Community: feminist.bloggers@brooklynmuseum

(Carolee Schneemann, still from Fuses, 1965. Courtesy of the Artist.)

This month there are a fantastic crop of programs showcasing the work of Carolee Schneemann, a feminist pioneer, and one of the most influential film and performance artists of the 1960s and 1970s. Early in her career, Schneemann was a protégé of experimental filmmaker Stan Brakhage, whose signature style of scratching film emulsion and choppy editing inspired Schneemann’s films like Fuses (1965) and Kitsch’s Last Meal (1973-76). But issues of the body and female subjectivity are always more central to Schneemann’s art than mere technical prowess. Schneemann became one of the first woman artists to articulate and eroticize her own body on film, while affirming the everlasting statement of feminist discourse: “the personal is political.” This is something Schneemann has always achieved with attitude and a fierce sense of individuality. If you’re in Boston, you can see a screening of Fuses and Kitsch’s Last Meal, as well as Plumb Line (1968-71) at the MassArt Film Society on November 20th. Meanwhile PERFORMA 07 has organized a comprehensive multi-program film retrospective that includes both the classics and some more recent installation works, plus a FREE conversation with Schneemann herself on November 7th.

We mentioned earlier that the Pierre Menard Gallery is celebrating Schneemann with an exhibition titled Carolee Schneemann: a selection of recent and early work. Curated by artist Heide Hatry, early works is just that, a collection of paintings, collages, photographs, and performance footage. Look for Schneemann’s beautifully assembled box constructions (made out of materials such as old photographs, mirrors, paint, strips of cloth, feathers, and bones) which anticipate her later performance work. Soon after creating these objects, Schneemann began using her body as an extension of her paintings and constructions in works such as Eye Body (1963) and Meat Joy (1964), two performances that challenge the standard images of women as powerful agents rather than simple objects in art history.

(Carolee Schneemann, Eye Body: 36 Transformative Acts, 1963. Courtesy of the Artist)

On Sunday, November 4th, beginning at 4 pm, at Studio Soto there will be a program dedicated to Schneemann’s impact on the art of contemporary feminist performance artists that will include performances by Heide Hatry, Mari Novotny-Jones, and Theresa Byrnes. Like Schneemann, Byrnes’ work is often characterized by critics as ‘body art’–a term that describes how artists will use their bodies as a literal canvas for enabling political or social commentary. This notion is punctuated by Byrnes’ in one of her most recent piece’s called Trace (2007), a performance in which Byrnes submerged herself in a vat of crude oil, and then spent 30 minutes cleaning herself of the thick substance in front of a crowd of spectators on a New York sidewalk. In Boston, Byrnes will be performing a new work titled Theresa Tree, a piece that she writes us is based on a question from her childhood: “What is the difference between me and a tree?” A worthwhile investigation indeed.

(Theresa Byrnes, Trace, performance, 2007. Image: Andrzej Liguz.)

Boston’s Carolee Schneemann events…
Sunday, November 4th at 4pm. After the Orgy: A Tribute to Carolee Schneemann. Curated by Jed Speare and Michelle Handelman, in conjunction with the exhibition, Carolee Schneemann: a selection of recent and early work at Pierre Menard Gallery through November 25. With performances by Heide Hatry, Theresa Byrnes and Mari Novotny-Jones, and films by Lydia Eccles, Jesse Jagtiani, Michelle Handelman and Luther Price. Followed by a panel discussion with the artists. At Studio Soto. See the Studio Soto website for more details.

And…

Tuesday, November 20th at 8pm: Carolee Schneemann: a Film Tribute featuring a screening of Fuses, Plumbline, and Kitch’s Last Meal. Shown and introduced by Saul Levine. At Mass. College of Art, MassArt Film Society. See the MassArt Film Society website for more details.

New York’s Carolee Schneemann events as part of PERFORMA 07…
Remains To Be Seen: New and Restored Films and Videos of Carolee Schneemann. Programs in Remains to Be Seen include: An Artist Talk & Screening on Wednesday, November 7th at 6pm. FREE. At Electronic Arts Intermix. Restorations & New Works on Thursday, November 15th at 7pm. Kitsch’s Last Meal on Friday and Saturday, November 16th and 17th at 7 pm. Both programs at Anthology Film Archives. See the PERFORMA 07 website for more details.

Maura Reilly and Roseanne Barr, June 25, 2007. Photo © Adam Husted

Dear Feminists,

I’m giddy with excitement when I tell you that one of the greatest comic geniuses of all time visited us here yesterday at the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art. She came–as a self-declared, longstanding feminist–to see the Center and Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party. Ms. Chicago–who is an old friend of Roseanne’s–was there to give her a personalized tour of the masterpiece, after which I showed her our inaugural exhibition Global Feminisms. She was delighted with it all! As was no surprise to any of us, she was brilliant, warm, and delightful to be with.

Thank you for the visit, Roseanne. Come again–and bring friends!!!

This Saturday, June 2, 2007
2–4 p.m.
Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Auditorium, 3rd floor

Come hear Feminist icon, Faith Ringgold discuss her groundbreaking work from the 1960s to the present!

Faith Ringgold’s inspiring and often humorous stories illustrate her personal journey and beliefs as an artist, activist, author, teacher, and parent. Her talk focuses on art and activism from the 1960s and 1970s to the present, and how she came to use painting, fabrics, quilt-making, and storytelling to create an extensive body of work containing paintings, soft sculpture, masks, and performances. And, after her talk, come be inspired by Faith Ringgold’s talk and create your very own quilt square in the Museum’s Beaux-Arts Court.

For more information on Ringgold’s work, please visit her profile on our Feminist Art Base where you’ll find a biography and lots of images.

We hope to see you Saturday!

Global Feminisms Remix
On View August 3, 2007 - February 3, 2007

Forty-four works selected from Global Feminisms will once again be on view at the Brooklyn Museum in the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art. Like its widely praised predecessor, Remix seeks to challenge the dominance of European and American contemporary art and explore such issues as racial and gender identity, politics, and oppression.

Remix assembles works by 40 women artists, who represent countries that are seldom involved in the contemporary art discourse such as Guatemala, Kenya, Pakistan, Thailand, Korea, India. The wide range of media employed in the exhibition includes paintings, sculpture, photography, works on paper, and video.

In this exhibition, many of the artworks are infused with political activism. From Afghanistan, Lida Abdul is represented by a single-channel video White House (2005), which shows the artist white-washing a building in bombed-out Kabul. Sigalit Landau, an Israeli video artist, swings a barbed wire hula-hoop around her naked, bloody stomach in which pain symbolizes the geographical barrier created along the West Bank. Regina José Galindo is seen making a bloody footprint with each step as she walks from the Court of Constitutionality to the National Palace in Guatemala City in memory of murdered Guatemalan women, in her performance video Who Can Erase the Traces? (2003). While other exhibiting artists’ themes are not as politically charged, they do create intense, emotive works that celebrate social freedoms or confront oppression. From Japan, Miwa Yanagi’s photograph from My Grandmothers series, depicts an elderly model with flaming-red hair riding sidecar on a motorcycle driven by her young lover. Japanese artist Ryoko Suzuki contributes a mural-sized installation of three photographs in which her face is bound tightly by pig’s intestines, where she is bullied into a kind of mute, anonymous submission.

Among the artists represented are Ghada Amer (Egypt), Arahmaiani (Indonesia), Pilar Albarracín (Spain), Pipilotti Rist (Switzerland), Tracey Moffatt (Australia), Lilibeth Cuenca Rasmussen (Denmark), and Tracey Rose (South Africa), Adriana Varejão (Brazil).

(Images top to bottom: Miwa Yanagi, Yuka, 2000; Lida Abdul, White House, 2005)

Our new Feminist Art Base currently has over 125 profiles and it is growing daily! We’re super jazzed because as far as we know, there is NO other digital archive dedicated to feminist art out there on the web! It’s a great source for other artists, curators, teachers or just art lovers! And depending on the artist and her/his preferred medium, each profile contains images, video and audio clips–so it’s really fun searching and exploring the database, which we lovingly refer to in-house as the F.A.B.

You can also learn all about each artist’s career by reading her/his bio and CV. And, most importantly, in the artist’s own words, how s/he or her/his work relates to feminism and/or feminist art in the mandatory requirement for each profile, the Feminist Artist Statement.

The Feminist Art Base features feminist pioneers such as Hannah Wilke, Carolee Schneeman, Faith Ringgold; international artists such as Tsuneko Taniuchi (b. Japan; lives in France) and Sutapa Biswas (b. India; lives in England); and a newer generation of feminist artists such as Ximena Zomosa and Aïda Ruilova.

See work from various points in a feminist career such as in Betye Saar’s, Joan Snyder’s, or Harmony Hammond’s profile; or discover someone who is new to the scene like Yun Bai or Swoon. There are also some really rare finds like impossible to locate videos by Mako Idemitsu or Joan Jonas. Where else can you see those for free?

Bottom line, feminist art rocks! And the Feminist Art Base is an ever-growing archive that demonstrates that.

Spread the word! And stay tuned!

(Images Top to Bottom: Hannah Wilke, Rosebud, 1976; Betye Saar, The Liberation of Aunt Jemima, 1972. Joan Jonas; Lines in the Sand, 2002.)