In last Sunday’s panel discussion, “The American Hero and the American Dream: Reflections on Our Contemporary Political Narratives,” moderator and well-known author Courtney E. Martin was joined by panelists Charlton McIlwain, Assistant Professor of Culture and Communication at New York University; Gloria Feldt, author and blogger at Heartfeldt Politics; and Ramin Hedayati, associate producer of The Daily Show for an in-depth examination of the narratives and images that dominate the media, campaigns, and candidates during this election season. If you missed this important discussion, check out the program in the following video!

(Laurie Ann Farrell of Savannah College of Art and Design asks artists Ghada Amer and Reza Farkhondeh questions about their collaborative work. Photograph by Jessica Shaffer.)

After this presentation, Amer energetically discussed how her eight year collaboration with Farkhondeh first began. In 2000, after a period of crippling depression, Farkhondeh leaned on his good friend Amer for support, and moved into her studio. Without her permission or consent, he started to literally “improve” on Amer’s works in progress while she was out, adding layers of paint to the canvases and drawings! To say the least, Amer was surprised when she discovered Farkhondeh’s additions to her pieces, but was so intrigued by her friend’s provocation on her works that she continued to let him participate, and together they coined the acronym RFGA(Riza Farkhondeh, Ghada Amer) to use as their signature.

In the years following, the artists continued their collaborations in tandem, each working on his or her own contributions in their separate locales. Farkhondeh would paint something on a piece, or use tape rather than paint as his medium, and send it off to Amer who would perhaps add an embroidered section or stencil to the work. The years of their collaboration included a stint at the Singapore Tyler Print Institute, where they completed a series of drawings which were later shown at the Kukje Gallery in Seoul in 2007 and at the Tina Kim Gallery here in New York in 2008. The duo currently resides as artists-in-residence at Pace Prints in Manhattan which marks the first time they have ever worked together face to face.

(RFGA, Mosaic Memory of Tongues, 2007. Acrylic, embroidery, and gel medium on canvas. Currently on view at the Brooklyn Museum in Ghada Amer: Love Has No End.Photo courtesy of the artist, and Gagosian Gallery.)

When asked how working together has changed their own individual work, Amer commented that she has definitely noticed elements of RFGA making their way into her own, individual style. In a rather poignant moment that marked the end of the discussion, Farkhondeh remarked that working with Amer has opened his mind and allowed him to become a viewer of his own work, seeing it in a different light than before the pair’s collaboration.

Two works by RFGA are featured in Ghada Amer: Love Has No End. Don’t forget to take advantage of this amazing retrospective of Ghada Amer’s work, curated by Maura Reilly, Curator of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, before it closes on October 19th!

(Cecily Brown, Untitled (#38), 2007. Oil on linen, 12-1/2 x 17 inches. Courtesy of Gagosian Gallery.)

The first part of A.I.R Gallery: The History Show, just opened last week at the Tracey/Barry Gallery at NYU’s Bobst Library. This multi-part exhibition features artwork and archival materials from A.I.R.’s opening in 1972 to present, and will include October and November openings at the A.I.R Gallery’s new location on Front Street in DUMBO. This is a great opportunity to learn more about the first artist-run, not-for-profit art gallery for women artists in the United States.

(Image from A.I.R. Gallery: The History Show. Courtesy of A.I.R Gallery.)

The Myth of Loneliness, featuring artist Amy Wilson, just opened at BravinLee Programs in Manhattan. With a style that is reminiscent of a long forgotten childhood methodology, Wilson uses watercolor and text bubbles to unfold her narratives. This exhibition will be open to the public until October 18th.

(Amy Wilson, It was harder for girls, I think, 2007. 5 1/2 x 7 inches, watercolor on paper. Courtesy of the artist.)

PASSWORDS 5. Our Bodies, Our Selves, an exhibition whose title references the 1970’s health book written by feminist activists, just opened at Centro Cultural Montehermoso in Vitoria-Gastiez, Spain. This group show includes the artwork of Trisha Baga, Pauline Boudry & Nao Bustamante, Celeste Dupuy-Spencer, Leah Gilliam, K8 Hardy & Wynne Greenwood, Marriage (Math Bass & Wu Ingrid Tsang), Alex McQuilkin. The 8 videos featured in this exhibition will be up until February 1st, so if you’re in the area between now and then, definitely add this one to your docket!

(Celeste Dupuy-Spencer, Uh-Ohtopia, 2007. Courtesy of Montehermoso .)

Patricia Barube: Paintings, Drawings and Monoprints will be closing this week at Soho20 Gallery. Barube uses the human figure to investigate familial relationships and events in her paintings, and even creates a portrait of an ancient Greek fertility goddess in the work pictured below.

(Patricia Barube, Ancient Greek Doll, 2008, Oil on canvas. Courtesy of Soho20 Gallery.)

Steve DeFrank: Mirror, Mirror, currently on view at Margaret Thatcher Projects, is deceptively playful as it confronts stereotypes about homosexuality. DeFrank has embraced his new medium of casein, rather than the lite-brite, which he used so often in the past, to create both sculptural and graffiti-like works. Check this show out before it closes on October 18th!

(Steve DeFrank, Fairy Nice, 2007. Casein on panel, 48″ x 48″. Courtesy of Thatcher Projects.)

(Louise Bourgeois, Installation view of Echo, 2008. Courtesy of Cheim and Reid.)

The Guerilla Girls and Brainstormers invaded Chelsea this past weekend!!! A veritable street action for feminists and anti-feminists alike, participants were invited to fill out postcards mad lib style and distribute them to all galleries showing mostly male art. Anyone who thinks that feminist art exhibitions have become too plentiful and are a sign of discrimination against male artists were invited to join the picket line of the newly formed protest group MAN (Male Art Now). Did you participate in the Guerrilla Girls/Brainstormers action? If so, we want to hear about it! Please share your comments with us below!

(Mad libs and picket signs for the invasion of Chelsea. Image courtesy of Kathe Kallowitz.)

This Tuesday, September 16th, NYU’s Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality will be hosting a talk titled (Un)Patriot Acts: Art, Activism and State Power from the ‘Culture Wars’ to the ‘War on Terror’. Artists Karen Finley, Chitra Ganesh, Miriam Ghani, Steve Kurtz, and Rebecca Schneider and moderator Karen Shimakawa will discuss the politics of art and art-making in a post-9/11 society. This event is open to the public and will begin at 7pm at Jurow Hall, Silver Center, at 31 Washington Place on the first floor.

(Chitra Ganesh. The Awakening, 2004. Courtesy of the artist.)

Nalini Malani’s latest exhibition Listening to the Shades opens this Thursday, September 18th at the Arario Gallery in Manhattan. This exhibition features Malani’s recent work, forty-two new paintings and a sound installation based on the Greek myth of Cassandra, a symbol for the unfinished business of the feminist movement.

(Nalini Malani, Medea III, 2006, Acrylic and enamel reverse painting on acrylic sheet. Courtesy of Arario Gallery.)

New Blood, an exhibition including the art of Nao Bustamante, opened at Vertex List in Greenpoint, Brooklyn this past Saturday. Bustamante is a performance and video artist, and in the past has collaborated with the likes of legendary performance artist Coco Fusco. At the opening, Bustamante kept the packed gallery mesmerized with her piece, “Given Over to Want,” a twenty minute solo that explored issues of waste, consumption, and gender. The work of artists Sasha Dela, Sergio De La Torre, Double Happiness, Sujin Lee, Jeanne Verdoux and Lance Wakeling will also be featured in this exhibition which will be up until Sunday, October 12th.

(Nao Bustamante, Given Over to Want, 2008, performance, 20 min. Courtesy of Vertex List.)

(Joan Snyder, A Girl’s Life, 2008. acrylic, herbs, rosebuds, velvet, on burlap, 36 inches x 48 inches.)

Prominent feminist artist Joan Snyder has an exhibition of her political paintings on view at the Danforth Museum in Farmingham, MA through November 23rd, and will be giving an artist’s talk this Sunday, September 21 at noon. Check out the Museum’s website for more info!

(Ladan Akbarnia and Jina Porter explaining Ghada Amer’s photo series of her various public works installations for the crowd. Photo courtesy of Jessie Shaffer.)

Akbarnia was very insightful in her take on Amer’s work, at one point questioning the attitude of Muslim women towards their veils and other traditional head and body coverings.

(Dr. Natasha Gordon-Chipembere describing her extensive work with circumcised women. Photo courtesy of Jessie Shaffer.)

Concurrent with the gallery talk was a screening of the film Moolaadé, directed by Ousmane Sembène, which addresses female circumcision. Afterwards, Dr. Natasha Gordon-Chipembere graciously led a heated discussion of the film and female circumcision in general. Moving from semantics to female circumcision in Brooklyn and the West’s misconceptions of the practice, and emotions understandably ran high as audience members volleyed back and forth on this controversial issue.

On Saturday, July 12th, Curator Maura Reilly gave a public tour of the exhibition Ghada Amer: Love Has No End, which is on view in the Center’s main galleries through October 19th.

(Maura Reilly presenting her take on Ghada Amer’s work. Photo courtesy of Jessica Hester.)

Reilly discussed the artist’s appropriation of the aesthetics of male Abstract Expressionists such as Barnett Newman and Jackson Pollock, and also suggested that Amer’s use of stitching – a traditionally-female endeavor – in some of her work is part of a reclamation of female sexuality and artistic autonomy. Like Akbarnia’s talk earlier in the month, Reilly touched on Amer’s investment in portraying both the social and political disenfranchisement and personal empowerment of Muslim women.

(Photo courtesy of Jessica Hester.)

Also on July 12th, the Center hosted filmmaker Katrina Browne for a showing of her documentary Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North. Presented in partnership with PBS’s P.O.V., a showcase for independent nonfiction film, the documentary chronicles Browne’s discovery that her New England ancestors were the largest slave-trading family in American history.

Don’t forget to stop by this Saturday at noon for the reading of excerpts from Live Through This—The Art of Self-Destruction, edited and read by Brooklyn-based feminist performer Sabrina Chapadjiev. Chapadjiev will lead a discussion following the reading with artist Fly and poet Nicole Blackman completing the panel. Thanks to everyone who came last month for your continuous support of the Center’s public programs!!

A notable section of Ghada Amer: Love Has No End contains three photographs from a larger series that Ghada Amer collaborated on with two fellow artists in 1991, titled I ♥ Paris, 1991. Then an art student living in Paris, Amer and close friend and artist Ladan S. Naderi walked around the city, dressed in veils and other conservative garments, staging group portraits in front of famous Parisienne tourist attractions such as the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe, and the iconic merry-go-round located at the Sacre Coeur. These photographs were taken shortly after a string of terrorist bombings by Islamic militants in Paris took place from 1990 to 1991. The series also extended into performances of Amer and Iranian-born Naderi attending art openings around Paris dressed in the Iranian chador and Egyptian naqqab, which called attention to the regional variations of Islamic attire and the meaning associated with choosing to wear the garments. Needless to say, the pair did not get much of a warm reception at many of these stuffy openings!

This is the first time any part of this series has been shown publicly, and recently got some attention, inviting comparisons to the likes of Emily Jacir and Shirin Neshat.

Related to this section of the exhibition, is Reign of Terror, 2005, an installation in the gallery that is not easily overlooked. Working with students at Wellesley College in 2005, this installation features the bold pink and green wallpaper and a plastic and paper place-settings that the artist covered with the phrase “Terrorism’ is not indexed in Arabic dictionaries.” The paper goods were displayed in the Davis Museum and Cultural Center, and also used by staff and students in the College’s cafeteria!

Stop by the galleries tomorrow, July 12th, to hear Maura Reilly, Curator of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, talk about these works and others from the exhibition Ghada Amer: Love Has No End. For more details on this, and other programs in the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art this weekend, click here.

(Ghada Amer (American, born Egypt, 1963). The Reign of Terror, 2005. Wallpaper from installation at Davis Museum and Cultural Center, Wellesley College, Wellesley, Massachusetts)

(Standing in front of the wallpaper from the installation The Reign of Terror, 2005, Ghada Amer speaks about the work during June’s Target First Saturday events. Photo taken by Eleanor Whitney.)

That same evening the South Asian Women’s Creative Collective board members Mareena Dareida and Sadia Rehman, along with artists Sara Rahbar, Samira Abbassy, and poet Sarah Husain gave us a sampling of their work during a panel discussion moderated by artist Miriam Ghani.

(The SAWCC panelists pose with Katie Apsey, former Brooklyn Museum Education Intern. Photo courtesy of Katie Apsey.)

As if that weren’t enough, on the twenty-first, Dr. Kay Sloan shared her film Suffragettes in Silent Cinema in conjunction with the Votes for Women, the exhibition in the Herstory gallery that is up through November 30th. Included in the footage from the documentary were some hilarious portrayals of women activists as aggressive homewreckers or child-like in comparison to their more mature and virtuous husbands. Writer and television producer Coline Jenkins gave a resounding presentation on her great-great-grandmother, the pioneering suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and her own dedication to uphold the legacy of her famous relative’s activism, while working to ensure that women everywhere realize “the full potential” of the Amendment that early suffragists fought so hard for in their lifetimes.

(Coline Jenkins shares a family portrait that includes her great-great-grandmother, Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Photo taken by Maura Reilly.)

Highlighted in the discussion following the film and Jenkins’ presentation was the implication that many of the same prejudices and discriminations present at the turn of the century are still alive in representations of women in the media today.

Stay tuned for more coverage of programs in the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art throughout the summer!

(From left to right; Melissa Messina, curator of Votes for Women, Dr. Kay Sloan, and Coline Jenkins during the panel discussion. The quote on projection screen is article XIX of the U.S. Constitution, which states: “The right of citizens of the U.S. to vote shall not be denied or abridged on account of sex.” Photo taken by Sarah Giovanniello.)

This month’s Target First Saturday events at the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art here at the Brooklyn Museum includes a screening of the film Moolaadé. Directed by Ousmane Sembène, this award winning film tells the tale of six young girls who are about to be circumcised and the subsequent attempts to protect the girls from this trauma. “Moolaadé” is the name for the magical protection one of the village women uses on the girls to prevent their imminent circumcisions.

The showing of the film begins at 6pm and is followed by a discussion with Dr. Natasha Gordon-Chipembere, who has worked extensively with, and as an advocate for, circumcised women. If you can’t make it at six for the film, stroll on over to the galleries to see Ladan Akbarnia, Hagop Kevorkian Associate Curator of Islamic Art here at the Brooklyn Museum, give a talk on Ghada Amer: Love Has No End at 7pm. Free tickets for both of these events are available at the Visitor’s Center at 5pm!

(Film Still from Moolaadé (2004), directed by Ousmane Sembène.)

(Close up of Suffragettes riding float…New York Fair, Yonkers, 10 August 1913. Courtesy of the Library of Congress)

Overhead view.  Pia Lindman: Soapbox Event, Reinventing Forms of Free Speech.  Federal Hall National Memorial, 26 Wall Street, New York City.  April 5, 2008.  Photo: Pia Lindman.  Courtesy: Pia Lindman.

Lindman received her MFA from Finland’s Academy of Fine arts, and received a second masters degree from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Over the years, Lindman has experimented with social and public space, challenging social, political and economic issues facing human beings globally. She has explored her interest in human masses, space and architecture through projects such as Three Cities, Rivers, Monuments (2002/2006) and Fascia (2006).

In her Soapbox Event, Lindman uses historical public spaces as venues for her art. She grants each participant a soapbox to stand on and sets her handy dandy timer for one minute. Participants can share just about anything in the time allotted; poetry, stories, monologues, movement sequences or articles. But there’s a catch: participants may form coalitions, stacking their soapboxes to create a higher podium. One minute is added to each coalition’s speaking time for each extra soapbox stacked. Now, this is a woman who understands the meaning of teamwork!

Side view.  Pia Lindman: Soapbox Event, Reinventing Forms of Free Speech.  Federal Hall National Memorial, 26 Wall Street, New York City.  April 5, 2008.  Photo: Pia Lindman.  Courtesy: Pia Lindman.

Lindman’s Soapbox Event is about more than getting your chat on. Lindman’s work forces participants to be conscious of one another, to share space, to communicate and listen. Her work is much more than a blab-fest: it challenges those involved to become more aware of their bodies in space, how bodies and voices relate to other bodies, how bodies and voices have the potential to affect the world.

The Soapbox Event is an ongoing project, taking place in public locations throughout New York City. The last event, held at the Federal Hall National Memorial in the Financial District reeled in 41 participants, a great success. Past Soapbox Events have taken place at Cooper Union, Yale School of Art and several other acclaimed venues.  To learn more about Pia Lindman’s upcoming events and her fascinating, thought provoking body of work visit the Soapbox Event Blog or check out Pia Lindman’s bio. Learn how to get involved and exercise your right to free speech.