Installation Art Media

Installation art describes artworks that the audience physically enters or that take into account the physical and conceptual relationships among objects, the space in which they are arranged, and the body of the viewer. This admittedly broad definition suggests the sheer diversity of artworks grouped under this category. Installations may employ ordinary or “found” objects; industrially fabricated materials; traditional visual art forms; organic material such as soil, blood, or food; screen-based media like film or video; the performing arts; lighting and sound design; and even scent. They may be full of sensory stimuli or visually restrained, even nearly invisible. Installations may transform a gallery's white cube into a seemingly autonomous world or employ the social, physical, and historic characteristics of the place where they are produced, as site-specific artworks do. Some installations may invite extended, individual contemplation, whereas others spur the audience to group action.

Thus, it is impossible to speak in broad strokes about installation art. The term itself was not even settled until the late 1980s, when major museums began to commission artists to produce original works, often with very high production costs, for their galleries. Today, installation art often calls to mind large-scale, museum-based, and highly capitalized projects that require small armies of technical advisers, production assistants, and professional fabricators. However, installation art has a much longer history, beginning with some of the politicized cultural movements of the early 20th century, continuing through the unmarketable, ephemeral “environments” of experimental artists of the 1950s and 1960s, and coming into its own in the 1970s and 1980s alongside artistic engagement in feminist, gay rights, and antiwar movements.

While canonical art histories tend to downplay the ways that some installation art has furthered political goals, tensions between art's symbolic and sensory roles and the more goal-directed needs of social movements have often complicated attempts for artists to work within groups dedicated to achieving political change. Particularly in the [Page 273]Euro-American tradition, which has traditionally prized artwork for its alleged universalism and transcendence of time, place, and politics, artists are often ambivalent about “instrumentalizing” their work in pursuit of specific social aims. Some of the most successful examples of art installations in social movements have involved the politics of representation: Marginalized groups have often successfully used art in general, and installation art in particular, to demand cultural and political visibility on their own terms. Finally, the existence of a distinct genre known as “installation art” may be coming to a close, as artists today are increasingly employing varied strategies in their work, of which recognizable art objects and art experiences are only a small part.