Author Archives: Camylle Fleming

A Legacy of Defining Oneself Against the Shortcomings of Another

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Waegner discusses how polycultural performances have become a contemporary art form enabling marginalized populations to construct hybrid identities free from the fixed cultural scripts that are commonly placed on them.

Pinder examines the onus we place on our contemporary and historical, multi-racial icons (like Tiger Woods or Sally Hemmings) to redeem our nation from its legacy of privileging white purity and superiority.

Readings like these inspire a question of how we might identify ourselves in a future world where everyone is multi-ethnic. Considering our tendency to use minority, non-white populations as the referent standard by which we give value and identity to ourselves, I can imagine how much a challenge a bi- or multi-racial individual poses to the world order.

Without fail, just about every topic we have covered has been laden with binaries; white/black, male/female, right/wrong, good/bad: these are the terms by which we make sense of the world. Binaries are put in place to maintain organizational clarity and to reject any opportunities for confusion. However with regards to the body, the living social and political being within which we all live our lives, the limitations of this structural framework becomes immediately apparent. It’s not simply a matter of embracing one’s multiple identities outside of the binary structure, seeing as each (racial) label is accompanied with a corresponding value within our societal hierarchy.  As Lorraine O’Grady alludes to in Pinder’s article these oppositions are “hierarchical, superior/inferior oppositions, so that male/female, black/white, good/evil, body/mind, nature/culture are not just different, one is always better than…”

All at once, the importance of having a visibly non-white population or an “underdeveloped”  “dark continent” like Africa becomes paramount in the establishment of a pure and superior race. Which brings us back to the question of how one goes about affirming one’s identity not at the expense of degrading another’s.

Berni Searle and the Reclamation of the Black Female Body

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Pariah: Chronicles the coming-of-age of a 17 year African American girl as she experiences societal, communal, and familial pressure for her to conform to pre-established norms of Black womanhood.

Barbara Thompson: This article discusses the works of contemporary artists in their efforts to challenge our historical canon which has projected an image/perceived reality of Black women as savage, inferior, and immoral beings.

Barbara Thompson’s mention of Berni Searle’s (South African artist) campaign to “reconstruct a micro-history of the personal” resonates with my own desire to abandon and re-script the visual narrative and identity that has been “made for me,”as a Black woman. Her recognition of the black female body as a site of oppressive politics in the historical narrative is noteworthy; but it is her subsequent decision to re-appropriate her body in an effort challenge racialized stereotypes- despite the debilitating weight it carries- that I view as a brilliant act of courage. In our own class discussions, we have pondered this very question of how an individual who has been defined as a material object for centuries can then transform their identity into that of an intelligent human being. Searle uses her nude body, which is anything but a neutral palette, to interrogate our traditional understandings of non-White beings. With the ever-present risk of outsiders “recognizing” her pieces as ‘more of the same’ images of un-clothed black bodies, Searle embraces the opportunity to promote images of black females practicing self-love, acceptance and ownership of their politicized bodies.

Thompson digresses into instances in which the nude black female body has been used explicitly as a “tactic of resistance.” Though I support Searle’s campaign to re-appropriate  the identities already given to black women, I don’t know that I endorse the metaphor of “self-exploitation” that is mentioned later in the article. I look forward to discussing the implications behind and the utility of a concept  like “self-exploitation” in our efforts to abandon stereotypical narratives that continue to oppress women of color worldwide.

 

 

 

 

Hiding Prejudice Behind Virtual Walls

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Shakhsari: Sima Shakhsari unmasks the role that hegemonic and heteronormative imaginations play in shaping the neoliberal tolerance policies that have become popularized through virtual media with regards to Iranian Queers living within and beyond the nation’s borders.

Reading this article brings up my personal apprehension with the validity given to campaigns for equality based on tolerance as opposed to acceptance. Sima Shakhsari’s piece on the apparent shift from denial of the existence of the Iranian Queer community to the sudden “chic” and tolerance of queerness exposes the utility behind the queer aesthetic in advancing the nation-state’s flawed reputation as an antiquated and repressive place. As spelled out in Shakhsari’s article, fighting for women and gay rights is commonly seen as a sign of democracy, modernity, and compassionate civility. Using cyberspace as a medium to promote this seemingly tolerant policy allows for supposed opposition groups to advocate for gay rights on solely a topical level. If I were a blogger, re-posting an article about the “gay-hangings” in Iran without positing my own commentary on the heteronormative discourses that support a homophobic atmosphere would be a convenient way for me to touch on the issue of gay rights with a metaphorical 10-foot pole, i.e.from a safe distance.

It is unsettling to find that cyberspace, a virtual world that offers the opportunity for us to challenge and reassess the ways of the “real world,” can be manipulated to replicate the same power dynamics that exist in reality. Though the internet has offered many marginalized minorities a safe-space to empower themselves and build community, this article has helped me realize the way in which this medium can simultaneously be used to exploit these same populations. Shakhsasri illustrates how the heteronormative imagination that dominates our “real world” can ultimately saturate the borderless territory of the world wide web, disciplining and denouncing the humanity of the very populations that seek liberation.

 

 

 

Andrea Frazer’s Embodiment of the Art Institution

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Taylor: Taylor’s historical chronicle of performance art illustrates the genre as one that mimics life’s (un)scripted, (un)predictable, and ephemeral nature.

Fraser: Andrea Fraser’s Museum Highlights is a sobering treatise that begs us to strategically deconstruct an art institution that has historically been the recipient of our unquestioning admiration and allegiance.

Andrea Fraser’s scripted performances in Museum Highlights legitimizes many of my own experiences of feeling inferior during my visits to art institutions throughout my childhood and young adult life.  Her impersonation of distinguished representatives of the museum quickly brought to light the specific mannerisms that were at the source of my discomfort. It was the way the curators, docents, guards and guides were dressed in either an official uniform or a particular high-class style of dress… It was also the way they moved about the art space, their knowledge of the “right” order in which to view the art works, the “best” viewing distance in which to interact with the piece, and their control over the amount of time an individual is given to take in a masterpiece. And it was the discriminatory and almost cryptic dialect which they employed in an effort to distinguish the prestigious and tasteful works of art exhibited in the museum from the lower-class creations existing outside of the museum walls…

In Frazer’s concluding quote of Chapter 9, she sums up the function of the museum not only as a site of socialization for the lower-class public, but as a discriminatory body that produces value and meaning in the art world: “distinguishing between a coat room and a rest room, between a painting and a telephone, a guard and a guide…”

In Chapter 11, Frazer continues to demystify the naturalized rhetoric about the characteristics of a museum as ordained. When considering the names of museums, lobbies or wings of an art institution, Frazer brings attention to the fact that many were named after historically wealthy-class individuals.  What’s more, she makes note of the fact that many buildings were given names “in memory of loved ones who sometimes had no interest in art themselves,” which served to discredit my assumption that all the patrons of that time had a taste for art. Learning the details behind a museum’s formation helped me as a consumer of art to humanize an art institution that is commonly seen as impenetrable. It also disrupts the belief that museums are naturally exclusive entities. Frazer makes it easier for art critics and the general public alike to see the institution’s systematic maintenance of disproportionate power relations between museum “insiders” and “outsiders.”

“Purity Culture as Rape Culture”: The Traditional Norms that Promote (Physical and Psychological) Violence Against Women

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Lopez: In the wake of an international, male-led smear campaign against Alma Lopez’s 1999 digital print, Lopez’s commentary offers insight into the underlying patriarchal ethos which disables a portion of our society from seeing “Our Lady” as anything other than a “tart”, “stripper”, and “devil.”

Latorre: In Guisela Latorre’s piece we see how the double exclusion of Chicana women from both patriarchal discourse and the White, middle-upper class-oriented feminist movement gave rise to politicizing and decolonizing methods of creativity in the world of Chicana art.

This week’s readings for our class interestingly coincide with a handful of articles assigned in my WGST Women and Health course, specifically on the topic of “rape culture.” The great sense of horror that I felt reading through Alma Lopez’s piece about the threat of censorship by art institutions, the vilification of the female body, and the candid condemnation of any threat to a patriarchal, Chicano society is almost identical to the feelings I experienced reading through an article on “rape culture” in India.

The WGST article that I am specifically referring to was written in response to the tragic gang rape that occurred on a public bus in New Delhi late last year.

(http://prospect.org/article/purity-culture-rape-culture)

Just above, I’ve posted the link about this barbaric crime to help initiate my argument that the hostile, cultural climate that Alma Lopez describes in her article, Silencing Our Lady, parallels the “rape culture,” (referenced in the link) that maintains a sense of entitlement for men to denounce women and their bodies as inferior, defiant, and worthy of corrective abuse.

According to my WGST article entitled, Purity Culture is Rape Culture, rape, in its modern form, is not about sex, it is about power. “Rape culture lives anywhere that has a ‘traditional’ vision of women’s sexuality. A culture in which women are expected to remain virgins until marriage is a rape culture. In that vision, women’s bodies are for use primarily for procreation or male pleasure. They must be kept pure…This attitude gives men license to patrol-in some cases with violence- women’s hopes for controlling their lives and bodies.”

Referring back to Lopez’s article we see this concept of “rape culture” play out comfortably in the society that she grew up in. A society in which woman’s bare breasts, exposed legs and belly are seen as “offensive” and blasphemous while the male nude is anointed as god-like in countless religious institutions across the nation sounds a lot like a society that promotes violence against women.  A society wherein a rape survivor who to tell her story is held “on trial” for putting herself in a dangerous situation sounds a lot like Lopez’s reality. Any society that is threatened by the voice and agency of women is definitely a society that we should be concerned about.

I suppose I write all of this to say that I am just as disturbed by Lopez’s testimony as I am by the countless articles I read on the normalcy of rape in patriarchal societies. I feel relieved by the fact that the art institution chose not to remove Lopez’s work, despite the violent opposition. However, in the end, it is the sizable body of people who fervently resist the right of a woman to create a positive and empowering image of herself that really makes me shutter.

 

My Argument for Feminist Art

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Jayne Wark’s Conceptual Art and Feminism piece gives an overview of how four feminists artists have managed to aesthetically challenge the ideological and institutional structures that promote dominant and mainstream art forms.

In “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists,” Linda Nochlin utilizes this “women-question” to inspire a collective reflection on the social environment that has consistently generated a body of legitimate art created exclusively by men, and absent of any so-called  “great” contributions from female artists.

“Marina Abramovic: The Artist is Present” chronicles the process of Abramovic and her team to prepare mentally and physically for the debut of her show at the MoMA.

What constitutes feminist art? My understanding is that feminist art is confrontational in its nature. Given the historical and present-day reality of our white, male-dominanted world, anything that does not measure up to this standard becomes, by default, inferior, dissident, and unlawful. This becomes the rationale that leads to our conventional belief that women are second-class citizens, rebellious, and sinful creatures. Though one could argue that the mere presence of a woman in a male-dominated social setting is considered defiant and thus a “feminist” action, after reading our course materials for this week, I’d like to situate my understanding of feminism as not only being confrontational, but stimulating self-refleciton of what we consider “normal” and “natural.”

I now reflect on many of our past classes, believing that just about any piece of artwork that disrupts/dislocates/dislodges the stereotypes that are so near and dear to our hearts is considered “feminist art”. Many would consider the female-identity of an artist a prerequisite for the creation of feminist art. However, I disagree. Feminism in itself is not even a monolithic movement. At it’s core, it calls for a disruption of the social and political climate that maintains the sub-ordinance of almost demographic, gender aside. I think of Jimmy Durham’s “Self Portrait” that we saw at the “This will have been: Art, Love, and Politics in the 80’s” exhibit at the MoMA as a contribution to feminist art. This was the cut-out canvas of what we would call the stereotypical American-Indian. As the piece is littered with judgmental phrases that society has projected onto his body, the viewer comes face-to-face with the ridiculous incongruity of our definitions of the American- Indian population. This piece stopped me in my tracks because it exposed me to this crime that I was complicit  in. Labeling my counterparts, boxing them into uni-dimensional, commonly polarized and contradictory identities was something that I was guilty of. If this piece were to come alive, if this piece were actually turned into an installation performance (with countless derogatory phrases and symbols placed all over the body of a man), it would still be me who looked foolish. I would still be the one feeling insecure. This is what feminist art means to me.

It throws me off balance. It forces me to see myself as a member of a society that strategically compartmentalizes and conquers certain populations for the benefit of an inconsequential few. It leaves me questioning what I really stand for in life. And this was exactly what I saw occurring in Marina Abramovic’s documentary. Her main piece at her MoMA exhibit left me in tears. Vicariously through the audience members who were bold enough to take on Abramovic’s gaze, I felt incredibly vulnerable, as if her gaze was deconstructing the countenance of not just me but humanity. She was exposing us to our wretched selves.  She was the mirror that we all so frantically avoid after we have engaged in some kind of illicit action. However, this time around, I was not being scolded for sneaking a treat from the cookie-jar, stealing my mother’s make-up, nor cheating on a lover, I was on trial as an accomplice for every transgression that this society has carried out against supposed, second-class citizens.

Lastly, as I do not want to end on a pessimistic note, I would argue that feminist art does not leave you suspended in a guilty stupor for long, but rather it catalyzes the processes of self-reflection, reassessment, and re-directioning of one’s life and behaviors. It inspires a gag-reflex of all the injustice and brutality that we have digested as palatable subsistence. I’m really looking forward to expanding my exposure to feminist art, as I feel that it will serve society and myself very well. I also hope that society will have the courage to (metaphorically) sit and stare back at Marina Abramovic.

Now Dig This and Maintaining Control of One’s Image

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Johnson: As he runs through the varying pieces of the Now Dig This shoe, Johnson tangentially sets out to dismiss any possible inference that Black artists invented artistic assemblage and that our gratitude is better attributed to “White artists like…”

Raiford: While in pursuit of protection and liberation for African-Americans in the 1960s, the Black Panther Party struggled to maintain control of their image which became a site of contestation from its inception to contemporary times.

Jones: Kellie Jones offers us a panoramic snapshot of the revolutionary African American artists and their artworks as they increasingly gained visibility in the U.S art scene of the 1960s.

I was completely disturbed after reading Johnson’s NY Times article. It read as an irrelevant piece of commentary on the Kellie Jones’ Now Dig This collection. Johnson   begins this piece by identifying the intention of the show to illustrate the inability of the high-end art world to acknowledge and celebrate the art of Black artists. However he finishes the piece in a hurry to discredit not just the works of many pioneering Black artists but the artists themselves. This is the same triple negation that Adrien Piper has faced as a colored women artist. The insecurities of Johnson throughout this piece are manifold, however it seems that the biggest fear is the recognition that the production of “high-end” art is not exclusive to the the higher tiers of society.

Japanese Internment Camp Life

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Creef:
Elena Creef’s piece discusses the visual politics of photographically capturing the Japanese-American population in the wake of Pear Harbor: a Japanese naval strike which nominally justified widespread racism, namely, the U.S.’s evacuation of people of Japanese ancestry out of their homes in the Pacific region, and into internment camps.

Kozol:
Kozol’s article challenges the authenticity of a government –piloted, photographic archive of Japanese-Americans throughout the 1940s evacuation process, given the nation’s interest in illustrating this population as obedient, loyal and non-threatening in an effort to feel secure on the home-front.

Howard:
Howard offers a panoramic display of the unique disruptions in traditional gender and sexuality roles that internment camp life presented to Japanese Americans.

I was taken aback by a specific section in the Relocating Citizenship article, where Kozol addresses the FBI’s campaign to destroy the artifacts of Japanese- Americans directly after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. In referring to the countless Japanese family heirlooms that were seized by government officials, Kozol speculates that “the objects’ ‘realness,’ the materiality of the artifacts made them threatening,” which couldn’t be a more brazen testament to America’s inherently xenophobic nature. This unveils the “difference equals deficit” model that this nation has unabashedly relied on for centuries in their countless campaigns to preserve a pristine American identity that never really existed. Our abstract/undefined understanding of what it means to be an American, may commonly be mistaken as open-ended to an outsider looking for a way in.  However, in truth, the prototypical American: the White- Euroethnic, middle-class male, who we use as our standard of acceptance, will always decide who belongs in this nation, who is defined as the underclass. No matter the history that your family may have here in America.
This reminds me of our contemporary immigration policies that subject hopeful-American citizens to arbitrary Citizenship Tests that I likely would not pass. Regardless of the fact that I am a descendant of slaves that gave their lives building this nation, my failing grade would likely categorize me as un-American.