Fort Mason Art presented Shiny Things for My Quartermaster: Seven Swallowtail Flags, a public art commission by Los Angeles-based artist and filmmaker Cauleen Smith, curated by Elizabeth Thomas. The suite of flags was installed above main entrances to Landmark Building B, Pier 2, and Festival Pavilion at Pier 3, September 20, 2023-October 6, 2024.
In a nod to Fort Mason’s military past, the flags paid homage to those who labored in United States Army Quartermasters Corps units – particularly Black service members limited by segregation – using motifs from Afrofuturism. During World War II, 80 percent of nearly one million Black American soldiers were assigned to service and logistics units in segregated divisions. Smith embraced and subverted military symbology, including crossed swords, an American eagle, and the Quartermaster’s key, challenging dominant institutions and asking: who got left out? How could they get back in? What other ways can humans exist for one another?
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An opening reception took place on September 20, 2023. Smith Spoke at the California College of the Arts Graduate Fine Arts program on September 21, 2023.
Cauleen Smith (b. 1967, Riverside, CA) is a Los Angeles-based interdisciplinary artist whose work reflects upon the everyday possibilities of the imagination. Born in Riverside and raised in Sacramento, she received a BA in Cinema from San Francisco State University (1991) and an MFA from UCLA School of Theater Film and Television (1998), where she currently teaches as a professor in the Department of Art. Her films create worlds that expand on mid-20th-century experimental filmmaking, drawing from structuralism, third-world cinema, and science fiction.
Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture presented Shiny Things for My Quartermaster: Seven Swallowtail Flags, a public art commission by Los Angeles-based artist and filmmaker Cauleen Smith, curated by Elizabeth Thomas. The suite of flags was installed above main entrances to Landmark Building B, Pier 2, and Festival Pavilion at Pier 3.
September 20, 2023 through October 6, 2024
Artist Cauleen Smith:
CauleenSmith.com
Curator Elizabeth Thomas:
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