Chapter 8: Bobbi Woods
Tucson, AZ
March 6 – April 2015
Back to The Manifest Destiny Billboard Project
Bobbi Woods’ billboards in Tucson, AZ created a cinematic-style experience of “driving through” images, which are mined form a variety of sources – from Alfred Stieglitz’s cloud photographs to luxury advertisements to Hollywood visions of masculinity – and layered into a deliberately hazy amalgam of consumer and capitalist desire. Drawing from Woods’ work in video and with poster advertisements, the billboards concealed and combined various sources to destabilize the function of the billboard medium as a means to advertise and convey clear messaging.
Images culled from the internet (to Woods, the other highway: the “information superhighway”) combined with Stieglitz’s black and white photographs from his series, Equivalent, functioned as the background for many of the billboards. The hazy and muted tones faded in and out of the clouds like a mirage in the desert while simultaneously mirroring the sky behind the boards themselves. On one billboard, an appropriated advertisement stating “ALL MEN ARE NOT CREATED EQUAL” directly related to the country’s ongoing struggle with equal rights for people of color, LGBT sexual orientation, and women. In other billboards, Woods collaged and superimposed images of commercial and sexual desire with movie posters from films shot in the Tucson area, cropping and refiguring the posters to reveal subliminal messaging about how the American “wild west” and masculinity are portrayed in the film industry, highlighting this propaganda and the false portrayal of heroics in relationship to Manifest Destiny.
Bobbi Woods (b. St. Louis, MO) is known for her ripped and altered posters that investigate commercial strategies and imagery.
MAP:
OPENING RECEPTION AND SCREENING
Join LAND and artist Bobbi Woods for a debut screening of a new video work and reception
MOCA Tucson
265 S. Church Street
Tucson, AZ
Saturday, March 7, 2015
6-8pm
This project was made possible with support from The Offield Family Foundation and an award from the National Endowment for the Arts Art Works and with support from Clear Channel Outdoor and Juggernaut Outdoor. Special thanks to MOCA Tucson.
