WACK! |
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WACK!
BY: Ding Ren |
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The shrill sound of a baby crying pierced my senses as I entered the WACK! exhibition at the National Museum of Women in the Arts. At first, I thought it was a sound piece, strategically placed to serve as a backdrop for works such as Susan Miller's 10 Months, where she documents the size of her growing belly with abstract photos - making it look as if her belly is a nondescript mound of flesh. Then, rounding the corner, I noticed a mom pushing a baby stroller, leaning forward in an attempt to comfort her crying child. Suddenly, it all became too obvious. I felt too "young" for this exhibit. Too young to experience pieces in the exhibition for their genuine, raw message. Because, as with the real LIVE baby crying, I immediately derived pre-conceived stereotypes on what to expect. Of course there would be a sound piece of a baby crying next to pictures of a pregnant woman, right? The true feminist sprit of the 1970s has been lost to the complicity of youth culture: muddled away by an age of teenage girls taking innocently seductive photographs of themselves in front of their bathroom mirrors, to be posted on their blog, Myspace, and Facebook profiles. I'm guessing the majority of these girls do not know of Adrian Piper's Concrete Infinity Documentation Piece from 1970 (which is in the exhibit), where the artist photographs herself in front of her mirror every morning while recording every detail of her day with no embellishments. After all, wasn't Piper, who was still in college, serving as the genuine precursor to what many young girls are doing today? --except there was no Internet culture in the 1970s. There must be a direct linear progression from Piper to the likes of Corey Kennedy, the outspoken 18-year old who became a model and Internet celebrity through her blog without her parent's knowledge.
With all lamentations aside, WACK! is a highly comprehensive and straightforward overview of feminist art spanning the United States and Europe. Originally organized by Cornelia Butler for the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, WACK! will travel to P.S.1 MOMA later this year after leaving the National Museum of Women in the Arts. WACK! is the largest exhibit the NMWA has hosted in the past 25 years, and arguably features the most controversial subject matter the museum has ever hosted. It is kind of a strange dynamic to walk up two flights of pristine marble steps, pass by the NMWA café serving daintily dressed grandmas having their afternoon tea, to be greeted by images of naked women with bondage contraptions, posing with dildos, plastering chewing gum-shaped vaginas on their bodies. One immediately wonders if the NMWA is the right match for the more radically reactionary feminist pieces, considering the fact that the counterpart exhibit currently on view is "American Indian Pottery from the Collection."
The exhibition is loosely organized around themes, such as Silence and Noise/Speaking in Public, Auto-Photo, Feminine Sensibility, Goddess and the Body, Art History, Abstraction, and Collage and Assemblage. The two floors are filled with installations, videos, photographs, paintings, documentary bits and pieces, and pretty much every medium in between. The "everything in between" would be fit to describe the actual scroll that Carolee Schneeman pulls out of her vagina in 1975 for her Interior Scroll piece. This infamous scroll is visibly worn and stained, encased in a clear Plexiglas container mounted on the wall at eye level, it provides a visceral viewing experience.
Contrasting with the more philosophical craft-based pieces are socially driven performances, placing feminist artwork in a public political context. Photographs of Mierle Landerman Ulceles' public performance, Washing/Tracks/Maintenance: Outside piece originally performed on July 22, 1973, take social critique out into the world. By cleaning the steps of a Connecticut museum with used diapers, Ulceles not only replaces the work of the museum's blue-collar workers, she also makes a direct comment on domestic gender roles. She was able to use a simple task to create politically driven commentary on the social constructs of work ethic. Documented through typed and written personal reflections, Lee Lozano's "total personal and public revolution" piece from 1971 chronicles her life-altering decision to stop making art and interacting with women. To this day, she continues to abstain from interacting with women. Influenced by Conceptual Art of the mid 60s and its politically orientated critique on the commodification of art after the Pop Art explosion, the piece was originally conceived as a means to launch her career further by emphasizing how men made all the decisions in the art world. Lozano's simple rule that she has stuck with for life is not only a socially constructed test of endurance, it also taps into pre-conceived political dynamics of power. Another piece by Monica Mayer publicizes oral history and culture. She passed out 800 slips of paper to women in Mexico City and asked them to write down what they disliked about living in the area. To display the comments, she hung them on clothesline so that the women of Mexico City could interact indirectly with their neighbors. A simple community survey like Mayer's brings together the voices of multiple women to emphasize the power of a collective voice.
All in all, WACK! provides a historically driven overview of artwork from the 70s feminist movement. The abundance of video and photographs reveal that the feminist revolution was thoroughly documented. Perhaps over-documentation is not the correct direction for an exhibition that holds such potential for extreme political punch however. Messages are lost within the hours of video and multiple images displaying the same piece. The viewer has to do a lot of work to find pieces that resonate with unfettered energy.
As I was about to leave, a group of 20 teenage girls speedily roamed through the exhibit. By an elevator, I observed a group of them watching the Ana Mendieta video Untitled (Body Tracks), where she dips her arms in blood and propels her body against a wall to smear it. Amidst the "EWWW" and "GROSS" remarks coming from the girls, they were captivated, staring at the large screen playing the video. It is probably safe to assume that the shock value of blood and gore is one of the few things that still has the ability to hold the attention of a youth that is bombarded with images, ideas and information.
But what does this mean for the overall feminist message that was so genuine and empowering in the 70s that existed beyond the initial shock value of blood, vagina paintings, and bodily fluids? Has it been suppressed to mere nostalgia for today's youth - not being able to say they were personally there to experience the revolution in the 70s and thus only being able to rely on historical dates and facts to contextualize the movement? For someone who is stuck between, too old to be only impressed by blood and gore, and too young to have genuinely experienced a raw-emotionally driven social movement, I would have to say YES to the above. Yes, the genuine idea of protest culture, feminist revolution and empowerment is sadly gone, replaced by apathy and a move towards internal reflection. Thus, it is not enough to rely on history and over-documentation alone to present an exhibition on feminism, especially if it is meant to reclaim the notion of feminism in the context of contemporary culture. Publishing the WACK! catalog with Martha Rosler's Body Beautiful, Beautry Knows No Paint: Hot House, or Harem, 1966-77, on the cover is the most immediate example of this problematic presentation. The original intent of the piece, a collage of nude women clipped from advertisements and Playboy magazine, was a means to protest that the only way women seemed to be placed in the media was as sexualized objects. Placed in a contemporary context and used to advertise the WACK! catalog, the notion of "The Other" seems to be perpetuated once again to highlight the gaze of men and women alike viewing the WACK! exhibit. Is Rosler's collage used because the editors know that sex has always and will always sell or are they using the piece in an ironic sense, pointing out the fact that history in a sense stayed the same, since ads today still portray women as sexualized objects? Furthermore, are the editors assuming all viewers will be educated enough to look past the initial "sex sells" reaction to see Rosler's piece for the progressive message it conveyed in the 70s? These are all issues that extend beyond the cover of the WACK! catalog and into the entire context of the exhibition. Perhaps the best solution is to draw connections between the past and present. If the Adrian Piper piece were interactive, displayed next to a computer where visitors could print out pages from their personal blogs to be put on display, a younger generation might begin to see how history keeps repeating itself and how there could be another shift from apathy to action. And that message alone, if anything else, should be pervasively obvious in an exhibition like WACK!.
Ding Ren is currently an MFA student at George Washington University. She creates interventions in environments with construction paper cut-outs and is working on a replacement performance project.
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