Collections: Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art

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Jen DeNike and PERFORMA are "happening" at First Saturday

Sarah Giovanniello on November 5, 2009

Academic Programs Coordinator Eleanor Whitney and artist Jen DeNike conduct a walkthrough of the Rubin Pavillion and Lobby in preparation for TWIRL.

For months, the city has been eagerly anticipating PERFORMA, the performance art biennial that is literally "happening" all over New York for the month of November. PERFORMA was founded in 2004, with the mission to support the presentation of performance by visual artists and the efficacy of "live art" within the visual arts. The discipline and practice of performance has been important to women artists since the 1960s and 70s, when the art form began to coalesce into a movement in such downtown art pantheons (though then they were just rough spaces and warehouses) as Judson Church, 112 Greene Street and PS1. Performance, like video, is arguably one of the first art forms to be pioneered equally by both men and women artists. Now performance art is generally considered a serious medium, not unlike painting or sculpture, although critics and historians continue to explore ways of defining, codifying and mapping its history and current importance. When PERFORMA organizers approached curators and educators at the Museum last year about hosting events in conjunction with this year’s consortium of arts organizations around the city–and the representation of Brooklyn venues is stronger than ever before –we jumped at the chance to participate!

This Saturday's program features original performances by Terence Koh, and Brooklyn based artist, Jen DeNike, whose meditative and dreamlike video, Happy Endings, 2006 is currently on view in the Center through January 10th, 2010 in Reflections on the Electric Mirror: New Feminist Video. Jen's performance on Saturday titled TWIRL, will include an award-winning fifty-piece student marching band from Weehawken, New Jersey, along with baton twirler, Erica Henschel, and a few other surprises. When we met with Jen last spring, all immediately hit it off, and were thrilled at the possibility of hosting her unique spectacle in the beautiful Rubin Pavillion and Lobby. Because Jen’s performance coincides with our monthly blow-out First Saturday, we know that hundreds of people will be milling about the area early Saturday evening. We also hear that local photographers are invited to shoot the bands on Saturday and post photos to the Brooklyn Museum's flickr group. You can shoot the performances too! Jen is enthusiastic about organizing a critical mass to capture many and varied perspectives, and crowd views of the performance as it unfolds.

Jen DeNike's performance TWIRL begins at 6PM on Saturday, in and around the Rubin Pavillion and Lobby.

Check out this recent interview with Jen about her art and performance on ArtOnAir.org!

TWIRL artist Jen DeNike visits the Weehawken Marching Band as they prepare for a Halloween parade led by Vice Principal Steven Spinosa.

 

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Picks (8/12-8/25)

Jessica Shaffer on August 12, 2009

Brainstormers, an NYC-based feminist collective, currently has a site-specific sound installation up at the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Community Center in Manhattan. The piece, titled "May I Please Have a Sip of Your Power?”, asks a repeating loop of questions in a computer-generated voice, including, “Do you think you could scoot over so that I can access some healthcare?” and “Would you please donate some of your control? It’s tax deductible.” This piece is part of Then and Now, a group show made up of almost 50 site-specific works commemorating the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall riots, and will be available for your listening pleasure until September 4th. (Promotional image, Courtesy of Brainstormers.)

Two exhibitions of note are closing this Friday, August 14th, at the ARC Gallery in Chicago. Mary Maughelli uses collage and mixed media in her work to reference historical representations of women as depicted in art of the past. In second exhibition, Margaret LeJeune & Sabba Saleem Syal, LeJeune shows her Modern Day Diana series, an examination of the world of female hunters, while Sabba Saleem Syal’s mixed media and fiber installation, A Contested Territory, draws from her personal/familial history, as well as the tumultuous political history of Pakistan. (Margaret LeJeune, Cindy, from The Modern Day Diana Series, 2008, 22x18 inches, Silver Gelatin photograph, archival inkjet print. Courtesy of ARC Gallery.)

Adriana López Sanfeliu: Life on the Block is open through this Saturday, August 15th at the Randall Scott Gallery in Brooklyn. In this, her first solo-exhibition in the U.S., the artist uses photography to document the life of Puerto Rican women who live on 103rd Street in Spanish Harlem. (Adriana Lopez Sanfeliu, Amy Getting Ready, From Life on the Block, 2009, Silver Gelatin Print,11x14 edition of 14. Courtesy of Randall Scott Gallery.)

The International Incheon Women Artists' Biennale, So Close Yet So Far Away is currently up at the Incheon Art Platform at the Incheon Korean-Chinese Cultural Center in Korea. This month long biennale showcases work from 101 international artists including Samira Abbassy and Judy Chicago, among others. Divided into three subsections titled “Personal Space”, “Fluid Interior”, and “Contested Space”, the exhibition explores the idea of space as perceived by contemporary women artists. The show closes August 31st, so if you are in the area, be sure to head on over! (Exhibition announcement image. Courtesy of the International Incheon Women Artists’ Biennale.)

Sight Unseen: Video from Afghanistan and Iran is made up of two video pieces—The Third One by Afghan artist Rahraw Omarzad and The White Station by Iranian artist Seifollah Samadian. Both artists use images of women dressed in chador-Ormazad to explore physical and metaphysical spaces of contestation, while Samadian’s women embody perseverance as they wait for a bus during a blizzard in Tehran in 1999. This show will be up at the Asia Society Museum in Manhattan until September 13th, don’t miss it! (Rahraw Omarzad (born 1964, Kabul, Afghanistan). The Third One, 2005. Single channel video, color, and sound. 11 minutes, 31 seconds. Courtesy of the Asia Society Museum)

This summer is proving a busy time for artist Kate Gilmore, whose video With Open Arms, 2005 is currently up at Ramis Barquet in Chelsea. The work is part of a larger exhibition curated by Nick Kilner titled East Coast Video, which includes the work of Caraballo-Farman, Jamie Diamond, Alex McQuilkin and Rashaad Newsome as well. This show is open until August 14th. (Kate Gilmore, With Open Arms, 2005. Courtesy of the artist.)

Jessica Dickinson’s Here just opened at James Fuentes LLC. Based in Gowanus, Brooklyn, Dickinson explores the exchange between perception and psychology in her paintings, which are filled with portals, thresholds and border spaces. This show will be up until September 20th. (Jessica Dickinson studio, Gowanus, Brooklyn 2009. Courtesy of James Fuentes LLC.)

GODDESS, a group show including artists Hunter Clarke, Ilene Godofsky, Michelle Orsi Gordon, Matt Harvill, Erin Lee Jones, Georgina Keenan, Raghava KK, Nia Mora, Jennifer Murray and Sara Woolley, is now open at Under Minerva Gallery in Brooklyn. Doubling as benefit for The Hazel K. Goddess Fund for Stroke Research in Women in honor of the late Brenda Navas, this exhibition attempts to reflect on the wisdom and guidance of the divine feminine. GODDESS closes this Friday, August 14th. (Exhibition announcement image. Courtesy of Under Minerva Gallery.)

I would like to bid a fond farewell to all of you who’ve read the “Picks” over the past year or so. Today is my last day interning here at the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, as I will be moving on to grad school and other things. I know, I know, it’s devastating, but don’t worry-the “Picks” will continue on for all you loyal readers out there looking for some good feminist art!

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The Fertile Goddess: Endings and Beginnings, Part III: Creation

Madeleine Cody on July 30, 2009

An installation view of The Fertile Goddess intro panel and title taken for archival purposes by our ECAMEA Curatorial Assistant, Kathy Zurek-Doule.

All this time, I had been researching each figurine type intensively in order to understand their original appearance, method of manufacture, and to find out what scholars thought their functions might be. This involved locating information about the provenance and archaeological context of scientifically excavated examples of each figurine type. All this is necessary to write didactic panels and labels that will answer viewers’ questions when they are confronted with the object in the gallery. Piles of books and articles, pages of notes, and countless hours are required to achieve a level of knowledge about the object that can then be reduced to less than a hundred words in the case of an individual label. What a visitor reads there is the product of months of collaboration and review by curators, editors, and our Interpretive Materials Manager, intended to make sure that the content is comprehensible, informative and useful.

What the polished and installed "chat" label for one of our figurines looks like up close.

By this time, we had also agreed upon our vision for the show: we wanted just a few stunning objects displayed in a jewel-box setting and, most importantly, in the round, so that the viewer could see them from every angle. This was crucial because museums so frequently display such ancient female figurines in groups, often literally with their backs against the case wall, and in conjunction with other objects from the cultures that made them. We wanted to make them the focus for a change; we also hoped to highlight the similarities and differences between types over time and geography by displaying them together, something that is seldom done.

The beautiful casework mock up for The Fertile Goddess with our Halaf figure superimposed inside. Designed by Matthew Yokobosky, the Museum's Chief Exhibitions Designer.

A major step in any exhibition is a so-called “mock-up;” a meeting between curators and designers in storage with the actual objects, when the layout of the cases and the placement of each object is determined. Based on decisions made there, special exhibition mounts are then made for each object and designs from which cases will be made are drawn up. Our Chief Exhibition Designer, Matthew Yokobosky, realized and even improved upon our vision beautifully. We were blown away by the cases he designed for the figurines; he surmounted the challenges of showcasing such small works at approximately eye level and including our label information, without letting either casework or text overwhelm them, with incomparable ingenuity. Matthew and Tomoko Nakano, Assistant Graphics Designer, also did an incredible job designing the graphics for the gallery, particularly the map, which posed its own set of challenges.

During the exhibition mock up, Matthew, photographed here with Barbara Duke, Art Handler, holding the Halaf figure, arrived at the "jewel-box" setting that we envisioned for what would become the sketch above.

Finally, during installation, our expert and very patient Art Handlers brought the objects to the gallery and placed them in their mounts within the cases, making endless adjustments at the request of curators, designer, and conservators to ensure their safety and make sure they looked their best. All around them, the final products of the hard work of so many on the Museum staff, wall panel didactics, labels and graphics like our map, were going up; until, at the very end, Matthew supervised the lighting for each object within each case in order to bring them all fully to life.

The finished product in the gallery. Check out more photographs of the installation here.

Maura and I originally wanted to have thirteen objects in the exhibition, but ended up with only twelve perfect pieces. I soon realized happily, however, that we would in fact have thirteen present in the gallery, as the thirteenth would be you, the visitor, who is, after all, the reason for every exhibition we present.

Interested in seeing more "goddesses" in the Collection? Browse the Museum's ever growing Collection databank or just click here.

Want to learn more about the Ancient Egyptian "goddesses" in the Collection?  Check out this group.

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