Political Drag: A Retrospective –
Martha Wilson in Conversation with Sara Reisman
Thursday, October 29, 2020
6 to 7:30pm EST
This event was held on Zoom
Martha Wilson, Thump, 2016. Photographer and Compositing Artist: Kathy Grove. Color photograph, framed 96.5 x 81.3 cm. 38 x 32 in. Edition of 5 plus 1 artist's proof (#3/5). Courtesy of Martha Wilson and PPOW, New York. [Image Description: An image of performance artist Martha Wilson impersonating Donald Trump complete with makeup, wig, blue suit, white shirt, black belt, and red tie. She gives the thumbs up, in front of a statue, presumably one that is a part of a court house. The lower half of the statue is visible with a robe draped over the figure's right leg with a sword resting on both knees. Below the statue and engraved in the stone is the word “FORCE.” Framing the image is a royal blue and red border.]
As part of our Performance-in-Place series, this video screening and public conversation featured performance artist Martha Wilson, who presented a selection of her seminal works addressing political personae from the last forty years. The artist’s embodiment of characters such as Nancy Reagan, Tipper Gore, Barbara Bush, and Donald Trump serve as time capsules for the contentious issues prevalent at the time of their original staging. A throughline in Wilson’s practice is her use of film and documentation as political mediums to record the temporal and often seismic moments occurring in the public realm. This evening was moderated by Rubin Foundation Executive and Artistic Director Sara Reisman, with audience participation encouraged.
Access Information: This event included live ASL interpretation and captioning.
To read a transcript of the event, please click here.
Bio
Martha Wilson (b. 1947) is a pioneering feminist artist and gallery director, who over the past four decades has created innovative photographic and video works that explore her female subjectivity through role-playing, costume transformations, and “invasions” of other people’s personae. She began making these videos and photo/text works in the early 1970s while in Halifax in Nova Scotia, and further developed her performative and video-based practice after moving in 1974 to New York City. In 1976 she founded and continues to direct Franklin Furnace Archive, Inc, an artist-run space that champions the exploration, promotion and preservation of artists’ books, installation art, video, online and performance art, further challenging institutional norms, the roles artists play within society, and expectations about what constitutes acceptable art mediums.
Martha Wilson joined PPOW Gallery, New York, and mounted a solo exhibition, I have become my own worst fear, in September 2011. In 2013, Wilson received an Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree from Nova Scotia College of Art and Design University. In 2015, she received the Audrey Irmas Award for Curatorial Excellence, administered by the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College; the College Art Association’s Women’s Caucus for Art Lifetime Achievement Award; and mounted her second solo exhibition at PPOW Gallery.