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March 27, 2009
Feminism As Young As It's Youngest Enthusiast
In the catalog essay She Will Always Be Younger Than Us Allyson Mitchell writes: "While feminism may be as old as the suffragists, it is also as young as it's newest enthusiast." While I hold this to be true, it reminds me of the challenge educators face in getting across the context of the Feminist Art Movement-- its dawn and its enduring influence. Every semester I am surprised by some of my college students’ adamancy of its irrelevance. For those of us who were not there, we need a context for these earlier moments. This is only one of the reasons I am eagerly awaiting Lynn Hershman Leeson's film Women Art Revolution and am re-reading The Power of Feminist Art.
I have often related to the video work of Oriana Fox (born 1978) whose videos (especially from 2003-04) touch on the feminist art trajectory as a skeptical response to a semester load of feminist classics. In this effort to understand its place in our current time, the catalog for Judy Chicago in Thread is a worthy addition, especially for fiber enthusiasts. We know feminisms cannot be learned without the identity politics of the Third Wave. But what came before it arrived?
The exhibition When Women Rule The World is at the Textile Museum of Canada (February 11 - September 7, 2009) in Toronto and the Art Gallery of Calgary (September 25, 2009 – Saturday, January 23, 2010).
Concurrent with Judy Chicago in Thread is the exhibit She Will Always Be Younger Than Us, which includes the Nike Blanket Petition (2003-2008) and my video Knitoscope Testimonies (2006) along with artists (in order of appearance below left to right) Ginger Brooks Takahashi, (Judy Chicago), Wednesday Lupypciw, Gillian Strong, Allyson Mitchell, me at the opening in February. Orly Cogan not pictured.
Posted by cat at 07:56 PM