Maren Hassinger

There seems to be a unified response to Maren's portfolio of pieces. While they exude an aesthetically pleasing visage, it fails to step beyond that limitation. Art, intrinsically, is subjective, so she's entitled to providing her own narrative and significance on her pieces instead of appealing to our need for an enigmatic and alluring depth in her art.

However, it's not difficult to perceive the lack of intricate meaning. When confronted by our professor on the mutinous aspects associated with her Wrenched News piece, she simply responds with assuring the piece, and all her other pieces, as not being a political statement.

You're to tell a classroom of revolutionary students that an art piece containing hundreds of twisted strips from a quasi-fascist right-wing news source, New York Times, as not being a directly subversive protest art?

The connotation behind all of her pieces emanate leftist politics. She exhibited Malcolm X's quotes on a subway station platform, for thousands of New Yorkers to see every day. Her sculpted wire wreath was perceived as a physically discomforting piece in a park, yet it provided shelter and comfort to a homeless Harlem resident for a night. Most, if not all of her pieces scream revolutionary, and has the potential to be inspiring artwork. But instead, she instills a contemporary Georgia O'Keeffe mentality on not embracing the actual depth riddled in her art. 

Though, while the students attending her presentation all had similar reception, none publicly gave critique in fear of being publicly pariah'd in the classroom, amidst the presence of a greatly renown artist. The peak of controversy in the presentation was having the monotonous discussion of if she can consider using an alternative to detrimental plastic bags because of the massive hindrance it would apparently contribute to climate change. In the stead of providing an actual shift in her artwork's narrative, we all safely write our overtly-harsh critiques that should've been outspoken in the comfort behind a computer screen. Hassinger cannot consider these opinions if no one gives it to her.