Rules of Engagement: Arlington Arts Center's 'Picturing Politics'

WHEN LIFE IMITATES ART, the occasion is often deemed ironic and sometimes gets repackaged with curatorial glee on the likes of the "The Daily Show." When art imitates life, poetic justice usually plays to smaller crowds.

Politics and art have been making strange bedfellows for centuries, but while Washington's reputation as America's political epicenter is superficially considered the city's raison d'etre, Washington's reputation as an artistic epicenter is much less defined.

Arlington Arts Center's passionate rebuttal is "Picturing Politics," a dense collection of works that addresses the political landscape and pushes for Washington's berth as a clarion-voiced artists' den.

"We don't want to live in the shadow of the Washington Color School," said Jeffry Cudlin, the Arlington Art Center's director of exhibitions. "It's a misperception of D.C.'s art. It doesn't get treated in a thorough way."

The pieces on display are searing portraits of societal ills and governmental missteps that have segregated and isolated America from the world and Americans from each other. Curator Rex Weil was chosen for his dedication to forging a stronger bond between politics and art.

"Political art in Washington goes way back," he said. "It's a natural place for response. But it's gotten quiet in that respect. There's a stereotype that artists here are disengaged, that it's all art for art's sake."

The rules of engagement throughout "Picturing Politics" are sobering, staggering and stinging. They also feel like something of a war-cry against the establishment in its various forms.

"That art should reflect the state as dictated by the state is archaic," said Weil. "The idea that art and politics don't go together is a naive view. It broadens a rather narrow range of debate on important issues pushed to the margins on the electoral debate."

Labor disputes are given voice in Jose Ruiz's commentary on illegal immigration and exploitation of workers. Painter Benjamin Edwards explores a commerce and media-saturated society that has disavowed nature and basic equal rights.

Alberto and Victoria F. Gaitan's video cuts away at the tangly pathology of repressed sexual identity. And Mary Coble's work, lifted from her "Aversion" series, focuses on the disturbing process of electroshock therapy to "treat" homosexuality.

The most visceral piece is a warping of reality television and a throwback to the civil rights movement called "Passive Resistance." Jefferson Pinder and Matt Ravenstahl's video places a white and black man, at loggerheads.

The larger oppressor takes turns beating the resilient African American, who refuses to strike back. Pinder and Ravenstah reference Gandhi and Rosa Parks, and illuminate the differences between humiliation and dignity, giving in versus standing up.

Wendy Babcox and Meg Mitchell's technology-bending work combines video projection, RSS feeds and audience participation via real-time polls concerning issues of war and peace in the Middle East.

Maryland-based artist Helga Thomson's "Here's Looking at You" is a series of digital prints that evokes surveillance shots, identity cards and passport photos, arranged like Big Brother-esque invasions of privacy by the various modes of media and by the government.

"We wanted a balance of issue-oriented work that challenges the status quo," added Cudlin. "It isn't didactic, but there's a prevailing message with every piece."

» Arlington Arts Center, 3550 Wilson Blvd, Arlington; reception Sept 5, 6-9 p.m., through Sept. 27; 703-248-6800. (Virginia Square-GMU)

Written by Express contributor Christopher Correa

Photos courtesy Arlington Arts Center, Alberto Gaitan