The Best in Visual Art

Ten art works from the past decade that engaged both artistically and politically.

New Year's Eve 2009 will see the end of one of the most politically charged and aesthetically challenging decades in human history. What easier way to make sense of the endless ricochet of event and analysis than with a list?

Our contributors have chosen their top ten creative works of the decade, from artworks to albums, which we will publish on a daily basis.

In deciding on my list of the “best” ten art works from the last decade, I chose works that evince the anxieties of the last ten years with respect to social issues, ecology, the environmental, family issues, poverty, conflicts, and war.

My best ten are therefore works variously described in contemporary theoretical literature as relational, dialogical, interventionist, and littoral – between the land and the sea, between urban and rural, between the art world and the public sphere. In such practices, political engagement is arguably the most important aspect of the work. When an artist engages in politics, it means that all the planning and decisions may be undertaken in the process of engagement with the site, whether this is an institutional, geopolitical, ecological, or community context.

So here goes. My ten (subversive) best of the decade.

Language Schools in Refugee Camps (performance; 1999) by Wochenklausur
Considering the catastrophic effects of the war in the Balkans and the precarious situation of hundreds of thousands of Kosovarian refugees, Wochenklausur established language schools in Macedonia and Kosovo for their exhibit at the 48th Biennale in Venice.

Tide Table (charcoal animation; 2003) by William Kentridge
Kentridge is a South African artist whose animated films display the anxieties that inhabit the unconscious of the human mind, positing the eschatological co-ordinates and limits of the death drive.

Beneath Land and Water: A Project for Elkhorn City (performance, mixed media installation; 2000-2005) by Suzanne Lacy (a progenitor of new genre art practices worldwide), Susan Liebovitz Steinman, and Yukata Kobayashi
Extending over several years and site visits by artists and students from as far away as Japan, this project coordinated by Suzanne Lacy, Susan Steinman, Yutaka Kobayashi, The Elkhorn City Heritage Council, and The American Festival Project at Appalshop (Eastern Kentucky, 2001-ongoing), includes finding funding, designing plans, and implementing a public artwork with local residents based on their direction.

If You See Something... (mixed media installation; 2005) by Krzysztof Wodiczko
This Polish artist’s multidisciplinary If You See Something... is an installation of four projected video images with sound. It is arguably one of the most powerful installations at the Venice Biennale 2009. The work focuses upon the plight of exiles and immigrants, the human traffic of globalization, surveillance, border crossing and policing, among other political concerns.

Wilhelm Noack oHG (mixed media installation; 2006) by Simon Starling
The 2005 Turner Prize winner has produced some extraordinary post conceptual film and video work over the past decade, including this work exhibited at the 2009 Venice Biennale which was a show stopper. Wilhelm Noack oHG is a documentary film projection of the making of the spiral film loop apparatus by workers at the Wilhelm Noack metal fabrication company in Germany, projected from the structure. It was exhibited at Venice Biennale 2009.

Substitution 2 (The Unforgettable) (mixed media installation; 2007) by Thomas Hirschhorn
Swiss artist Thomas Hirschorn is arguably the relational artist extraordinaire whose public exhibition and work ethic is described thus: "I do not want to invite or oblige viewers to become interactive with what I do; I do not want to activate the public. I want to give of myself to such a degree that viewers confronted with the work can take part and become involved, but not as actors.”

Oil (photographs; 2001-2008) by Edward Burtynsky
Burtynsky is a celebrated Canadian photographer who presents stunning photographic documents of environmental degradation by industrial processes. (Displayed: Oil Fields #19a, Beldridge, California, U.S., 2003)

Alternative Economics, Alternative Societies (mixed media installation; 2003-2008) by Oliver Ressler
Vienna based artist Oliver Ressler has expanded the framework of the theme-specific installation to incorporate opportunities for dynamic discussions on topics pertaining to the new millennium. His multidisciplinary installation “Alternative Economics, Alternative Societies” focuses on “diverse concepts, models, and utopias for alternative economies and societies which all share a rejection by the capitalist system of rule.”

The Library Project (performance, mixed media installation; 2005-2008) by Martha Rosler (an exemplary political artist for four decades)
In this work, New York based artist Martha Rosler has dispossessed herself of her private library containing books that have nurtrued her creative and critical art practice over four decades. The act of instituting the personal library into a public space has not only rendered visible many of the sources of Rosler’s work but has also transformed them into an “installation/artwork that continues many of the concerns – with public space, access to information and engaged citizenship – that traverse her entire oeuvre.”

Bhopal wakeup performance (2009) by The International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal and The Yes Men
My inbox invariably prefaces the Yes Men feeds as spam. Nevertheless, I always open the interventionist practice of these two artists Mike Bonanno and Andy Bichlbaum (real names withheld) and their several hundred "imposters" who have taken the art and political world by storm with their creative pranks. My favourite for inclusion in this list is their Bhopal wakeup performance for Dow Chemical over their continued inaction over the lethal gases leaked in 1984 from Union Carbide’s pesticide factory in Bhopal, India, which has resulted in tens of thousands of deaths.

(Photos by Susan Liebovitz Steinman, Nancy Brogden, WockenKlausur, Galerie Lelong, New York, Edward Burtynsky/Hasted Hunt Kraeutler, New York/Nicholas Metivier Gallery, Toronto, Kunstihoone, Tallinn, and j lord)