HEROINE-ITY

Exhibition Catalog

HEROINE-ITY brings together a group of women who have been in the vanguard of feminist art making. They deploy their creative agency through role-play, costume, impersonation and self-transformation to confront culturally entrenched forms of misogyny. They have in common a performative anchor: their bodies are the center of their work – a personal act of resistance to a repressive patriarchal society.

HEROINE-ITY proclaims that we must embrace the life-affirming qualities of our heroines and the fierce power they wield. They testify to the intertwined roles of gender, race, class and sexual identity.

Laura Elkins appropriates the reverence bestowed on our first ladies to confer honor and dignity to the low-wage working women who are essential to our economy – committing her own body to that transmutation.

Martha Wilson reveals Melania Trump’s artificial youth by morphing her own face into that of Mrs. Trump and back again – her hard-won wrinkles, a sly comment on the systemic ageism of the cosmetic industry.

Katya Grokhovsky shares the demeaning remarks she receives as a woman artist, demanding recognition now, not when she is old or dead.

Karen Finley appropriates the actual pages from “Gone With the Wind” on which to inscribe a most unladylike invective decrying the many sins of the Confederate era. Collectively, they demand all genders fight shoulder-to-shoulder to combat the sexism that continues to thrive.