Vraiment: féminisme et art

April 7 — September 7, 1997
Magasin, Grenoble (France)

    American art critic and historian Laura Cottingham was the guest curator of this exhibition featuring artists of the feminist art movement (FAM) that surfaced during the women’s liberationist period of the 1970s in the United States and Europe (mainly in France) such as Chantal Akerman, Nancy Angelo, and Candace Compton, Martine Aballéa, Eleonor Antin, Mary Beth Edelson, Nicole Gravier, Françoise Janicot, Léa Lublin, Cynthia Maughan, Tania Mourand, Nicola, Orlan, Gina Pane, Adrian Piper, Martha Rosler, Dorothée Selz, Mierle Laderman-Ukeles, Womanhouse, Hannah Wilke, Nil Yalter (Nicole Croiset) and Judy Blume, and a post-1970s generation of younger women artists such as Ghada Amer, Polly Apfelbaum, Dyke Action Machine, Nicole Eisenman, Géraldine Gallavardin, Natacha Lesueur, and Lorraine O’Grady. Some works were specifically created for the show, such as the installation above by Nicole Eisenman (Grenoble Airport Installation), who made her ironic tribute to the city of Grenoble and its surrounding mountains, ski activities, and airport (on the ladders she placed numerous tins of dog food called “Alpo”). I coordinated the exhibition, the site-specific projects and edited the exhibition catalogue.

    Nicole Eisenman
    Grenoble Airport Installation, 1997
    Installation view (detail)
    Vraiment: féminisme et art
    Magasin, Grenoble

    Orlan
    Le baiser de l’artiste (Kiss of the Artist), 1977
    Black and White photographs, wooden plinth, flowers, plastic lettering, chair, soundtrack
    225.5 x 170 x 70 cm
    Vraiment: féminisme et art
    Magasin, Grenoble

    French artist Orlan first presented this work combined with a performance at the 1977 edition of the FIAC art fair in Paris. She offered her lips for five francs (see photograph on the right), thus transforming a classical beauty icon such as the Holy Virgin into a symbol of desire, sensuality, and sexuality of a latent and actual body represented by her own. The consequence of her work was the strike of her students and her expulsion from Lyon’s school, where she worked.

    Natascha Lesueur
    Untitled, 1996
    C-Print
    75 x 60 cm
    Vraiment: féminisme et art
    Magasin, Grenoble

    In this performance, Rosler takes on the role of an apron-clad housewife and parodies the television cooking demonstrations popularized by Julia Child in the 1960s. Standing in a kitchen, surrounded by a refrigerator, table, and stove, she moves through the alphabet from A to Z, assigning a letter to the various tools found in this domestic space. After more than forty years, Rosler’s parody still speaks to the theatricality of cooking shows today.

    Martha Rosler
    Semiotics of the Kitchen, 1975
    video
    Duration: 6 mins.
    Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuZympOIGC0
    Vraiment: féminisme et art
    Magasin, Grenoble