Today was the grand, official opening of The Sackler Center for Feminist Art at Brooklyn Museum. The inaugural exhibition was “Global Feminisms,” a group of work from artists in early to mid-career. You heard that right. All the artists were born after 1960. To my knowledge, this is one of the first exhibitions of its kind. And if you don’t think young women are down for some hardcore feminism, shuttle yourself pronto to Sackler.
I’m still digesting the art I saw. On Thursday I spent the better part of three hours looking at everything and still don’t feel like I have a total grasp of the show. A lot of the pieces were challenging, disarming, and intense. I felt fully emotionally engaged, especially mid-way through the exhibition when a video of “Binding Routine” (Mary Coble) where a butch woman binds and unbinds with duct tape precedes a video of a woman hula-hooping with barbed wire. A lot of it was just so fully frightening. It made me think a lot about the collective experience of fear among women.
The NYT review of the show was (of course) ridiculous and flagrantly condescending. The title of the review is They Are Artists Who are Women, Hear them Roar, if that gives you any sense of the author’s standpoint. She basically argues that feminist consciousness has no intrinsic aesthetic value. You also get the feeling that she thinks the whole thing is cliche and almost petty.
But I know I was deeply engaged in the show. I’m no art critic, but I’ve seen a lot of the stuff. And frankly, a lot of it, especially modern art, is soulless and uninteresting. Possibly because I can’t relate to it, possibly because it’s all made by men. Seriously. In 2005 the new MoMA installation only included 5% women artists in its fourth and fifth-floor installations of the painting and sculpture collection. And in the same year (*2 years ago!*), only 18% of artists are women in the Chelsea Art District summer group shows.
The best pieces in Global Feminisms will make you think – they will collaborate with your own embodied experience and inspire you. And the worst pieces will irk and bore you. But at the end of the day, the institutional and ideological context makes the work cutting-edge rather than fringe. Validity, backing, and community is still something women (artists) need to survive. Even the times agreed: “The word feminism will be around as long as it is necessary for women to put a name on the sense of assertiveness, confidence and equality that, unnamed, has always been granted men.”
But I prefer the words of Wangechi Mutu, one of the contributing artists,
I think a Revolution dies when somehow it is deemed to have completed its own work. Feminism in all its various iterations has permeated only certain very priviledged classes and sections of womens lives worldwide and only succeeds when it transcends, mutates, empowers every section of our personal, social, economical, and political lives.
On a side note, don’t try to bring a baby to the feminist art show because I learned first hand that fucking strollers aren’t allowed. Can you believe that shit??!
3 Comments
March 26, 2007 at 8:09 am
1) strollers aren’t allowed!? in the whole museum? or just in the Sackler center? Wouldn’t thatbe ironic?
2) despite the stroller snafu, the show sounds amazing. I can’t wait to see it. Thanks for giving a real (aka not Times-ified) perspective).
March 26, 2007 at 10:00 pm
[...] von Hausswolff, a Swiss artist included in Global Feminisms, contributed three photos from her series, “Back to Nature.” They are meticulously [...]
April 25, 2007 at 2:58 pm
[...] weekend I finally saw the new Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum, and what struck me about their Global Feminisms exhibit is how violence is [...]