Darkness Visible: The Art of Occupying Public Space as a Space of Appearance

Abstract

During the twentieth century, art has increasingly dialogued with public space to escape the normative role of institutional exhibiting contexts. However, the first artistic efforts in public spaces mostly failed to reconsider what ‘public’ and ‘space’ could represent, thus implicitly upholding the status quo ruling those spaces. By discussing two case studies – namely, Martha Rosler’s House Beautiful: Bringing the War Home (1967-72), and Krzysztof Wodiczko’s The Homeless Projection (1986) – this paper argues for the presence of artistic operations that instead focused on a critical rethinking of ‘public space’ from a site of transit or an extension of the art system to a space of political appearance.