because of their different sizes. I can also create a new variety of pitches and timbres by filling the bottles with different levels of water. From these everyday materials, I think it would be a wonderfully playful creation to make melodies and harmonies by combining the sounds of the bottles in musical ways. The cotton string connecting them could also serve as a plucked string sound, and I would also plan to layer the sounds of my guitar over a video of me performing the original composition for the bottles.
ADRIANE THARP
2015 YoungArts Winner in Writing & U.S. Presidential Scholar in the Arts
Selected: Christodoulos Panayiotou
Some things that have been swirling in my emotional soup: What would an introvert-friendly party look like? The idea of blocked or removed senses—I sometimes can’t sleep without earplugs; a friend recently told me he can’t smell much besides vanilla-scented things but this doesn’t affect his taste. Helen Oyeyemi’s short stories, Ross Gay’s The Book of Delights, Janet A. Kaplan’s biography of my favorite painter, Remedios Varo. Loneliness even in the presence of loved ones.
CORNELIUS TULLOCH
2016 YoungArts Winner in Design Arts and Visual Arts & U.S. Presidential Scholar in the Arts
Selected: Carrie Mae Weems
Midnight Inferno transforms the home into a dream like state that uses color and light to explore visual storytelling. Through these silhouettes, icons and characters emerge to explore the passion and urge of creativity through a dream like state. The imagery invited the viewer to interpret and read into what they are seeing. These scenes then live on in a public sphere inviting the urban context to be in dialogue with its performance.
MARIA USECHE
2016 YoungArts Winner in Design Arts
Selected: Uri Aran
Interpretation by: Maria Useche
In response to the Do It Instruction to “Doodle” I used 40 sketches from the sketchbook I kept while in quarantine as this was the escape I had when my physical body couldn’t leave the house. They became the building blocks for the virtual world I created using Blender taking the viewer on an accelerated ride through the physical manifestation of my sketchbook. Turning my 2D escape into a 3D daydream.
TAYLOR YINGSHI
2020 YoungArts Winner in Visual Arts
Selected: Dyson Torkwase
Interpretation by: Taylor Yingshi
I prepared a list of 20 events that occurred in the United States during 2020 with the intention of drawing each of them for 99 seconds consecutively. There was no shortage of events to choose from - the hard part was knowing how to start. I stressed over messy markmaking and imperfect anatomy before realizing that I just had to "do it". Having never tried a timed sketch before, my brushstrokes were hesitant, but after 2 or 3 drawings I was back in my creative workflow.
In 1993, curator Hans Ulrich Obrist introduced do it, a concept that tested how exhibitions could be rendered more flexible and open-ended. Now more than twenty years later, and as many around the world remain physically distanced, YoungArts is proud to iterate on Obrist's do it (home)—a reimagined project presented in collaboration with Independent Curators International (ICI).
For the first time ever, 28 YoungArts award winners across the literary, visual and performing arts will be featured together in a group exhibition. Multigenerational and interdisciplinary, participants represent a range of voices, practices and ways of seeing the world. Their prompt: choose from a set of do it (home) artist instructions to make a work that could easily be realized in one’s own home.
This exhibition is designed to inspire joy and reflection and to offer a space for healing and contemplation. The works on view are vulnerable and personal. They speak to this very moment in time that has forced artists—that has forced us all—to think differently, to think anew.
Note: Exhibition artists are listed in alphabetical order and include the artist instruction selected, their final interpretation and insight into the process. For an expanded view of instructions and artwork please click on the thumbnail, image, or video file (videos can be expanded to full screen mode).