by Emily Colucci on February 15, 2017
Even as feminism experiences a resurgence, there’s still a marked lack of representation of women of color and gender nonconforming individuals in both art and political activism. This disparity was recently debated on an international level with the criticism launched at the disproportionately white and cisgender Women’s March. A current show HACKING/MODDING/REMIXING As Feminist Protest at Pittsburgh’s Miller Gallery at Carnegie Mellon provides a direct rebuke of this continued inequality by emphasizing the power of intersectional feminism (feminism that embraces multiple, overlapping social identities beyond gender, including race, ethnicity, sexuality and class).
The exhibition leads by example by bringing together a group of twenty two artists who fracture and rearrange technology to create their own narratives within male-dominated fields like gaming, net developing and computing. Organized by artist and game developer Angela Washko, the show, in many ways, is an answer to the much-reported lack of women in tech industries (Washko cites a 2013 study in her introductory wall text, stating only 26% of the positions in computing jobs in the U.S. are held by women). But, with its smart and diverse curation, HACKING/MODDING/REMIXING As Feminist Protest goes further than exhibitions about feminism often go, taking on race and other identity issues. This makes the show not only politically relevant, but also necessary viewing during our current feminist revival.
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by Rea McNamara on December 17, 2015

Rafia Santana has to be one of those rare digital artists exploring race via advertorial web vernacular. The dimensions are akin to a website’s big box ad, there’s a cheery and bright pure colour palette and an appropriation of call to action marketing tropes, like drop shadows and animated bursts. The swinging noose even looks like a spiral gimp bracelet from girlhood cultural expressions of yore. It’s a cunning recast of Lisa Frank graphics, but a perversion of the nostalgia to forcefully recall a time when slavery was the driver of American economic growth, and even connecting this historical with the tyranny of self-branding, self-promoting affective labour.
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