Neoliberal Loops
Art exhibit at Rozsa
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HOUGHTON -- Art is often driven from the experiences of the artist. It is no different with Emma Johnson's art exhibit, "Neoliberal Loops," showing now thru Nov. 6, at the Rozsa Center in Houghton. Johnson, a 45-year old Houghton High School alumnae, aimed to provide a haunting, minimalist critique of late-stage capitalism and response to economic recession.
Johnson first studied art at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design in the early 2000s. She pursued further degrees following her stay in art school, including a Master's of Arts from Central Michigan University and a Master's of Science from Michigan Tech. Johnson said her aim was to combine art with scholarship.
The exhibit is painted stale white and sparsely decorated with paintings, videos on screens, LED signs, photographs and written prose. The desolate yet familiar spaces are the purposeful backdrop to Johnson's work.
Johnson studied Rhetoric, Theory and Culture for her master's degree and said she imbued herself within the Math and Music Lab, where she received guidance for this exhibit. There was one track playing on a loop, which has a story behind its repetitiveness. "I told Math and Music my idea and they were excited," she said. "They want to have these musical compositions in art installations."
Johnson's creation samples several pop songs and includes keyboard note hits which correlate to ticks on the NASDAQ. The notes play over and over again and sometimes bleed into each other. "The first note in the sound piece is each day of the stock market crashing between 2007 and 2009," she said. "It's 482 measures because that's the number of days [in recession] between 2007 to 2009."
Aside from the background music monotonously playing over the gallery speakers, guests walking through the exhibit see photographs, portraits of still consumerist objects and LED signs with messages on them.
The three signs include a blurry, pixelated ad, a scrolling sign of 99 "Neoliberal Truisms" which was created by Johnson and her mother, as well as dates ranging from the 17th-century all the way to 2025.
"The dates are every stock market crease that we know of in recorded history," she said. "That starts with the first one in 1637 with the Tulip bulb speculation [Tulip Mania]. The last recession was 2025 with the tariffs imposed by the United States President."
Some of the signs with truisms say, "Death is efficient," “You are what you can afford," "You are only as valuable as your productivity," and "Eat. Pray. Spend."
With so much going on in the exhibit, many may overlook the big picture of it all. Johnson said she believes in looking at our seemingly natural economic and political power structures in a new way.
"I love looking at kind of the banal, anodyne things that a lot of people might think are boring," she said. "Then just taking a closer look at it, things that are normalized in society and that are a little idiosyncratic -- just asking why is it that way?"
For more information about the Rozsa Art Gallery, visit mtu.edu/rozsa/about/facilities/gallery/. More of Johnson's work can be found at emmalovesparis.blogspot.com.