‘Sharonka’: The Practice and the Creation in Sharon Lockhart’s Art Projects with Children and Young Adults Cover Image

„Sharonka”. Praktyka i dzieło w projektach artystycznych Sharon Lockhart z udziałem dzieci i młodzieży
‘Sharonka’: The Practice and the Creation in Sharon Lockhart’s Art Projects with Children and Young Adults

Author(s): Julia Harasimowicz
Subject(s): Anthropology, Social Sciences, Theatre, Dance, Performing Arts, Fine Arts / Performing Arts, Photography, Visual Arts, Cultural Anthropology / Ethnology, Culture and social structure , Film / Cinema / Cinematography, Sociology of Art, History of Art
Published by: Wydział Polonistyki Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego
Keywords: childhood studies; childhood; children in art; film; photography; Sharon Lockhart; participatory art; contemporary art

Summary/Abstract: The main goal of the article is to describe and analyse the artistic practice of the American artist Sharon Lockhart as well as her works created with the participation of children and young adults. The materials studied herein are the documentation of her activities, interviews, and texts accompanying exhibitions. A particular attention is paid to the projects made in Poland, especially those created with Milena, a teenage girl from a poor area of Łódź, and her friends from the Youth Sociotherapy Centre in Rudzienko. In the article, the artist’s statements are confronted with a formal analysis of her projects. With the use of such secondary sources as cultural, anthropological, art, and childhood studies literature, Lockhart’s artworks are described and interpreted in the context of creating the child’s image, of the young girls’ participation in art projects, and of the author’s method of work itself, which she calls ‘etnographic.’ The precise and interdisciplinary research shows superficiality of this pedagogical and emancipatory method, including using the girls to evoke a specific mood in the audience. From the perspective of art studies, Lockhart’s works, however, may be interpreted as an aesthetic story about a meeting with and an attempt to get to know the Other.

  • Issue Year: 1/2019
  • Issue No: 1
  • Page Range: 160-179
  • Page Count: 20
  • Language: Polish