Community: feminist.bloggers@brooklynmuseum

If you are in New York, make time to visit the new building for the New Museum of Contemporary Art, which was designed by Kazuyo Sejima in collaboration with Ryue Nishizawa. Their firm SANAA has built a number of impressive structures all over the world including the Toledo Museum of Art’s Glass Pavilion in Toledo, Ohio; the extension of the Institute Valencia d’Art Modern in Valencia, Spain; and a satellite of the Louvre in Lens, France, to name a few. Sejima trained at Toyo Ito’s firm, and has since proven her talents on her own. She founded Kazuyo Sejima and Associates in 1987, and holds a professorship at the prestigious Keio University in Tokyo, and the school of architecture at Princeton University. While architecture remains a notoriously difficult profession for women, and boasts very few established women architects, including Zaha Hadid and Elizabeth Diller of Diller+Scofidio, achievements such as Sejima’s deserve recognition so that more aspiring women architects will find the support to break through the glass ceiling, literally.

(Design and Visualization: Sejima + Nishizawa / SANAA. Site Photography: Christopher Dawson. 2007. Courtesy of the New Museum of Contemporary Art.)

The New Museum is also showcasing the work of Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries (YHCHI)’s Black on White, Gray Ascending. YHCHI is a two-artist collective that uses Flash animation techniques to show fast-moving texts, which are often projected onto the span of gallery walls. Their works are often synchronized with music, which gives an added sentiment or wit to the content of the narratives imbedded on the screen. In her native country of South Korea, Young-Hae Chang is regarded as one of the few women artists who uses new media on such an impressive scale. Click HERE to view a segment of YHCHI’s work–you will not be disappointed!

If you live or plan to travel outside of New York City this week, be sure to check out these exhibits…

(Frida Kahlo, Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird, 1940. Courtesy of the Nicholas Murray Collection, Harry Ransom Huminities Research Center, The University of Texas at Austin.)

Walker Art Center’s Frida Kahlo exhibition in celebration of the 100th anniversary of her birth goes through January 20. During her life time, Kahlo was known for being the wife of Mexican muralist Diego Rivera, but today she has fully emerged from the shadow of her famous spouse, and become an icon among surrealist painters and feminist artists, alike. This exhibition features not only her better known self-portraits but also a number of striking still-life paintings.

(Maya Lin, 2 X 4 Landscape, 2006. Photo: Colleen Cartier. Courtesy of the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis.)

A must-see exhibit before it closes on December 30! Maya Lin: Systematic Landscapes on display at Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis. Lin is best known for designing the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial in Washington, DC–a structure that dramatically changed the formal language of monuments by infusing design with the emotional charge of memory. Since then, Lin continues to produce sculptural work that transgresses public monuments, earthworks, sculpture, architecture, and landscape design.

(Cosima von Bonin. Installation view of Roger and Out at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 2007. Photo: Brian Forrest.)

A survey of Germany-based, Kenya-born artist, Cosima von Bonin, titled Roger and Out will go through January 7 at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. von Bonin makes work that playfully addresses identity and gender representations in a variety of media including sculpture, photography, textile, performance, and video. This installation will present von Bonin’s body of work since the 1990s, including new work produced for the exhibition.

(Lucy McKenzie, After G. Hobe, Salon Library for the Great Exhibition, 1902, Turin, 2006. Installation view at Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh, Scotland. Courtesy of the Cabinet Gallery, London.)

At the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, New Work: Lucy McKenzie is on display through February 24. Scottish artist McKenzie’s paintings of 19th-century interiors follows the style of famed Scottish architect and designer Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s art nouveau designs. The installation also includes McKenzie’s collaboration with fashion designer Beca Lipscombe.

(Catherine Lee, Diminutive, Grey, 1977. Courtesy of Gallery Lelong.)

Early paintings by Catherine Lee will be on view through January 26, 2008 in The Mark Paintings 1977-79 at Galerie Lelong. Lee’s grid-like drawings maintains the formal language of Minimalism. However, her body of work is differentiated from Minimalism by the painstaking repetition of calligraphic markings on the grid, while the hand-crafty quality of her works suggests the historic tenacity of women’s domestic labor.

(Do-ho Suh, Reflection, 2007, nylon and stainless steel tube, Courtesy Lehmann Maupin.)

When we speak of female sensitivity in repetitive and accumulative work, we automatically think of embroidery and stitch work. Artist Do-ho Suh explores the universal human experiences of displacement through his laborious stitch work. The stunning fabric replica of an arch gate at his childhood house in Korea is on view through February 2 2008 at Lehmann Mauphin’s second gallery in the Bowery.

(Jenny Holzer, Exhibition View of PROJECTIONS at MASS MoCA, 2007. Courtesy of MASS MoCA)

Prominent artist Jenny Holzer uses text in many of her sculptural installations, which often discuss sociological aspects of female experiences. The public dimension is integral to the delivery of her work, since language is about communication and sharing. Projection, her first U.S. installation of interior light projections along with recent series of paintings at MASS MoCA, will be a perfect chance for museum-goers to experience her work. PROJECTIONS will be on display until fall 2008.

(Louise Bourgeois, Hours of the Day (cover), 2006. Courtesy of artist (Carolina Nitsch Project Room)

Carolina Nitsch Project Room presents Louise Bourgeois: Hours of the Day from December 2007 through January 2008. Louise Bourgeois is widely considered to be a living legend of Feminist art, and her biography is a must for anyone interested in her work. This installation comprises a series of printed fabric diptychs and a fabric book, in which Bourgeois juxtaposes visual representation of memories with text written by her.

(Miwa Yanagi. Ayumi from the My Grandmothers series, 2001. Photograph courtesy of the artist.)

Global Feminisms artist Miwa Yanagi is having a show at Byblos Art Gallery in Verona, Italy. Yanagi’s photographs depict the role of women in the context of Japanese society, yet reflect the universal concerns of women across cultures. Congratulations to Miwa Yanagi!

(Ruth Asawa, Untitled S.075 (Hanging open form), 1960’s. Photo Credit: Laurence Cuneo. Courtesy of Rena Bransten Gallery.)

A show for the feminist blog readers in the Bay Area! Rena Bransten Gallery is presenting Ruth Asawa: SHAPES AND FORMS until January 12, 2008. In the sixties, Asawa subverted traditions of sculpture-making by selecting webs of wires to create her works which then hung from the ceiling as if suspended in mid-air. This was in opposition to the long convention of creating pedestaled works of stone or bronze. Asawa’s sculpture beautifully challenges notions that associate art with masculinity and craft with femininity.

Another exhibition in California! Please Be Seated, a video installation by Nicole Cohen is on display at the Getty Center in Los Angeles.

(Please Be Seated: A Video Installation, 2007. Installation view at the Getty Center, Los Angeles.)

Nicole Cohen’s work deals with the relationship among reality, fantasy, and culturally constructed space. In this work, video allows Cohen to play upon its intrinsic capacities to manipulate time, distort environment, and overlay imagery. The chairs that the viewers are invited to sit on while participating in the video project are inspired by the Getty Center’s French decorative art collection, which play up the juxtaposition of classical and contemporary in the scene.

(Last Riot: The Tank and Waterfall, AES+F, 2007. courtesy of Claire Oliver Gallery)

Last Riot 2 by AES+F is at the Claire Oliver Gallery this month. AES+F consists of four Russian-born artists: Tatiana Arzamasova, Lev Evzovich, Evgeny Svyatsky, and Vladimir Fridkes. In a series of photographs, the artists show female models playing the roles of heroines in futuristic-looking war. They explain that the last riot is “where all are fighting against all and against themselves, where no difference exists any longer between victim and aggressor, male and female. This world celebrates the end of ideology, history and ethics.” Hurry! The last day of the show is December 29^th.

**Many thanks to Angela Oh for helping to compile this week’s picks!**

(Ariane Lopez-Huici, Dalila, 2001. Courtesy of the Artist.)

The New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting, and Sculpture presents the work of photographer Ariane Lopez-Huici through February 2nd. The exhibition focuses on Lopez-Huici’s ongoing exploration of the nude body–in images that capture an uncanny sense of liveness, easy, and spontaneity.

(TallBlondLadies, Ascendant Landing, 2006. Photo: Iris Selke.)

Performance artist Marina Abramovic curates the third installment of her performance series When Time Becomes Form, at Artists Space this week. This program features TBL (TallBlondLadies), a collaborative project between artists Anna Berndtson and Irina Runge, in a work titled Solidly Grounded, which will include a collection of three works, performed over five days for five hours per day, on December 18th through December 22nd.

(Przemek Matecki Hair [3 faces tranparenti], 2006. Courtesy of RASTER Gallery, Warsaw, Poland.)

The Raster Gallery in Poland comes to RENTAL in New York with RASTER HAIRCUT, an exhibition that explores the importance of “hair,” as a motif, and an aspect of individual and cultural identity. The exhibition features works by Polish artists Anita Grzeszykowska, Jan Smaga, Rafal Bujnowski, and Przemek Matechi, and runs through January 13th.

(Beth Campbell, Following Room, 2007. Photo: Mack Mc Farland.)

For Following Room, a site-specific solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of America Art, multimedia artist Beth Campbell investigates notions of the everyday and the common place in an installation that duplicates a reading room along a mirrored wall. On view at the Whitney through February 24th.

(Richard Serra, “Backstop” (To Thurman Munson), 1987. Courtesy of the Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York, NY.)

90 degrees The Margins as Center features works by Lynda Benglis, Richard Serra, Robert Morris, and James Turrell at the Andrea Rosen Gallery through January 24th, 2008.

Opening…


(Shirley Goldfarb, 1977, 1977. Courtesy of Zabriskie Gallery, New York.)

The Zabriskie Gallery presents Three Paintings: A Decade in the Life of Shirley Goldfarb, an exhibition of three large oil paintings that span a decade of Goldfarb’s career, and hint at the transition from her earlier abstractions of the sixties to the patterned grids of her later work. Opening at the Zabriskie Gallery December 18th through February 2nd.

An Opportunity…

(Allison Smith, The Muster, A public art event on Governor’s Island, May 14, 2005. Photo by Amy Elliot, Courtesy of The Public Art Fund.)

The Public Art Fund presents the thirteenth annual In the Public Realm, an opportunity for artists living in New York to develop and create a temporary work in a public space. Past participants have included, Alejandro Diaz, Beth Campbell, and Allison Smith, who organized The Muster on Governor’s Island in 2005. Click here for more information about deadlines and submission guidelines.

More international press about the Global Feminisms exhibition from Bulgaria!

Diana Popova, “Boryana Rossa: Bio (art) and Cyber (Feminism),” Kultura Weekly, #33 (2472), October 3, 2007. This is an interview with artist Boryana Rossa, who talks about Global Feminisms, the history of the women’s rights movement in communist countries and the connections of these ideas with contemporary cyber feminism theory. Rossa also describes her participation in The Bioart Initiative at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and her artistic transition from a classical education at the Academy of Fine Arts, Sofia, Bulgaria to contemporary tech and media arts and theory (Published in Bulgarian).

Boryana Rossa, Global Feminisms at the Brooklyn Museum, 39 Grama, Wet, #0036, July 7th, 2007. This article is an extended description of the exhibition, and features information about the works of roughly ten of the artists, and an overall discussion about the intentions of the curators. The author evaluates the importance of the exhibition on an international level and in particular for the countries in Eastern Europe (Published in Bulgarian).

(Margot Herster, GUANTÁNAMO: pictures from home, 2007. Courtesy of the Artist.)

Love/War/Sex, presented at Exit Art through January 28th, considers the spectacles and seductions of war through the work of nine internationally recognized artists, including Ellen Lake, Rebecca Loyche, and Margot Herster, whose work incorporates photographs and tokens lent by the families of Guantánamo detainees. The exhibition includes video, sculpture, and photography, but also features a selection of military artillery borrowed from the Military Museum of Southern New England, and wallpapered stories of war conjured from texts.

(Moving Theater, Impermanent Collection, 2007 Photo: Brock Labrenz/An Films.)

The Whitney Live performance series presents Moving Theater: Impermanent Collection. Performed against the backdrop of the Whitney’s Lower Gallery, dancers interact with videos of themselves dancing, and respond choreographically to the artwork in the Museum, while the ICE (International Contemporary Ensemble) provides a live score. December 14th at 7PM, Whitney Museum of American Art.

(Francesca Woodman, Untitled, Providence Rhode Island, 1975-78, Courtesy Marian Goodman Gallery, New York.)

Marian Goodman Gallery is featuring an exhibition of photographs by acclaimed feminist photographer Francesca Woodman, whose haunting black-and-white images of herself, often staged in crumbling, abandoned houses, foreshadowed the tragedy of her young life, which was cut short by suicide in 1981.

(Bridget Riley, Painting with Vericals 2, 2006. Courtesy of PaceWildenstein, New York.)

Prolific British artist Bridget Riley, who began her career in the 1950s creating abstract paintings, is experiencing something of a comeback, mainly due to an exhibition of her large-scale drawings and newest works on view at both of PaceWildenstein’s Chelsea and Midtown branches through January 5th.

(Liz Craft, Beach Girl Rose, 2007. Courtesy of the Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York.)

L.A. based artist Liz Craft continues to exhibit her second solo show in New York at the Marianne Boesky Gallery through December 22nd. Craft’s installations evoke a curious tangle of architectural whimsy, including tableaux of caves of stalactites, interiors of kitschy bric-a-brac, and a befuddled beachcomber.

Opening…

On Friday, December 14th an exhibition of video art by Ann Carlson and Mary Ellen Strom opens at Alexander Gray Associates–which very recently CLOSED a fabulous exhibition of drawings and installations by Karen Finley. For their new video art, Carlson and Strom worked closely with four New York City attorneys, choreographing and performing a dance and vocal score about the judicial system and their lives as lawyers.

(Ann Carlson and Mary Ellen Strom, Sloss, Rosenberg & Moore, 2007. Courtesy of Alexander Gray Associates.)