WORCESTER -Three microphones appear in "Actions Speak," the new giant mural by the artist duo THINK AGAIN at the Worcester Art Museum. One caked with lipstick lies beside a second covered with a red condom. The third hangs bare over a pile of human bones, as if waiting for the dead to rise and speak. Ashes and salt fill the background with a grim black and white. Text floats down beside the first two microphones: "smear," "violate," "misquote," and more aversive words.
It's the latest installation in the "Wall at WAM" series, for which the museum invites artists to fill a 17-by-67-foot expanse in its Renaissance Court, overlooking sixth-century Roman mosaics. The piece - a hybrid of photography, drawing, etching, and sculpture, all captured in a digital print - is a shocking, sobering work, impressive not only in scale, but in its gorgeous detail. For all its darkness, "Actions Speak" has an allure that makes it hard to turn away.
Artists S.A. Bachman and David John Attyah, who collaborate as THINK AGAIN, specialize in public art, including billboards and outdoor projections, hoping to spur dialogue and social action. They're used to working on this grand a scale. "Actions Speak" also has a public component - a projection of words from the mural, appearing on the museum's facade on the third Thursday of every month. More positive text emerges from the bleak flow, according to the museum.
"Actions Speak" works on several levels. The microphone is THINK AGAIN's signature image, a metaphor for free speech, for political possibility, and for the power of public expression - which turns out to be double-edged.
Those who speak have more clout than those who remain silent. Then there are those who have been forcibly silenced, signified by the bones, a pile of femurs tangled with microphone cords. The condom and the lipstick refer to social issues such as AIDS and violence against women, but the lipstick-covered microphone also made me think immediately of Sarah Palin, how she used her moment in the public eye, and how it was used against her.
"Actions Speak" probes the shadowy line between power and vulnerability. "Human Nature(s)," an exhibit of contemporary works drawn from WAM's recent acquisitions, often touches on the same theme. Most of the art is figurative, but some of it - like the bones in "Actions Speak" - merely refers to the body.
Unfortunately, "Human Nature(s)" turns out to be a roundup of the usual suspects, artists who have touched a nerve and become the darlings of many contemporary curators: Kara Walker, Laylah Ali, Zhang Huan, Kiki Smith, and Martha Rosler, among others.