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Püss Füst recently opened at Open Space . For being such a young gallery, Open Space is producing strong shows. Although the website needs some work, I love the picture on the home page: the empty gallery room, a blank canvas where, so far, a lot of great stuff has happened. Molly O’Connell, Sarah Milinski and Maire O’Neill brought fifty-some female artists together to throw this gigantic event. The show, which runs through January 31st, includes drawing, painting, sculpture, weaving and quilting, but opening night added interactive installations, video projections and live performances.
It would be impossible to detail all that went on Saturday night, so I will content myself to speak about one piece in particular. Hannah Brancato, Kendra Hebel and Sarah Tooley’s “Get it off your chest, pluck it from her breast!” is representative of the serious energy put into Püss Füst. Not only is it a materially impressive piece, but it works to open dialog about the institution of art as well as the institution of medicine. I don’t believe all good art has to directly grapple with political issues, but that kind of work inspires me to believe in the political power of art actions.
Brancato, Hebel and Tooley’s performance/installation is not the quick read that engages every passerby, but I was really happy I invested time in the work. The installation’s facade replicates the tawdry allure of a circus freak-show booth. Brancato and Hebel, dressed in spandex catsuits embellished with braided locks of artificial hair, guard the entrance (thinking back now, I’d call the booth a sort of hairy tabernacle). They greet visitors and schedule appointments with the woman inside. Once my turn came, I parted the long hairs at the entrance to meet Doctor Sarah. She holds a clip board and wears a white lab coat. I take a seat as I look around at the hairy walls, the examination table and a tray of implements: two pairs of tweezers, some rubbing alcohol, and a box of blue nitrile gloves.
Doctor Sarah explains that she will share a story about ‘body shame’. Afterward, if I feel comfortable, I can share a story about my own body with her. Dr. Sarah’s show-and-tell concerned her unruly body hair and the resulting shame and anxiety that she experienced as an adolescent. I don’t want to ruin the surprise for you, because they plan to perform this work again. I will simply say that in the privacy of that hairy office, barriers were broken and trust was built so that I returned the favor with a story about my own body and some gross stuff it’s done in the past. I was amazed at the efficacy of the work and shocked to hear myself confessing my ailments to Dr. Sarah. In fact I almost renegged until I remembered that I learn a lot more when I forget about being cool and open myself to the experience. ‘Get it off your chest, pluck it from her breast!’ demonstrates the power performance work has to bring the artist and the viewer into authentic dialog.
This work serves to highlight the confessional quality of the doctor’s office. Maybe you pass every physical with flying colors, but maybe, like me, you’ve had quasi-religious experiences at the doctor’s or in the hospital, where you, as the patient, become the penitent and the doctor becomes the priest. You confess the ways in which you have transgressed against the edicts of healthy living (unsafe sex, drinking, smoking, drugging, failing to exercise). Then the doctor administers tests whose results will either condemn or absolve you. I do not mean to argue with medical science, but at this time, as politicians debate health care reform, I am espeically conscious of the plight of the individual in the face of the larger medical institution and the inequality of that relationship. The medical complex holds the knowledge and the money, i.e. it holds the power. The average citizen acquiesces to this inequality since it provides peace of mind in the form of a clean bill of health, but there are citizens with pre-existing cronic conditions, for example, or as of yet poorly understood psychiatric conditions, or even disorders that are dubiously termed as such (I am thinking of Gender Identity Disorder)– for these citizens the bondage to the medical complex is not so comfortable.
To go further, there is an unavoidable analogy here to the institution of the museum, which, similar to the medical institution, operates from a privlgedged position of knowledge and wealth, in this case to dictate standards of beauty and value. I am not the first one to compare the museum to a temple, the paintings to idols, the biographies of the artists to myths. Of course this does not seem as pressing an issue as the medical discussion, but I think the comparisson is unavoidable.
Püss Füst
Open Space Gallery
2720 Sisson Street
Baltimore, MD 21211
January 16th through January 31st
Closing reception Saturday, January 30th
openspacebaltimore@gmail.com
Tags: Doctor Sarah, Hannah Brancato, Kendra Hebel, Maire O'Neill, Molly O'Connell, Open Space, Püss Füst, Sarah Milinski, Sarah Tooley
Filed Under: Feature Sights
Usually I don’t write-up on blogs, but I wish to say that this write-up forced me to try and do so! Thanks, very nice article.
April 12, 2011 6:48 pm