Earth Day Collage Roundtable
On Saturday, May 6, 2023, the Unconfirmed Makeshift Museum joined the Repair Cafe organized by Sabine Kunrath and Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow at the Community Center for Earth Day from 11am-2pm. UMM hosted a station for collage and miniature sign-making on a large round table, alongside other stations staffed by wonderful volunteer neighbors. Special thanks to Silas for volunteering through UMM’s Art Ambassador Youth Program.
¡Hola! UMM in Santa Ana:
Catharsis_underscore repair
This participatory project and exhibition took place in May and June 2022 at Grand Central Arts Center (GCAC) in Santa Ana, CA. UMM offered the audience three different ways to participate in a project focused around the themes of violence and resilience. Although the Storefront Gallery Exhibit is over, the project itself is still open. Please contact us if you wish to participate. For more about the project, please see the announcement on the GCAC blog.
Equal Rights (ER) Guide
In 2020, UMM commissioned research and writing from neighborhood youth to begin developing a driving guide to sites related to histories of racial justice and struggle in Orange County, California. View the guide…
do it (home)
As many around the world are experiencing social distancing and orders to stay at home, UMM is joining Independent Curators International (ICI) and over 30 art spaces around the world in sharing do it (home).
Visible Signs
Visible Signs is UMM’s initiative to underscore progressive civic activity on the streets with the presence of colorful hand-made signs and slogans. More…
And Tossing and Turning And
As with previous participatory projects sponsored by UMM, this work draws on materials collected from UMM’s neighborhood, in this case residents’ responses to the question “What recent news headline has caused you to lose sleep?” UMM collected the responses and transferred the texts using a substrate of bedsheets – also donated by neighborhood participants – as a way to capture the affective dimension of our current political moment. Special thanks to Adriana, Amy, Charis, Chris, Davin, Deborah, Laura, Leo, Lilli, Luis, Jane, Jessica, Michael, Sabine, Sandrine, Sarah, Becky, and Pauline for their headlines and sheets.
Painting with Balls
At its opening reception on May 28th, 2016, UMM invited participants to contribute to a jocular painting titled “Painting with Balls,” a work on drop cloth gradually built with the accumulation of colorful and largely failed ball gestures aimed at three painted geometric targets. The project’s underlying critique is two-pronged: a critique of the competitive tennis culture in Orange County and a critique of heroic abstract painting. More on this work…
Light to Dark Brown: A Meditation on Brown and All Browns
On December 6, 2014, during the opening reception for its inaugural exhibitions, UMM invited anyone who shared a sense of injustice and sadness around the recent cases of Michael Brown and Eric Garner to participate in a painting project titled “Light to Dark Brown: A Meditation on Brown and All Browns.” The work was later selected to participate in the Response show at Smack Mellon in New York City. More on this work…
Street Talk
For the closing reception for its fifth exhibition in February 2017, UMM invited neighbors to choose from a list of published insults made by the Denigrator-in-Chief and remix them to create different anagrams, which were then transferred to a found and painted door. Examples of participants re-arrangements included “ILLEGAL>LAG LIE,” “PATHETIC> HATE PICT,” “NEUROTIC> UNEROTIC,” “NOTHING WORKS> SHOW TORN KING,” and “REALLY SAD> SADLY REAL.”
Testing Antidotes for Tones of Beige: More than a Chromatic Exercise
At the opening reception on April 4, 2015, UMM invited participants to think against the homogenizing color palette that accompanied William Pereira’s utopian vision. “Testing Antidotes for Beige: More Than a Chromatic Exercise,” reimagined the ruling chromatic monotony of our suburban masterplan and revealed the link between authoritarian Homeowner Associations, complacency, and conformity of architecture, color, class, manicured landscape and lifestyle, making visible the New Town suburban noir we might inadvertently protagonize. More on this work…
On the Translation of Signals
At its opening reception on October 3, 2015, UMM invited participants to contribute to an art-letter to the local police, which will be comprised of 140-character individual messages translated through Morse code. The project is prompted by recent events in UMM’s own neighborhood as well as nationally, and is also inspired by the use of Morse code by contemporary artists, including Claudia Bertucci, whose work is part of UMM’s current exhibit. The art-letter is intended to address both the difficulties and potentials of communication. More details…
Time Bank
UMM is assessing whether there is enough interest in the community to create a time bank for our neighborhood. At UMM, we believe other economies are possible, and actively promote the idea of the time bank as a way to think creatively about systems involving labor, time and a market exchange of services. More details…