{"id":60998,"date":"2021-06-29T22:20:43","date_gmt":"2021-06-29T22:20:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=60998"},"modified":"2021-06-30T02:24:12","modified_gmt":"2021-06-30T02:24:12","slug":"social-representations-of-art-in-public-places-a-study-of-everyday-explanations-of-the-statue-of-a-real-birmingham-family","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=60998","title":{"rendered":"Social Representations of Art in Public Places: A Study of Everyday Explanations of the Statue of \u2018A Real Birmingham Family\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Social Representations of Art in Public Places: A Study of Everyday Explanations of the Statue of \u2018A Real Birmingham Family\u2019<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Genealogy<\/a>
\nVolume 5, Issue 3<\/a>
\npages 59-74
\nFirst Published 2021-06-22
\nDOI: 10.3390\/genealogy5030059<\/a><\/p>\n

Peter J. Aspinall<\/strong><\/a>, Emeritus Reader
\nCentre for Health Services Studies<\/em>
\nUniversity of Kent, Canterbury, United Kingdom<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/a>
\nFigure 1. \u2018A Real Birmingham Family<\/a>\u2019, 2014. Source: https:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/
\ncommons\/2\/27\/Real_Birmingham_Family_statue_-_Library_of_Birmingham_(15119604114).jpg, accessed on 1 May 2021.<\/em><\/small><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

This article focuses on the social\/cultural representations of the statue of A Real Birmingham Family<\/em><\/a> cast in bronze and unveiled in Britain\u2019s second city<\/a> in October 2014. It reveals a family comprising two local mixed-race sisters, both single mothers, and their sons, unanimously chosen from 372 families. Three of the four families shortlisted for the statue were \u2018mixed-race\u2019 families. The artwork came about through a partnership between the sculptress, Gillian Wearing<\/a>, and the city\u2019s Ikon Gallery<\/a>. A number of different lay representations of the artwork have been identified, notably, that it is a \u2018normal family with no fathers\u2019 and that it is not a \u2018typical family\u2019. These are at variance with a representation based on an interpretation of the artwork and materials associated with its creation: that a nuclear family<\/a> is one reality amongst many and that what constitutes a family should not be fixed. This representation destabilizes our notion of the family and redefines it as empirical, experiential, and first-hand, families being brought into recognition by those in the wider society who choose to nominate themselves as such. The work of Ian Hacking<\/a>, Richard Jenkins<\/a>, and others is drawn upon to contest the concept of \u2018normality\u2019. Further, statistical data are presented that show that there is now a plurality of family types with no one type dominating or meriting the title of \u2018normal\u2019. Finally, Wearing\u2019s statues of families in Trentino<\/a> and Copenhagen<\/a> comprise an evolving body of cross-national public art that provides further context and meaning for this representation.<\/p>\n

Read the entire article in HTML<\/a> or PDF<\/a> format.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This article focuses on the social\/cultural representations of the statue of A Real Birmingham Family cast in bronze and unveiled in Britain\u2019s second city in October 2014.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1649,12,24,414,1196,8,394,10],"tags":[31564,15923,81,28827,18341,10176,61,1877,31563],"class_list":["post-60998","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anthropology","category-articles","category-arts","category-family","category-literary-criticism","category-media-archive","category-socialscience","category-uk","tag-a-real-birmingham-family","tag-birmingham","tag-england","tag-genealogy","tag-gillian-wearing","tag-ian-hacking","tag-peter-aspinall","tag-peter-j-aspinall","tag-richard-jenkins"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60998","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=60998"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60998\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":61009,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60998\/revisions\/61009"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=60998"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=60998"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=60998"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}