The Composition of

Wendel Patrick

BmoreArt Magazine

A long-form artist feature summarizing Wendel Patrick’s life and career for the past fifty years and the new projects he is currently working on for the next concert season.

America:

Land of Civil War

George Washington

University Museum and Textile Museum

The project “America: Land of Civil War” engages with 155 American Civil War covers from the Albert H. Small Washingtoniana Collection. Civil War “covers” are envelopes printed with nationalistic iconography to display political allegiance during the Civil War, and they testify to the nationalistic rhetoric of the era. This imagery was exchanged and disseminated through all forms of written correspondences, and displayed the divisive opposition of the time.

The current project presents American Civil War covers from the collection with contemporary socio-political and socio-economic critiques of life in America today. These contemporary texts are written on reproductions of the historical covers to collapse time and space, depicting the same topics of political contention 162 years later. The title of the series, “America: Land of Civil War,” illustrates the idea that the American government is designed to keep its people in conflict as a mechanism to resist institutional change.

Collectivism, e-flux reader

In 2022, I published an e-flux journal thematic reader and written abstract titled Collectivism to characterize life after the pandemic.

Individualism dominated Western culture proliferating the global market prior to the covid pandemic when the fragmented world shifted towards the age of Collectivism. The unified experience of social estrangement and communal loss of time with family and friends brought about intense longing for proximity to people and the desire to experience oneself in community. An emphasis on the populace at large dominates the news headlines identifying infection rates, death tolls, war casualties, and employment vacancies. Following the murder of George Floyd, tens of millions of people came together to move their bodies in the power of the crowd to command change and attempt to topple racist institutions. The infrastructure for change exists within the power of collective action. Being in unison can feel empowering, liberating, and intoxicating. Dissolving one’s personal identity into the collective can be the first step toward garnering trust in something greater, otherwise known as hope.

Gathering:

Together As Ourselves, As One

A written review and reflection zine of the Washington Project for the Arts (WPA) HOW CAN WE GATHER NOW? experimental symposium.

How To Do Less

A DIY How To zine focusing on how to do less and investigate our reasonings for doing so so we might be able to actually address the root issues compelling us to do more and then be able to follow the thirteen steps.

Defixus Anima:

The Ecology of Aesthetic Relations and Companionship

Defixus Anima: The Ecology of Aesthetic Relations and Companionship is a publication of my graduate thesis work. The approximate thirty-page document traverses subjects from art and curation to ecology, philosophy, and human rights. I explore how Western-society views objects, how the problematic coupling of humans and objects perpetuate use and abuse structures, and how creating interactive body vessels allow for a phenomenological entry point to reinterpret our relationship with them. I pose that objects be renamed defixus anima, and that we may investigate their aptitude for companionship. How might our new relations then disrupt the ideological power structure of objects serving people and the slippage of people being relegated to objecthood? How might the queering of objects save them from the obscurity of mass production and liberate humans from being denied human rights? These questions and much more are explored in my personal research.

The publication is apart of California College of the Arts’ the permanent collection housed in both their library and graduate fine arts office