This 1978 world map 'painting' by Alighiero Boetti is an embroidered artwork. The land masses are divided into nations and colored with the controlling countries' flags. Boetti hired embroiderers to translate his drawings using needle and thread. Boetti's artworks chart an ever-changing globe of shifting boundaries and powers, the imprecise hand-stitched needlework suggesting the world’s fragilities.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:

• What colors or shapes dominate the image? Are there areas where the patchworked patterns are more densely arranged? Examine the surface texture using the zoom tool. Describe what you see along these national borders represented in thread. What symbols do you encounter? Does anything surprise you?
• How would this map be different if made today? Besides the geopolitical progression of nation states falling and rising, what other kinds of information could you communicate using a map? What materials or textures might you use to suggest other aspects of global change—economic, environmental, technological and informational?

Danh Vo is another artist whose interest in national boundaries provides a glimpse at global change. Danh Vo's approach to this topic revolves around his family's history and personal connections to places.

"Born in Vietnam in 1975, Dahn Vo escaped with his family in 1979, attempting to reach America on a boat built by his father. But chance intervened and the family was picked up by a Danish fishing vessel and soon became citizens of that country. It is in part Vo’s history as a refugee that has given him a profound understanding of the importance of documents, which the artist has described as 'equivalent to a performance, since through paper and institutions our society has already determined our movements and actions.'"—Bartholomew Ryan

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:

• This tombstone was installed in the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden in May 2012 and will eventually be placed in Denmark when the artist's father, Phùng Vo, passes away. At that time, five of Phùng's personal possessions will become part of the Walker's collection. What do you think of this work of art having parts that are not all visible in one place at one time?
• What are the differences between home and nationality? What documents or objects do you have in your life that represent your home or nationality?

Huang Yong Ping, the son of a tea planter, grew up in China during the Cultural Revolution, a time when much of that country’s artistic and intellectual history was destroyed or replaced by its government. The title of this sculpture tells exactly how it was made: the artist put two art history books into a washing machine. Once used to teach about the history of art in China, Europe, and America, these books were destroyed by this process—the pictures and words have faded and the pages are mixed together. Huang then heaped the paper pulp onto a piece of glass balanced on a Chinese tea box commonly used to keep tea leaves fresh when transported from place to place. With this sculpture, the artist invites us to think about the importance of learning world history and to recognize ways that today’s artists combine ideas from many cultures.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:

• Have you ever pulled clothes out of the washing machine to find a pocket full of mushy paper? Zoom in on the paper pulp to see if any information remains. Or is the shredded jumble a new kind of information that wasn't there before?
• What books would you put together to combine ideas from many places? What does it mean to refashion history for artistic purposes?

Hito Steyerl is another artist who demonstrates an interest in art history and through her art, addresses issues of global change. Steyerl's Red Alert combines art historical reference with symbols connected to politics, ideologies, power and fear.

Note: Feel free to stop the video at 1:23. After that point, Steyerl discusses a different work, Red Alert II.

The artist describes Red Alert as a new media translation of Aleksandr Rodchenko's triptych Pure Yellow, Pure Red, Pure Blue from 1921. (Click here to view an image, courtesy MoMA.)

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:

• Do you think a video with no moving images is still a video? Do you think a pure rectangle of color can still be considered a painting?
• Steyerl's red refers to the U.S. Homeland Security Advisory System, created in 2002 as part of 9/11's aftermath. How do you think political issues influence art? If you were to make a work about 9/11, what would it look like and where would you start?

Though Paul Thek's approach to political concerns feels less direct than the previous example, he is another artist offering a way of looking at global change.

"[Paul Thek was] enormously troubled about the state of the world and the state of the world then very much included Vietnam. He had originally been showing at Pace Gallery, which at that moment in time was very associated with minimalism and everything was very crisp, very right angled, very unyielding materials. He began to do these glass and steel vitrines but they were filled with corrosive flesh, which he was sculpting out of something called dental moulage, which is a very quick setting wax, and putting these horrifying lumps of flesh . . .. It was really his response to an art world that he thought was completely incapable of responding to the urgency of the culture in which it existed."—Richard Flood

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:

• What parts of this object look technological? What parts look organic or life-based? How do the animal and machine components interact? (There is no single correct answer.) Could it be a life support system? An experiment? A preserved specimen for study? A nightmare? A stage in a cloning or cyborg-creation process?
• In your opinion, have relationships between technology and nature changed since the 1960s? Since the 1800s? Support your answer with evidence and if you answered yes, do you see this as a global change? Think about how the natural and built environments in your life intersect or encroach upon one another. How would you respond to this by making art?