Proposed Panel for the 2nd Annual Florida Women’s and

Gender Studies Consortium Conference, February, 2007

Submitted by Mary Jo Aagerstoun, Ph. D.

429 30th Street

West Palm Beach, FL 33407

mjaagerstoun@mathisnet.com

561-881-5658

PANEL ABSTRACT: Breaching Borders: Feminist Activism and Art in Florida and Beyond

This panel will provide opportunities to consider the history of activist attempts to establish a strong feminist approach to art, art history and criticism; and highlights examples of specific, Florida-based feminist art production and feminist art pedagogy the new Feminist Art Project Florida (TFAP-FL) seeks to highlight.

Paper 1: Trajectories: Feminist Art Activisms 1969-2006

By Mary Jo Aagerstoun, Ph. D.

Mary Jo Aagerstoun is an independent art historian based in West Palm Beach and specializing in contemporary activist art and cultural production. She is the co-editor of a special issue of the National Women’s Studies Association Journal on feminist activist art to appear in Spring, 2007; is developing a project on environmental activist art with a target for implementation in Florida in 2009; and is co-coordinator of the Feminist Art Project Florida.

Abstract:

This paper will consider The Feminist Art Project, begun in 2005, in the context of similar efforts over the past several decades, including those particular to Florida; and the current implications for Women’s Studies programs and curricula.

Proposal:

This proposed panel represents one of the first actions taken by The Feminist Art Project Florida, a new, statewide effort--part of a larger, national strategy--to bring attention to the

impact of feminism on art practice, art criticism and art history, and to encourage attention by institutions—museums, universities, commercial galleries and alternative spaces—to historical and current efforts to bring feminist perspectives to the study, exhibition and practice of art, and feminist art practices, history and criticism into the women’s studies arena. The Feminist Art Project was instigated in late 2005, to take advantage of the momentum created by the imminent appearance (in early 2007) of two very different large exhibitions of feminist art (WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution, at LA MoCA; and Global Feminisms at the Brooklyn Museum).

In this paper, I will provide the context for the three other panel papers, by outlining trajectories of the nexus between feminism and art, especially women’s art. Included in the paper will be a description of how the Feminist Art Movement first emerged in both the United States and Great Britain at about the same time, but with very different valences that would color the art practices that both established the Movement and departed from it.

Many of the problematics that emerged along with the growth of the Feminist Art Movement of the late 1960s through the early 1980s continue today to challenge attempts to bring special attention to the work of women artists, and to place it within a feminist analytical system. Included in my discussion of these issues and how they continue into the present, will be: the three main strategies of the earliest segments of the Feminist Art Movement to use art to celebrate and empower women and establish a “feminine aesthetic;” the countervailing influence of 1980s poststructuralism that called for a rejection of these “celebratory” approaches in art in favor of ones that helped to “unfix” the notion of “woman” as a category; and the power relations within feminisms—women of color vs. white women, lesbians vs. straight or bisexual women; and US-centered consideration of feminism and art vs. a more international approach.

Key works from artists in many locations internationally, will demonstrate the trajectory of these problematics from the late ‘60s to the present. Special attention will be given to examples of feminist art activism in Florida, and feminist imagery from Florida women artists and the implications of the current lack of attention to art in most Women’s Studies curricula.

Paper 2: Evoke/Invoke/Provoke: A Case Study of Judy Chicago’s Feminist Pedagogy

By Viki Thompson Wylder, Ph. D. and Keri Fredericks

Dr. Viki Thompson Wylder has served as a Museum Operations Specialist at the Florida State University Museum of Fine Arts since 1989. She curated the Judy Chicago retrospective titled Trials and Tributes in 1999, which focused on Chicago’s works on paper, and traveled to seven additional venues through February, 2002. The Trials and Tributes catalogue essay, in abbreviated form, became the principal essay for the 2002 catalogue (edited by Elizabeth Sackler) published in conjunction with the Judy Chicago survey hosted by the National Museum of Women in the Arts (October 9, 2002 - January 5, 2003). Other Thompson Wylder publications on Chicago include “A Conversation with Judy Chicago, 1997-1998," an interview published in Creating Women, an anthology (edited by Bryant and Elder) published in 2005 to be used in Women’s Studies classes.

Keri Fredericks, a PhD student at Florida State University, studies American and Latin American art history with an emphasis on visual culture between the wars. Interested in issues of class and gender, she has presented papers on women artists at Florida State University, the University of Oregon, and Case-Western University. Additionally, she has taught surveys of Western art and twentieth-century American art at FSU and Barry University.

Abstract:

This paper investigates the intersection of intention and reception in Judy Chicago’s project Evoke/Invoke/Provoke at Vanderbilt University, Spring, 2006. Our paper explores two key questions: how does this project operate within the context of Chicago’s feminist oeuvre and pedagogy, and how has involvement affected individual participants’ artistic production?

Proposal:

This paper analyzes the effects of Judy Chicago’s feminist teaching methods at the individual level. The pedagogical intentions of Chicago, as well as the involvement of art historian Vivien Green Fryd and two artist-participants in Chicago’s project, are explored through analysis of interview responses, situated within the socio-political and art historical context that includes a description of Chicago’s project and its participants, an explanation of the feminist teaching methods used, and the project’s place within Chicago’s series of university ventures dating to 1970 in California with the first Feminist Art Program.

Interviews with Chicago and Green Fryd focused on their roles/intentions as the experts (teachers) as well as the perceived reception of their expertise by the participants. Questions arose about Chicago’s inclusion of an art historian in the project. How did she and Green Fryd view the place of art history and theory in what appears to be a studio art class/project? How was Green Fryd’s input translated into the art produced?

Chicago’s sense of the efficacy of her feminist pedagogical methods will be a central issue. Chicago’s methods have been analyzed extensively by Karen Keifer-Boyd. Keifer-Boyd describes three steps in Chicago’s methods: preparation, process, and artmaking. Preparation includes a very personal “content search” by participants that must be translated through process and artmaking into a product viewed by an audience. Of special interest is Chicago’s means of balancing the personal during participants’ “content search” with the demands of distancing required to analyze and critique their formal art production.

Two participants of the project will offer their perspectives. How do they view the efficacy of Chicago’s and Green Fryd’s methods? How did they view individual pedagogical components such as “content search” or “group bonding or building?” How did they cope with the balance or tension inherent in a feminist pedagogical mode that values democracy as well as the experienced “voice of authority.” How did they view their own art production during the course of the project?

One of these participants is now a Florida resident. Her move can be seen as metaphoric for a link between the general diaspora of students/artists connected with Chicago and the spread of a deeper understanding of Chicago’s concepts and methods.

Findings from these interviews are summarized. How did the project impact Chicago and Green Fryd? Was there a reciprocal influence from the participants on their mode of pedagogy? Did participation affect any change in Green Fryd’s teaching philosophy? How did participation in this project affect the participants? Does the experience of these participants transfer to their later artmaking, their desire for more education, an expansion of their career or life goals, or a better comprehension of the steps necessary to become a professional artist as a woman in today’s culture? Will these participants go on to make a mark in their own communities? Responses are compared and contrasted and the question of the possibility of a general conclusion is considered.

Paper 3: Other-In/Other-Out: Ethnicity, Gender, and Otherness in the Work of Miami Artists GisMo and Susan Lee Chun

By Jillian Hernandez

Jillian Hernandez is currently a curatorial associate at the Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami where she has contributed to, or conducted research for, various of the museum’s catalogs (MoCA and Miami, 2005, Richard Artschwager: “Paintings” Then and Now, 2004, Roberto Juarez: A Sense of Place, 2003, American Short Stories: Saul Steinberg/Raymond Pettibon, 2003, Inka Essenhigh: Recent Paintings, 2004). She founded Women on the Rise! a project that is now being replicated nationwide. Women on the Rise! targets at-risk high school age women with a feminist, arts-based approach to encouraging self-confidence and positive behavior. Her essay, “Male-Identified "Shorties": Towards a Culturally Specific Understanding of African American Girls' Self Esteem” was recently published in the book, Growing Up Girl: An Anthology of Voices from Marginalized Spaces (Girlchild Press). She expects to enroll in a Women’s Studies PhD program in the Fall of 2007 where she will pursue the nexus between art, activism and feminism.

Abstract:

This paper will explore how the works of these artists can provide unique perspectives into race, ethnicity, and gender. The paper will also place these artists in the wider context of feminist art history.

Proposal:

Miami has been increasingly marketed as the “Gateway to the Americas,” its population compared to “melting pot” cities such as New York and Los Angeles. This may appear true to the outsider, but for those who live in Miami the city seems like a sprawling amalgamation of diverse, yet segregated, communities. Miami has yet to experience the influx of Eastern European and Asian immigrants that cities such as New York and Chicago have experienced, and its immigrants are overwhelmingly of Caribbean and Latin American descent. Miami's reputation as a multicultural city can sometimes conceal the alienation that newcomers from outside Latin America and the Caribbean feel when trying to find their place.

GisMo’s Majestuosas Princesas and Food Body series depict Cuban-American “princesses” in lavish settings. The female characters depicted are voluptuous and Rubenesque, but their grandeur is often undermined by an underlying roughness that contradicts traditional notions of Latina femininity and grace. In their manifesto, artists Crystal Molinary and Jessica Gispert (aka GisMo) state, “For we are fair maidens of Miami, the most valued virtues are greatness and grandness, both in the physical and material sense.” The artists describe themselves as obese and use their bodies to make feminist statements about power and self via ethnic pride. For GisMo foregrounding ethnicity has been the foundation of their practice. They flaunt their otherness through hyper-baroque depictions of Cuban-American girlhood.

GisMo’s in-your-face, gaudy style is a wide departure from Susan Lee Chun’s performance/installation works that consist of monochromatic environments in which the artist embeds herself to the point of near invisibility, offering a subtle commentary on the ambivalence of efforts to assimilate.

When Susan Lee Chun moved from Chicago to Miami her work took an unexpected direction, that of dealing with her Asian identity as subject. Chun has stated, “The installations’ primary function is to act as a stage or platform that I perform within, depicting the process of assimilation and the stark contrast between my ability and inability to conceal my identity.” In Chun’s Camouflage Series, (2005) the artist disguised herself using a plaid dress and blonde wig, which hold strong associations with whiteness. Although she attempts to hide her face, the viewer is able to continually thwart her disguise.

In Other-In/Other-Out I will argue that the work of these emerging, Miami-based artists can provide unique perspectives into race, gender, and ethnicity through divergent articulations of otherness in their work. The paper will examine how the female body is used to articulate otherness and the work of these artists will be discussed in the wider context of feminist art history. Diverse and nuanced viewpoints of race and gender are necessary in order to negotiate identity in an increasingly globalized society.

Paper 4: Body Language: An Investigation of Lost Freedoms

By Lamia Endara

Lamia Endara is an Egyptian born artist, educated in the United States, and is currently residing in Miami, Florida. Endara works in the medium of photography and video. Her most recent solo show entitled Seduction opened at Deluxe Arts Gallery, Miami in October 2006. She has participated in group exhibitions at the Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami, The Los Angeles Center for Digital Art, The Autonomous Art Gallery Show during Art Basel 2005, and most recently at the Deluxe Arts Gallery Art Basel on Edge 2006, and also at Edge Zones Art Fair, Art Basel 2006, where she curated a multi-media exhibition entitled Body Language.

Abstract:

This paper will explore my current photographic series, Body Language, in the context of discourses on censorship, codes of conduct, prescribed behavior for women, especially Muslim and Arab women, and ethnic profiling. Also addressed will be the work of Shirin Neshat, Ghada Amer, and Barbara de Genevieve in light of my ongoing research on a banned 11th century document in Arabic dealing with female sexuality.

Proposal:

A banned 11th or early 12th Century treatise entitled “Gawami al Lada” or “Encyclopedia of Pleasure,” is the inspiration for my recent series of photographic images, Body Language, that explore issues of female sexuality, codes of conduct, prescribed behavior for women, and a great loss of freedom for women in Muslim communities. This important, yet obscure document, written by an Egyptian Muslim man named Ali Ibn Nasr Al Katib, was never published in Arabic and is very rare. Only three partial documents remain; two are located in Turkey and one is said to be in Alexandria. “The Encyclopedia of Pleasure” was translated into English as part of a Ph. D.Thesis, edited and annotated by Salah Addin Khawwam in 1979. There is only one published copy of this thesis available in the United States and it is at the Library of Congress. A second copy is on reserve at the University of London, School of Oriental and African Studies.

In this presentation I will place my work, and the work of several other artists of Muslim background who work with the female body, in juxtaposition with the view of female sexuality presented in “Gawami al Lada.” Some of the images in my Body Language series show Arabic text inscribed on the body. In “Veiled”, the woman’s face is framed by her arms. Her forehead and mouth are hidden under text-covered arms, mimicking a veiling effect. Her dark eyes arrest the viewer in a strong gaze. The black text creates a soft pattern on the flesh. The Arabic text further grounds the woman within a cultural context and confronts preconceptions of, and question assumptions about, the “other”, “woman”, and “Muslim” about a person of another ethnicity, gender, religion, etc.

In “Hand Grenade” the woman’s toned and muscular arms muscles extend toward the camera ending in her interlaced fingers. The foreshortening effect makes her hands very large and central in the frame. The shape is similar to that of a grenade. This image encourages speculation on assumptions we make about people based on cultural identity and background. The play on words also raises the specter of ethnic profiling.

In, “Lost Identity”, the side and back profile of a woman is portrayed. We don’t see her face. The black Arabic text covers her hands and her arms but not the rest of her body. This disappearing text is symbolic of the effects of immigration, such as the merging of cultures as well conveying a loss of national identity.

I will specifically compare my Body Language series with selected works by Ghada Amer, Shirin Neshat, and Barbara de Genevieve that express the political potential of imagery that evokes pleasure, paradox, and ambivalence while infused with a strong sense of social-awareness and self-awareness with which the feminist movement first encouraged women to approach their lives and choices.