This Week’s Must See Events: Feminist Icons and the Mechanics of the Gaze

A behind the scenes look at “Paradise Interrupted”, an opera produced by Asia Society and the Lincoln Center that reimagines the biblical story of Eve’s expulsion from the Garden of Eden through the dream of Du Liniang.  Composer Huang Ruo (Dr. Sun Yat-sen); director/designer and librettist Jennifer Wen Ma; and soprano Qian Yi will discuss the creative process while offering snippets from the performance. Basically, it’s a talk for art installation and opera nerds.

Oh, now this has got to be good: Martha Rosler and Martha Wilson discuss the major themes in their work—identity, representation, feminism, language, and performance. People, lectures like this are the reason you move to New York. It’s hard to imagine two more thoughtful and force-of-personality artists coming together to talk about their work.

Rosler focuses on housing, homelessness, and gentrification, as well as war and the national security state in her art and writing. Wilson, an artist and gallery director, creates work that explore  her female subjectivity through role-playing and costume transformations.

Guðmundur Thoroddsen’s drawings and sculptures look prehistoric—or at least very, very aged. The themes, however, a little more advanced. He creates moving parts out of the patriarchal system, and shows them in disarray. In the image above, men of different occupations appear to celebrating—according to the release, they are striving to capture the dying days of male supremacy. Seeing as how those days are depicted as on the out, we’re definitely in support of the message here.

Watch artists Jessica Feldman, Gene Kogan, Tega Brain, and Ranjit Bhatnagar present work on the subject of the body and technology in a new event series co-hosted by Babycastles and Eyebeam. Expect to see a lot of 3D rendered bodies and animations. We’re into this for the GIFs.

Sara Ludy might as well just move to the city, she’s showing here so much. Mark Dorf lives here and is showing here and everywhere else. This is a show by two rising stars.

The show at hand deals simulacra—or in layman’s terms, images and reproductions of someone or something.  Both Ludy and Dorf make vaguely unsettling work, so I’d add to the list of possible show themes, the sublime. Curated MA Curatorial Practice fellow Valerie Amend.

Work that explores “the nature and culture(s) of photographic images, exploring questions of perception and representation and the mechanics of the gaze.” It sounds boring until you see an image of an eye in paper cutter. Ew.

A guided tour of Rashaad Newsome’s exhibition, “THIS IS WHAT I WANT TO SEE”.

Newsome reframes how performers are presented and present themselves, from mash up youtube videos, to improvisatory orchestral music made up of repeated sequences of stereotypical gestures, movements, and vocalizations. Really imaginative work.

An artist reception for Jen Mazza, Laurie Riccadonna, and Michelle Vitale. Mazza paints virtuoso renderings of figures and still lives, Vitale works with knitting and textiles, and Riccadonna combines floral designs and patterning in her paintings. In many ways, pretty traditional stuff, and worth a look for that very reason. This is exactly the kind of skilled work that often gets overlooked.