MESSAGE FROM THE CURATORS CTD.
To follow up on Susan’s illuminating discussion of how issues of the natural world are being explored by many of you I’d like to center on how issues of identity and stereotypes are being engaged on losingyourself.com.
Proliferating Selves
Susan Lee Chun and Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum complicate the notion of a stable, singular “self” in their work by creating alter egos. Susan Lee Chun’s “When Sue Met Sioux” is a narrative consisting of two characters the artist situates in absurd and surreal environments. The installation project consists of sculptures of headless young women in plaid school uniforms. The uniform has figured persistently in Chun’s work as a vehicle for exploring issues of assimilation and the “standardization” of subjectivity.
Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum explores hybrid and transnational identities in “A Short History: Starring Asme as Herself.” The video features three incarnations of an alter ego named Asme who communicate by blowing and inhaling an ethereal cloud of air through their mouths. Asme has a dynamic relationship with the lush landscape. Her travels through the land affect her subjectivity and result in the spawning of multiple selves. Hybrid identities are also a focus of Donna Huanca’s work that is informed by the personal mythologies and spiritual practices of her Korean and Bolivian background.
Girlhood & Domesticity
The traditional femininity embodied in the “pretty” pink dresses that often appear in the work of Alison Ward sharply contrast with the aggression and hyper-consumption that occur in her performances such as “The Birthday Girl” and “Boxing for Mr. Wonderful.” Katie Hovencamp’s installation work also destabilizes the representations of femininity found in fairy tales that continue to inform how gender is performed by girls today (e.g. the popular Disney Princess products and media).
A 1973 Barbie townhouse is the backdrop of Jenifer K Wofford’s “Townhouse Trilogy” that explores how interior spaces and daily routines structure female subjectivity. The characters in Wofford’s video perform against the backdrop of the dollhouse and are engaged in absurd and compulsive rituals such as spell checking and walking around clutching cups of coffee.
Domestic settings also appear in Yoon Cho’s “Nuclear Family Series.” A response to the pressures on the artist and her husband to have a child after moving to the suburbs, the work consists of a holiday greeting card sent to friends that depicts the couple conducting household chores. The images are superimposed with silhouettes of babies and toys. “Nuclear Family Series” stages the construction of a normative family “unit,” which entails the consolidation of male and female subjectivities in addition to that of the gender-less, yellow-hued infant.
Handcrafted domestic objects are sold for professional advancement in Vadis Turner’s “Dowry” project. Turner abandons the customary function of the dowry as a commodity that facilitates marriage and utilizes it instead as a vehicle for personal profit. The Mail Order Bride performers turn a profit by making a spectacle out of wedding ceremonies. M.O.B. engages with stereotypes of Filipina women as sexual and domestic laborers by advertising their services as bridesmaids-for-hire who can weep on call during the nuptials and provide emotional support for the bride-to-be.
Gender-in-Text
Constructions of gender are primarily advanced through representations of the body in visual culture. We have discussed how artists like Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum and Alison Ward trouble notions of subjectivity and gender through their representations of embodied women. In the work of Renetta Sitoy and Nora Herting, however, text is the vehicle through which issues of identity are engaged.
Nora Herting embroiders women’s underwear with statements revealing moments of self-doubt and insecurity such as “I have an unfortunate face.” Renetta Sitoy’s video “The Truth About Boys and Girls” consists of computer-generated text appearing on a dark screen. The truisms about gender that are listed, such as “Girls like to be chased after” and “Boys like to read good things” are vocalized electronically. The artist culled the phrases from a Google search in which she typed “girls like to” and “boys like to” into the field. The results reveal how the identities of women are persistently constructed through notions of physical attractiveness and providing sexual pleasure for men whereas men are framed as being interested in reading and other “productive” activities.
–Jillian
Jillian,
Your comment about how we complicate the notion of the stable and singular “self” brought to mind how in my previous works the formation of the alter egos Sue and Sioux, dueling personas, are truly symptomatic of the formation of self/identity based on perception of self and others. However symptomatic, what became vital for me was to recognize my evoking and continuing of their (Sue & Sioux) dueling nature would simply go round and round. In order to stop this pounding of the same or over familiar beat of identity politics that I felt the work was situated, the idea of finding a new ground or space of contemplation as The Suz collective became very important. More so, I feel that creating this new identity loosens or releases the ties to the past and serves as a vehicle to navigate the new possibilities in the undefined.
Another aspect of my work that’s been a part of the discussion and transformation of Sue, Su, and Sioux into a faux real collective (The Suz) and the production of experience-based projects, specifically pertains to the idea of performance and the distinction of the artist as performer and audience as viewer. If the idea is for the viewer to actually partake in a dialogue about their immediate surroundings and the related issues, they need an “in”. In my search for how to present an “entrance” into the work I recognized the difficulty that revealed itself on numerous occasions in my previous performance works- where the lines and boundaries are clearly drawn, on one side stands the artist and his/her ideas and on the opposite side the audience/viewer watching, awaiting, or even evading interaction or connection with the other side. How does one contest these lines and blur the boundaries to make it possible for an interactive dialogue or exchange? The Suz brand acts as an ideal guise to diminish the obvious presence of the artist and instigator. In addition, I found that by having The Suz fabricate an experience that involved the construction of a familiar space or construct that is illusive to the eye of the viewer can be an interesting way to build an entrance into the work and possibly set the stage for critical dialogue or exchange.
Susan,
I appreciate how you describe navigating the “possibilities of the undefined” in attempting to move beyond the framework of identity politics. It reminds me of a provocative discussion I had on this site with Yoon Cho. Identity politics is a contentious issue in feminism too. On the one hand we want to move away from and complicate notions of “male” and “female”, but when there is real material oppression, don’t we rely on these categories to mobilize change? The same goes with race, ethnicity, and sexuality. As artists/scholars who to various extents personally identify with categories, how do we want these to be read in visual/performative production?
Yoon actively worked to hide her face to avoid being read as “Asian” in Nuclear Family Series, but since she had images of a yellow baby in the work I automatically assumed she was engaging in racial identity politics.
I think that art has the potential to challenge categories in a significant way because it is essentially visual. It is through visuality that categories of race, gender, and sexuality were established. The notion that “looking” at someone’s body, the color of their skin, their facial features, would indicate something essential and “true” about them.
I think the direction you are taking, of working to create a more active bond with the viewers of your performances, may provide some insights on how to explore a subjectivity, or in the case of your “faux real” collective, subjectivities, that are “undefined.” How would you describe the engagement of viewers with the Suz? Is it moving the in the direction you’re hoping for?
All the best,
Jill
Jillian,
Aside from featuring text as a vehicle in our work, Renetta Sitoy’s the “truth about girls and boys” and my “I make art to avoid making decisions” are interesting as counterpoints. Renetta’s text is generated by typing into a Google search. The voice of this text is by aggregate, and therefore impersonal, almost totalitarian. Interestingly, the voice in Renetta’s text becomes a universal, omniscient virtual voice.
In comparision, my text is diaristic. As opposed to offering axioms, mine reveals doubts.
The primary function of language is to refer to its signified, however text still remains a visual symbol and also a referent of the physical process of writing. Both Renetta and myself are sensitive to this, and have made decisions about the physicality of the text to echo its meaning.
Renetta’s text refers to its authorship and is fittingly ethereal and digital. The meaning of my text, is also echoed in its physicality. The shaky, hand-stitched embroidery refers both to the imperfections outlined in the insecurities and to the repetitive nature of self-doubt and neurosis.
Nora,
There are definitely some compelling differences between how you and Renetta utilize text. I’m really glad you pointed this out.
It seems there is an extent to which language, although seemingly not corporeal, does have a physicality that both you and Rentta deploy.
What’s interesting to me is that although there is a diaristic quality to the statements in your work you also see them as not your solely your own, as they reveal feelings that many others posses. I think that is a really complex way of thinking about the “I” in your work.
Thanks for your response,
Jillian
What is this reading thing that men like? You showcased an interesting assortment of work. I particularly like the mail order bride project.