September 29, 2016
Jeffrey Baykal-Rollins
The Body of the People
Curator
Lanfranco Aceti
Location
Old South Meeting House
Photographer
Samuel J. Brewer
Jeffrey Baykal-Rollins has worked for more than twenty years in the field of socially engaged art when it was not glamorous and in places where punishment for such a form of art would easily turn physical. He has engaged with the complexity of contextualized images of protest and has dealt with despotic, authoritarian, and political speeches across countries to signpost common tropes. He is currently in the USA where he has developed new projects and performances in public spaces.
The performance The Body of the People was commissioned and curated by Lanfranco Aceti for the Museum of Contemporary Cuts and realized in Boston at the Old South Meeting House, the site of the first protests that led to the American Revolution. It was part of a series of events that were planned in 2015 and realized in September 2016 ahead of the November election of Donald J. Trump. The curatorial remit was to anticipate trends and what by very few was perceived as an inevitable electoral outcome, leaving ahead of time a warning of ‘things to come’. The Body of the People was just one of such visionary works of art which light up the cradle of American democracy, warning of future dangers.
documentation of performance
Artist
Jeffrey Baykal-Rollins is a multimedia artist and educator, now based in the greater New York City area after living for many years in Istanbul. His “art as social practice,” combines drawing and painting with performance, alternative education, institutional critique, and cultural studies. Working in collaboration with numerous museums and universities nationally and internationally, Baykal-Rollins has created site-specific projects reflecting upon current socio-political disruptions such as the Arab Spring, citizens in democracy, Black Lives Matter, and gun violence in the United States. He completed his BFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Glasgow School of Art in Scotland, and holds an MFA from the University of California, Santa Barbara.