CHICAGO — What does it mean, bodily, physically, emotionally, mentally, and perhaps spiritually, to be what Simone de Beauvoir deemed “the second sex,” to be a woman and, moreover, to be a mother? These are questions that Chelsea Knight explores in her latest video work “The Breath We Took” (2013), now on view at Aspect Ratio.
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This past weekend I joined the audience for the day of panel discussions at the Brooklyn Museum organized by The Feminist Art Project as part of the annual College Art Association Conference. I was only able to stay for the first three and a half panels, in a day that included five. But in those three and a half panels, a clear through-line started to emerge, at least from my perspective. That through-line involved the idea of creating collective histories, of asserting a history that complicates singular narratives, and that makes it clear that whole communities of differing experience and perspective participate in the making and supporting of the arts.
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World of Warcraft (WoW) has a massive following: in 2011, some 10 million users participated in the online role-playing game. And according to a New York Times article from last year, women comprise an increasing numbers of those players and of online gamers in general: they are, apparently, one the industry’s fastest growing demographics.
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I’ve had countless people express strong feelings against modern and contemporary art, as if “art” were a dirty word. (As a more high-profile example, filmmaker Werner Herzog’s declaration of despising art comes to mind.) But equally as problematic is the art world’s mocking response to the naysayers: The unease of many people is met with “That’s because you just don’t get it.”
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The first survey of Chinese installation artist Lin Tianmiao at Asia Society, called Bound Unbound, could not have a more fitting title. The artist’s sartorial sculptures, grotesque bodies, and fibrous compositions illustrate an artist bound by cultural convention creating art unbound in technique and concept.
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LOS ANGELES — Most artist retrospectives occur decades after an artist’s career really takes off, once their name has been recognized in the annals of art world lore. But long time collaborators Chan and Mann — Audrey Chan and Elana Mann, respectively — have organized their own retrospective to recognize their “seven year itch” of collaboration and “historicize now.”
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Cindy Sherman’s one-woman retrospective is profound, provocative and sadly incomplete, most noticeably in relation to her earliest works despite the inclusion of the entire black and white “Untitled Film Stills” (1977-1980), the “encyclopedic roster of stereotypical female roles” that skewered the post modern discourse on photography right through its kabobs.
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Has she no decency? At long last, has she no decency? The transgressive, titillating performance artist Karen Finley was denied a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1990 because the language and content in her work was deemed “indecent.” Along with three other artists she became part of the infamous Supreme Court case The National Endowment for the Arts v. Karen Finley, which culminated in the discontinuation of individual artist grants. In her interview with Hyperallergic, Finley reflects on the past of New York City, the state of women in the arts, Lady Gaga and more.
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This week I skipped the Chelsea gallery scene (the show I wanted to see was unexpectedly on hiatus when I got there) and found myself on a road less traveled for me and I am sure other art-goers as well. The destination was the Henry Street Settlement Abrons Art Center on Grand Street between Pitt and Columbia Streets. As I walked the several blocks from the F train Delancey stop (several more than I expected), it seemed that the dust of the previous tenement neighborhood still settled on these streets. Not only did it remind me that, as much as New York reinvents itself, the past is never far behind, but it was also a refreshing art viewing experience that I probably would not have found in the white boxes of Chelsea.
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Out of the 55 artists represented at the 2010 Whitney Biennial, 26 were women. While that’s still less than half, it’s certainly better than the days when only one or two members of the “fairer” sex fought to be included. Lynn Hershman Leeson’s new documentary !Women Art Revolution, now playing at IFC Center, compiles interviews spanning 40 years that document the tumultuous battle women artists fought for proper representation in the world of galleries and museums.
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