Or are we, ourselves, the strangers in our own worlds?
Answers to these questions aren’t posed only at the Roswell UFO Museum and Research Center. They also bubble up in Life on Mars, the theme for the 55th annual Carnegie International — America’s most enduring contemporary art exhibition. Former Walker curator Douglas Fogle, now curator of contemporary art at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, organized what he describes as a “collective self-portrait of humanity colliding with the economic and political events that define daily existence.”
Given the theme, it’s unsurprising that among the nearly 40 artists represented here, the vast majority are men, including Doug Aitken, Bruce Conner, and Paul Thek. In this video interview with WDUQ-90.5FM, Fogle calls the title — the first Carnegie International exhibition to bear one — “a metaphor about other worlds. The best contemporary art takes you to other worlds.” The exhibition opens Saturday and flies to another galaxy January 2009.