Aleksandra Mir
1967–
Through drawings and films that incorporate a do-it-yourself aesthetic and various forms of performance, Aleksandra Mir’s socially engaged practice reflects her background in publishing and graphic design, as well as her study of cultural anthropology. The pair of drawings that constitute Osama were part of an ambitious collaborative project—Newsroom 1986– 2000—that transformed Mary Boone Gallery in New York into an imitation newsroom, gathering space, and artist’s studio. Over a period of six weeks in 2007, Mir worked with a group of artists to translate approximately two hundred covers culled from a fifteeen-year span of the New York Post and New York Daily News into large-scale drawings that covered the gallery walls in rotating installations.
In selecting which covers to work from and conceptualizing the installation of the Newsroom drawings, Mir aimed to dissociate the featured headlines from any particular chronologies or events. This is especially evident in the Osama drawings. By the time these works were shown in 2007, Osama bin Laden was well-known for masterminding the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, but the drawings are based on cover stories from 1998. The headlines “Worst Is Yet To Come” and “The War Has Just Started” quote the Al Qaeda leader’s threats to avenge US attacks in Afghanistan and Sudan. Today, in light of the 9/11 attacks, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and bin Laden’s assassination by US military forces, his words seem chillingly prophetic. By giving permanence to daily tabloids, Mir undercuts the ephemerality of the news and highlights the cyclical nature of the narratives it both reports and shapes.
