IT IS ART IF I SAY IT IS
The installation IT IS ART IF I SAY IT IS presents itself as a performative and participatory exploration of the elusive definition of art and the eternal dispute over aesthetic authority.
Starting from an apparently trivial action—the appropriation of household pins and aluminum foil in her work Stuck On You—Beda expands this premise into a comprehensive inquiry into subjectivity and the social construction of artistic value.
The centerpiece of this exhibition utilizes rope: a material devoid of a predefined artistic “aura.” When arranged within the space, these ropes become the canvas onto which the fundamental question is projected: At what moment does a common object transcend its functionality to be invested with the status of a work of art?
To delve deeper into this inquiry, the installation incorporates a series of video testimonials from individuals of diverse backgrounds performing a simple yet deeply meaningful act: proclaiming that a piece of rope is art. By stripping these assertions of academic justifications, Beda decentralizes the authority of critics and curators, instead vesting it in the ordinary viewer.
This work does not seek to offer a definitive answer, but rather to dismantle the rigidity of established categories. IT IS ART IF I SAY IT IS celebrates the freedom of interpretation and the aesthetic potency latent in the ordinary, reminding us that the boundary between the everyday object and the museum piece is far more permeable and subjective than we are willing to admit.
“My art is deeply personal, darkly comic, and subversively feminist. My conceptual sculptures question what art is and, above all, who holds the power to decide.”
— Allison Beda
