Inbetweens
Weekly wrap:
This past week I returned to my apartment! Hooray! Solana beach was a lovely spot to evacuate to but I am very happy to be home. I have air purifiers running 24/7 and am cautious about the particulate in the air but luckily everything here is eerily fine even as another massive fire has broken out. sigh.
This week I’m going to wrap up the week with photos, less words… And then also continue last week’s questioning of Identity. In this newsletter I reflect on the Vancouver Art Gallery show Between the Multiple Realities focusing mainly on Gabrielle Stotzer “Trans Sitting” and also think about an old idea I had for an art project called “Performing Significance.”
Seeing:
Vancouver Art Gallery
Visiting the Vancouver Art Gallery this past December I found the most interesting show “Between the Multiple Realities: Experimental Art in the Eastern Bloc, 1960s-80s.” In large part it is about artists living under strict rule and surveillance during the Cold War era navigating and negotiating public and private spaces while constructing necessarily mutable identities. It is a fascinating show.
Many of the works have my brain tripping on what makes identity. How we all have a fluidity to our identities because we are necessarily different people when performing different roles. Who we are at work is different than with family, is different than with friends, is different between different individuals we interact within all the varied spaces and groups we move.
The work that most bent my brain is Gabrielle Stotzer “Trans Sitting.” In this art series Stotzer made groupings of photographs of a persona she named “Winifred.” In the photos Winifred is partially dressed in female gendered clothing and explicitly shows male gendered parts. This is at a time when transsexuality was illegal in the GDR where Stotzer was working. Some years after making this series she learned that her sitter, the person she photographed, “Winifred” was a Stassi agent using the modeling opportunity to surveil her! How do we make sense of this contextual layer!? How to even attempt to grasp at identity or reality here. Or process when and for who laws and norms are allowed to be transgressed?
All of these questions around identity swirling in my mess of thoughts has me thinking of an art project I came up with while on a walk during the pandemic lockdown, “Performing Significance.” The project would be Cindy Sherman-esque but instead of dressing up and touristing as other people’s identities I would dress myself as clichés of things I participate in, things I perhaps am? It would be some form of signaling “I am this.” In the process maybe I show an audience and myself who I am while also offering some cliché identities for anyone looking to also attach to or play with. I think there is joy, fun, pleasure in recognizing clichés that ring true to us even though the tropes are preposterous or over the top. A haha moment in recognizing that the cliché of artist is SO me despite the fact I do not wear a beret, sport a Dali-sequel mustache, nor tote a wooden easel everywhere I go. Maybe I’ll think more about this project while I think more about identity.
Since identity is a main way we relate to the world and find understanding it’s shocking to me to realize it is so slippery! As the world continues towards an authoritarian bent I wonder how we might be required to show up and how and what we will do to negotiate and retain who we are and what we want to become?
Opening:
Visual AIDS Postcards from the Edge opens for previews at Berry Campbell Gallery NYC and online tomorrow January 24th! Online sales open to all at 10am EST Saturday the 25th! Postcards from the Edge is always a a great collection of artworks and also a fun show and fundraiser!
Open Call:
ARTADIA AWARDS Los Angeles Application
Due to the L.A. wildfires the deadline to apply was extended to February 14, 2025 11:59PM PT