Power Surge

I grew up in a home where issues of gender roles were pretty much non-starters. My mother and father started a small business jointly in the mid 1980’s, and while it was the South, their names were on the business license, as well as the loans together. My mother, for the most part made dinner for us out of desire rather than obligational necessity, and that’s not to say my dad doesn’t bake an insane rum cake that oozes sweet flavor.

Perhaps they would not have achieved this balance without their involvement in the youthful political movements of the 1960’s, or without consciousness of feminist theory and practice beginning its uphill battle. That battle obviously still has not been won, or even called an equal ground truce, but a question has been nagging me recently; why is 2007 the year of Feminism’s reappraisal by the world of art?

This started to hit me when Melanie Manchot, an internationally exhibited artist, but not self-identified feminist artist presented her past work to our guest lecture class. She was in New York to install a solo show, was missing an opening of a group museum exhibition in Europe, and had three more exhibitions to prepare for in the next few months. Her feeling on the topic was that she was thrown into the pot of resurgent feminist interest where as her work more, …”uses photography and video as a means to investigate notions of intimacy and gesture as a currency of exchange. Most of the recent work looks at specific,often intimate gestures, such as the kiss and attempts to question how such a gesture becomes a metaphor for relating desires, fantasies, needs.In this respect, some of the work attempts to sit at the borderline between reality and fantasy…” such as in her 2007 four channel video work where she collaborated with four Berlin rock bands to record an original song on their perception of what the future will hold. (video of one of the groups resulting song)

So if this is the case, and so it seems historically with female artists such as Marina Abramović who vigorously play down their artistic interest in feminism, then is the lensing effect of the art world focusing a true need to evaluate the needs of contemporary women, or is the organizing of such a significant number of exhibitions surrounding the issue a market driven sales tactic to some extent?

According to Fall 2006 New York Auction results, there is certainly still an incredibly long way to go in relation to valuing the art work of women in a comparable manner to males, with Agnes Martin being the only woman in the top twenty highest grossing artists (check it) We’ve got problems indeed

Feminist exhibitions/programs happening in 2007 (certainly an incomplete list) :

• WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution
• Brooklyn Museum: Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art
• (Tender) Assembly
• A Tribute to the Women of Juarez
• Aqui No Hay Virgenes: Queer Latina Visibility
• Global Feminisms
• Identity Theft: Eleanor Antin, Lynn Hershman, and Suzy Lake, 1972–1978
• Mary Heilmann: To Be Someone
• Multiple Vantage Points: Southern California Women Artists, 1980–2006
• Normalization at Outpost for Contemporary Art
• Shared Women at LACE
• The Moral Museum: Selections from the Bick Archive
• The Performing Archive: Restricted Access
• The Sculptures of Ruth Asawa: Contours in the Air
• Where Did Our Love Go? film series at REDCAT
• Women of Vision: 18 Histories in Feminist Film & Video
• [From Site to Vision] the Women’s Building in Contemporary Culture
• The Feminist Art Project
• FEM·IN·ART at UCLA
• Faith Wilding/subRosa
• Exquisite Acts & Everyday Rebellions
• Echoes: Women Inspired by Nature
• California Institute of the Arts