by Rea McNamara on April 28, 2016
Earlier today, I had the honour of speaking with curator Jacqueline Mabey and Bennington College students in a course Mabey is co-teaching on feminist praxis. The pop-up module is part of Mabey’s Utopia Is No Place, Utopia Is Process show at Usdan Gallery. The show, featuring works by artists like Lorraine Grady, Nicole Killian, Hannah Black, Ann Hirsch, Ella Dawn McGeough and more explores the notion of failed utopias from a contemporary feminist perspective. The course is running alongside the show as a way of opening the gallery up to explore the basic principles of feminist organizing. (It’s worth noting Mabey is one of the artists behind the Art+Feminism campaign to expand Wikipedia’s coverage of women in the arts.)
For a week that began with Lemonade, I appreciated having the opportunity to discuss Sheroes, a limited run event series I organized from 2011-2012 in Toronto exploring the iconography and cultures of fandom surrounding the “League of Legendary Ladies”. Every month, a different female artist, like Nina Simone, Erykah Badu, Joni Mitchell, or Yoko Ono, were honoured with on and offline performances, sounds, installations and visuals. The series was a hub for a myriad of Canadian and international artists, all of whom were active participants in celebrating female pop superstars, who, throughout their careers, have pushed boundaries and persevered with goddess-like strength. (Yes, I evoked “goddess” — our tagline was “herstory done right.” The “campy 1970s feminist speak” overload was intentional.)
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by Rea McNamara on April 25, 2016
It’s been only 48 hours since Beyonce dropped Lemonade, which has thrusted onto the mainstream this un-parallel vision of the South that’s full of #blackgirlmagic feels. At a time when celebrity culture is prime docu-drama box office entertainment, Beyonce has managed to pull off a release that veers dangerously close to full-on revenge narrative — the visual album’s concept hinges on marital strife with husband Jay-Z — that you almost expected the tabloids to be flooded with a divorce announcement.
But the album ends with redemption — they stay together! — with Beyonce still managing to hold firm on her persona. (This is an artist, after all, who has a temperature-controlled digital storage facility containing every existing video, photo, interview and even diary entry she’s recorded on her laptop.) Beyonce is a performance artist who savvily positions her creative output for real-time, hashtagged (#BeckyWithTheGoodHair, followed by Beyhive bee emojis) collective consumption.
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