Unassumingly situated on the 300 block of State Street between Case de Lara and The Gap, the depiction of a neglected playground lies behind the shop window of a store that has seen better days.
On the corner of Gorham and State, “This is Only a Façade,” a newly-installed piece by Tyanna Buie, reminds us even during the felicity of the holiday season, the brokenness of our past can push itself up from below and force us to come to terms with the uncomfortable.
Buie, the artist behind the storefront window installation, currently lives in Milwaukee, working on her own projects while also lecturing at the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design. She earned her Master of Fine Arts from University of Wisconsin in 2010, and taught printmaking and foundations at UW, her website said.
Buie looks fondly upon how her experiences in Madison have influenced her work.
“I was around so many different types of artists, and didn’t have that type of exposure before. This pushed me outside of my traditional realm of printmaking,” Buie said.
While pursuing her MFA at UW, Buie said she began to better understand the artistic direction for which she was destined after conversations with UW art professor Douglas Rosenberg.
After his attempt to persuade her to pursue performance art instead of printmaking, Buie realized that, while she could not stop printmaking altogether, she should be more considerate of the main ideas which inspire her creations, such as her broken past and child abandonment.
“I started to think of my work as being less precious, and more about getting the idea out,” Buie said. “I love the notion of being more considerate; that it’s okay to make something and not have it last.”
After this realization, Buie started creating more temporary exhibitions like the one currently on display on State Street, which she does not have to guard, so that her viewers can draw their own conclusions, Buie said.
In most of her artwork, including “This is Only a Façade,” Buie draws on her burdensome and often lonely childhood to address her broken past so that she may move forward, Buie said.
“When I was younger I didn’t think about my childhood as much. Now, as I get older, I’m the youngest of four, and we are still faced with challenges to this day because of our upbringing. I have decided that I need to look back in order to move forward,” Buie said.
In “This is Only a Façade,” Buie said she draws on her childhood in which she moved between multiple foster homes in Milwaukee and Chicago, not quite realizing at the time how unsafe the environment was.
During her time as a graduate student in Madison, she used imagery of abandoned playgrounds as inspiration, Buie said.
In light of a recent gang shootout by a playground in Milwaukee that left a girl dead, Buie thought that her art could not only address the abandonment she felt in her childhood, but also address contemporary issues.
“A playground is supposed to be a safe haven, but when a child’s life is taken [there], I want to let [“This is Only a Façade”] speak to a larger situation,” Buie said.
