Conflict &/or Resolution

BERLIN WALL

As we embark on a new topic, Conflict and/or Resolution, you could look to political conflicts for inspiration.  This is a photograph of the Berlin Wall which was constructed in 1961 to divide Eastern Communist Germany from Western Socialist Germany.  It was quite literally a symbol of a political conflict that divided countries, nations and even families, and was built to keep easterners in and westerners out.  Many people tried to escape the confines of Eastern Germany and lost their lives doing so.  In 1989, that all changed when the wall was finally torn down.  However, so as not to forget this terrible time, Berlin has left behind portions of the wall and artistic memorials as reminders of this conflict and its resolution.   

Portion of the wall in Potsdamer Platz, Berlin

Memorial strip that marks the path of the wall.

YINKA SHONIBARE
Yet another way to look at the topic could be cultural. 

This is a sculpture called Dysfunctional Family, by Yinka Shonibare.  Shonibare was born in England, moved to Nigeria when he was 3 and then came back to England for college and now lives and works there.  His work deals with colonisation, cultural melding, conflicts in identity when you are pulled between two cultures, and how those issues resolve together or don't.  In this piece we have aliens wrapped in what we consider to be traditional African fabric, and there are some deeper meanings going on here.  What do aliens represent?  Could we be dealing with beings form other worlds coming together and trying to function? But wait, the title tips us off to the fact that there's a dysfunction, though it does call this a family as well.  So is this a chosen family or one that is forced upon them? 

The fabric that these figures are wrapped in is also and intentional choice because, though we associate it with Africa and it's considered a cultural symbol for Africa, it did not originate in Africa.  The fabric actually came from Holland, but has been adopted and melded into another culture.  As you can hopefully see, Shonibare addresses ideas of mixed cultural identities and the conflicts and resolutions they entail.


M.C. ESCHER
Another way I think you could interpret the theme is through a structural conflict and resolution in you piece.

 This is M.C. Escher's Sky and Water from 1938.  In the middle you have an interlocking, interdependent tension that resolves into a single bird or fish on either end.  Are these elements clashing together in the middle or does it flow from top to bottom, from resolved to interlocking to resolved again? Maybe it's both. :)   It certainly is a visual puzzle.