Love Is Resistance: The Kind of Show we Need Right Now

The Cleveland Institute of Art’s Love Is Resistance, which opened on Valentine’s Day at Transformer Station, is in a multitude of ways The Kind Of Show We Need Right Now. After a year with no visual art programming at the Cleveland Museum of Art’s West side exhibit space, after decades during which Cleveland artists have pined for any measure of attention from the Museum (beyond being deployed for outreach purposes), and just a few weeks into the new White House administration, the Museum’s re-opening of Transformer Station with a show about love and resistance is not only a Valentine for the local art sector, but it comes with much more gravity than the holiday celebrated with chocolates and flowers. Even if we do have quite a bit of love for chocolates and flowers.

That’s not just because the opening featured CIA Class of 23 alum Thomas Smith’s larger than life Donald Trump puppet, head bobbing and seeming to conduct the unquiet rumble of the hardcore band Private Prisons, featuring Mike Meier (singer/drummer) and Zak Smoker (Guitar). That was delightful, but alas the puppet—which required three people to operate—was only there for the opening festivities. You may yet see it at protests around town, though.

No, it’s the kind of show we need right now because it shows how love for who and what we care about can inspire bonds, defense, defiance, debate, and resistance to whatever might destroy it. Lovers are resourceful and tenacious.

Love Is Resistance features works of CIA Faculty, students, and alumni, responding to works in the CMA collection that deal with resistance in some way, which makes the show a collaboration between the two institutions. Alum and adjunct faculty member Alicia Telzerow’s mixed media assemblage Liberty with her Tongue Cut Out –for example–responds to Laurent de La Hyre’s 1654 painting, The Kiss of Peace and Justice. In that nearly four century-old work, two figures—Peace and Justice—embrace, while Peace sets a fire to melt a shield and suit of armor, and Justice holds a sword–point down into the ground, at rest—and balances on it the scales of right and wrong. The Museum’s description notes that the subject “may have had political significance: the painting’s date coincides with the end of the (17th century) ‘Fronde,’ a period of civil war in France during which the parlement (courts of appeal) and the nobility sought—unsuccessfully—to limit the power of [Louis IV’s] monarchy.”

In Telzerow’s piece there is no question about the political significance. On a silver(ish) platter we see surgical gloves, a scalpel, and a bloody tongue, cut out—perhaps from the bell, as it is stuffed with bloody gauze. Nearby there is a bandage, too small and simply not the right remedy for this wound. The control over speech, via the NEA’s new focus on patriotic art for the nation’s 250th birthday, through control over what doctors can tell their patients or prescribe for them, over Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programming at the federal level and now reaching into colleges, universities and beyond, couldn’t be more timely.

But the resonance is surely not limited to the works the artists are responding to. Adjunct faculty member Yiyun Chen’s photo print Love takes inspiration from John Rogers Cox’s 1942 painting, Gray and Gold, which depicts heavy storm clouds advancing over golden fields of wheat cut by the intersection of two roads. Painted a year after the US entered World War II, it might imply that the US was at a crossroads, fighting against the advancing storm of fascism. Yiyun Chen’s image features a couple, maybe holding hands, on the edge of a large body of water, which could be a sea of troubles, with a massive wave breaking and spraying high above them, dwarfing their humanity. They face turbulent times. What does the future hold? Do they have dreams? Would they bring children into this world? Without reading the didactic about that antecedent, it’s easy to find connection in the 19th century German Romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich’s Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog. While the abyss facing Friedrich’s Wanderer is surely Life, the Universe, Nature, and Everything, he was a liberal German nationalist at a time when a dictator—Napolean—had overtaken much of Europe, reaching into Saxony and Russia. With support from their allies, the people of Saxony—before Germany was Germany—succeeded in turning the little man back from Leipzig.

Professor of painting Lane Cooper created a hand-lettered broadside weaving together Biblical quotes about Love, all of which directly confront the Christian nationalist ethics and practices of the current White House administration, and the American religious Right. She doesn’t quote the verses of Corinthians, “Love is patient, love is kind,” etc, so often recited at weddings. Love, as Cooper finds in these parts of the Bible, is full of defiance and resistance. Through acts of love, in the Gospel According to Luke, for example, Jesus taught disciples not to become victims: “But to you who are listening, I say: Love your enemies; do good to those who hate you; bless those who curse you; pray for those who treat you spitefully. If anyone hits you on the cheek, offer the other also, if anyone takes your coat, let him have your shirt as well. Give to anyone who asks you; If anyone takes what is yours, do not demand it back.” (Luke 6: 27 – 30). Cooper’s broadside was presented with photocopies for visitors to take away.

CIA student Emily Fontana’s mixed media piece Lamb Chopped takes up a complicated bundle of associations and symbolism via a lamb cake. On the one hand, as she says, cakes have long been tied to traditional expectations of domestic labor. Lamb cakes in Catholic families go further as symbols of the sacrificial Lamb of God at Easter. Fontana’s lamb is chopped–a bloody slice taken out–revealing striations of fleshy pink and red. At the same time as domesticity—especially in the Age of Lamb Cakes at Easter – can read as oppression, the act of making, as the artist observes, “is love.” Making food, feeding people, is not only an expression of love, but—as USAID and other forms of foreign aid show—of capacity, of strength.

Professor of Sculpture and Expanded Media Sarah Paul –inspired by a child’s suit of armor at the museum—was disturbed by the historic need for such a thing. Her present-day response, Grrrl’s Armor, focused on protection of a child’s reproductive system: in the culture wars of the 21st century, those are the endangered parts. Her wet-felted, child-sized woolen suit, in white detailed with red, is armored with a trivet, pasta fork, and an array of other forks all positioned around the genital area. In light of federal overreach into reproductive healthcare, people of all ages could use this kind of protection.

Patriotism, in most dictionaries and encyclopedic sources, including Merriam Webster and Wikipedia, is described using the word love: Love for one’s country, and taking pride in it. Patriots express that by waving flags. While it’s not a proper ROYGBIV rainbow flag, Natalie Lanese’s floor-to-ceiling geometric abstraction Falls (Maine Gallery Wrapped) is a torrent of love in all colors, streaming down the large’s room’s south wall. Stretching thirty feet from top to bottom, it’s the largest piece in the exhibition, spilling out across the floor. And like a flag, its many-colored stripes wave in support of every kind of person. And maybe loving each other–building community, defending each other, finding strength in each other–is the most important act of resistance available right now.

On opening night, Lanese’s painting towered above performances by bands Ritual Sin, Private Prisons, Kill the Hippies, and Minority Threat. The music was loud and full of defiant energy, and it helped to gather the crowd to celebrate the show. It motivated Cleveland Museum of Art staff to show their love by offering earplugs to all who entered the building. It’ll be quiet there if you visit Love is Resistance when those performances are not happening, but opening nights are always about celebration and community, while follow-up visits are always better for considering the art itself. This show is absolutely worth that. You’ve got til April 6.

The love for Northeast Ohio art continues at the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Transformer Station throughout 2025. A list of the year’s exhibitions is below.

Love Is Resistance: February 14 – April 6, 2025
Students, Faculty and Alumni of the Cleveland Institute of Art

CMA Artists at Work: June 6 – August 3, 2025
Cleveland Museum of Art Staff Exhibition

FRONT Futures Fellows: September 12 – December 31, 2025
Works of Antwoine Washington, Charmaine Spencer, Amanda D. King, and Erykah Townsend