Community: feminist.bloggers@brooklynmuseum

The Empire Trilogy recently opened at Luxe Gallery, featuring the work of artist Heather Bennett. Bennett’s unnerving triumvirate of a fifties-esque housewife, a female lumberjack, and a wicked witch of sorts are presented to the viewer as video portraits accompanied by a droning soundtrack. Definitely not for the faint of heart, this exhibition will be open until December 23rd .

(Heather Bennett, Locks & Hocks, 2008, production still. Courtesy of Luxe Gallery.)

Opening last month at Flomenhaft Gallery, Sonia Benjamin’s solo exhibition, Lilith in the New World is a combination of Indian comics, Persian miniatures, illuminated manuscripts, and lore. Benjamin pulls from multiple faiths to create the contemporary Lilith, a woman asking still for freedom, justice, and equality. This exhibition will be on view until December 6th.

(Siona Benjamin, Directions on How to Wear an Indian Jewish Sari, 2005, etching, aquatint and digital print on paper. Courtesy of Flomenhaft Gallery.)

Following the veil throughout history and it’s various contexts, Union Art Gallery at the University of Milwaukee presents The Veil: Visible and Invisible Spaces. Curated by Jennifer Heath, this group exhibition features the work of twenty-nine different artists and several interesting events. Check it out if you are in the area before it closes December 12th.

(Anita Kunz, Girls Will Be Girls, 2007. Courtesy of Union Art Gallery.)

Ernesto Pujol: Inheriting Salt opened just last week at Ramis Barquet. Influenced by feminist art and theory, Pujol explores themes of loss and brokenness in this current exhibition. Pujol has invited three women artists, Stephanie Diamond, Rosemarie Padovano, and Joy Whalen, to share their photography and video work in conjunction with this exhibition. Inheriting Salt closes December 23rd.

(Ernesto Pujol, from Inheriting Salt exhibition. Courtesy of Ramis Barquet.)

Burning Down the House artist and good friend of the Brooklyn Museum,Joyce Kozloff’s most recent solo exhibition opened last month at Trout Gallery in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Kozloff has been involved in the feminist art movement since the seventies, and this new exhibition, Co+Ordinates, focuses on cartography and borders which serve as a metaphor for other divisions in culture, the mental, and the physical. This show will be on view until January 10th.

(Joyce Kozloff, Targets (detail), 2000, acrylic on canvas over wood. Courtesy of the Trout Gallery.)

The Greenroom: Reconsidering the Documentary and Contemporary Art is CCS Bard Galleries and Hessel Museum of Art in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. This show features a wide variety of feminist artists including such greats as Valie Export, Nan Goldin, Ana Mendieta, Mona Hatoum, Jenny Holzer, Kiki Smith, Cindy Sherman, Martha Rosler, Mary Kelley…the list really goes on and on. Head on over before this gem closes on February 1st.

(Installation view of The Greenroom: Reconsidering the Documentary and Contemporary Art. Courtesy of CSS Bard.)

Zoë Charlton: Family opens November 14th at Connor Contemporary Art in Washington, D.C. Chalton’s large format drawings of her nude Floridian cousins address issues of the body and questions where inspiration is drawn from in the construction of self. This exhibition will be up until January 3rd.

(Zoë Charlton, Weeds, 2007, graphite and goache on paper, 52 x 91 inches. Courtesy of Connor Contemporary Art.)

Catya Plate’s artist book, Clothespin Tarot has been included in a selection of artists books from the collection on the second floor of the Museum. The Queen of Buttons, Queen of Thimbles, and Queen of Hatpins are included amongst Plate’s feminist interpretation of the minor and major arcana. The installation of the books coincided with the recent Contemporary Artist’s Book Conference and will be on display until the end of December, 2008.

(Catya Plate, Queen of Darners from Clothespin Tarot, 2007, artist’s book, 11″ x 7¼”, watercolor and color pencil on paper. Courtesy of the artist.)

Apocalyptic Pop, curated by Kathy Goncharov, opens November 16th at Dorsky Gallery in Long Island City. The show will include works by Jody Culkin, D. Dominick Lombardi, Laura Prnes, TODT, Michael Zansky, and feminist artist Chitra Ganesh. Two of Ganesh’s digital collages will be on view, showing the comic-book inspired segment of this innovative artist’s work. This exhibition will be up until January 25th.

(Chitra Ganesh, Fingerprints, 2007, 40 x 72 inches, digital print, edition of 5. Courtesy of the artist.)

The Dairy in London is opening a new group exhibition on November 10th. demons, yarns & tales: Tapestries by Contemporary Artists should prove to be an exciting show with an all-star line up that includes Kara Walker, Grayson Perry, Beartrz Milhazes, Fred Tomaselli, Ghada Amer & Reza Farkondeh, Gavin Turk, Jaime Gili, avaf, Paul Noble, Julie Verhoeven, Gary Hume, Franchesca Lowe, Shahzia Sikander, and Peter Blake. Amer and Farkondeh recently spoke here at the Center about their collaborative works, and we can’t wait to see what they’ve come up with for this one! This exhibition is curated by BANNERS of PERSUASION and will be only be up until November 22nd. If you are in the area, this show is a must see!

(Kara Walker, A Warm Summer Evening in 1863, tapestry (detail), 2008. 1.68 x 2.5m. Exhibition announcement image.)

My First Love, a solo exhibition of the work of Alessandra Exposito opens November 13th at Mixed Greens. Through the use of domesticated animals and decorative elements, Exposito’s intriguing work is given a feminist take on the stereotypically masculine practice of mounting hunted animal heads on the wall of one’s home. This time, Exposito focuses exclusively on the horse, an animal beloved by both the masculine and feminine among us. Check out My First Love before it closes on December 22nd!

(Alessandra Exposito, Queenie, 2006, 22 x 37 x 28 inches, mixed media on horse skull. Courtesy of Mixed Greens.)

There is a new monograph worthy of note that just came out on the video work of Ursula Biemann from 1998-2008. Ursula Biemann Mission Reports: Artistic Practice in the Field, Video Works 1998-2008, includes feminist readings by Angela Dimitrakaki and Wendy S. Hesford. A complete description of this monograph’s contents can be found here.

(Cover of Ursula Biemann Mission Reports: Artistic Practice in the Field, Video Works 1998-2008. Courtesy of the artist.)

Cindy Sherman, the incomparable feminist photographer will be honored tomorrow as part of the Brooklyn Museum’s annual Women in the Arts Luncheon! Sherman’s work was invaluable to the feminist art movement in the late seventies, forcing viewers to consider the significance of “the gaze” in Western culture. Through the use of costumes and role-play in her self-portraiture, Sherman helped to redefine the notion of gender as something performed rather than innate. Women in the Arts 2008 will celebrate her contributions to feminist art during the awards presentation tomorrow, followed by a reception and luncheon.

This event coincides with the current exhibition here at the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, Burning Down the House: Building a Feminist Art Collection, which includes Sherman’s Untitled (detail), 1975/2004, an early photograph that precludes Sherman’s famous Untitled Film Stills series by two years and references the gender bending, surrealist photographer Claude Cahun. For information on Women in the Arts 2008, click here.

(Cindy Sherman (American, b. 1954). Untitled (detail), 1975/2004. C-print. Printer Charles Griffin, Inc. Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Linda S. Ferber, 2005.10. Courtesy of the artist and Metro Pictures.)