Action, Gesture, Performance: Feminism, the Body and Abstraction

Whitechapel Gallery, London
17.01. – 07.05.2023

This exhibition accompanies Action, Gesture, Paint: Women Artists and Global Abstraction 1940-70 and focuses on pioneering dance and performance practices by women artists who were using their bodies to explore freedom of expression, subjectivity and politics.

Renowned American choreographer Martha Graham (1884, USA – 1991, USA) developed a new language of movement, which influenced Abstract Expressionist artist Judith Godwin whose whose stark, bold gestures in paint find an echo in Graham’s choreography. Similarly, Pearl Primus (1919, Trinidad – 1994, USA) created a new approach to movement based on r African-American, Caribbean and African dance.

In New York, Carolee Schneemann’s (1939, USA – 2019, USA) early paintings in the 1950s were influenced by Abstract Expressionism before she went on to explore the act of painting with her body as both tool and ground. Rosemarie Castoro (1939, USA – 2015, USA) considered the implications of the body in abstract painting expanding her works into the gallery or studio itself in 1960s New York. In performances, photographs and films, Ana Mendieta (1948, Cuba – 1985, USA) explored themes of violence against women and the physical and spiritual connection between her body and the Earth.

In Europe, feminist art practices by artists like Renate Bertlmann (b.1943, Austria) and Annegret Soltau (b.1946, Germany) staged the female body in performance works to examine male oppression and sexual violence. Niki de Saint Phalle (1930 – 2002, France) took aim at Abstract Expressionist painting by shooting at her canvases in a documented explosion of both destruction and creation.

The first feminist happening in Korea took place in 1968 with Jung Kangja (1942 – 2017, South Korea) inviting participants to burst balloons attached to her body. Shigeko Kubota (1937, Japan – 2015, USA) and Atsuko Tanaka (1962, Japan – 2005, Japan) were key figures in the Japanese avant-garde exploring new approaches to gesturalism through performance and video art fusing the personal and the technological. Brazilian artist Lygia Clark (1920, Brazil – 1988, Brazil) expanded abstract painting and sculpture into collaborative actions which blurred the distinction between art and life.

Später Triumph - Renate Bertlmann

Zum 80. Geb. von Renate Bertlmann
kulturMontag, ORF2
27.02., 23:15 Uhr

Das Tier in Dir - Kreaturen in (und außerhalb) der Mumok Sammlung

Mumok, Wien
22.09.2022 - 26.02.2023

https://www.mumok.at/de/events/das-tier-dir

The mumok collection contains nearly five hundred works related to animals—a considerable quantity that raises the question of what kind of zoo the museum in fact is. What is kept, researched, and displayed both here and there to protect “wild life” and the “freedom of art”? And in whose interest?

The Animal Within addresses such questions and uses the popular appeal of animals to reflect on the nature of sex, hunger, and affection, as well as on family and gender relations, socialization and domestication, and, not least, on the enduring impact of colonial history. Who leads whom on a leash? Who clips whose wings? Who scratches whose back?

The exhibition is thus less about animals than about bodies, moving or still, reclining or standing, crouching or crawling. The animal as a motif serves as a starting point to get to a materialist understanding of art and life. For in the Western world, “taming and framing” is what we do to mark our territories and claim our subjectivities.

Curated by Manuela Ammer and Ulrike Müller

UNE AVANT-GARDE FÉMINISTE. PHOTOGRAPHS AND PERFORMANCES OF THE 1970S FROM THE VERBUND COLLECTION, VIENNA

Les Rencontres de la Photographie d‘Arles, ARLES, FRANCE
July 4th – September 25th, 2022

https://www.rencontres-arles.com

The Rencontres d’Arles is delighted to present, for the first time in France, the exhibition A Feminist Avant-Garde. Photographs and Performances of the 1970s from the Verbund Collection, Vienna, with over 200 works by 71 female artists. The exhibition title refers to “an” Avant-Garde, one containing a multitude of feminist movements, diverse in age, nationality, and culture. Feminisms are also considered in intersectional terms because some of those female artists have experienced, and continue to experience, multiple forms of discrimination, including racism, classism, and gender. The exhibition is divided into five themes: women’s reduction to “wife, mother, and housewife”; their resulting feeling of “being locked-up”; the questioning of “dictates of beauty and representations of female bodies”; explorations of “female sexuality”; and debates around “female roles and identities.”

Helena Almeida (1934–2018), Emma Amos (1938-2020), Sonja Andrade (1935), Eleanor Antin (1935), Anneke Barger (1939), Lynda Benglis (1941), Renate Bertlmann (1943), Tomaso Binga (1931), Dara Birnbaum (1946), Marcella Campagnano (1941), Elizabeth Catlett (1915-2012), Judy Chicago (1939), Veronika Dreier (1954), Orshi Drozdik (1946), Lili Dujourie (1941), Mary Beth Edelson (1933), Renate Eisenegger (1949), VALIE EXPORT (1940), Esther Ferrer (1937), Marisa González (1945), Eulàlia Grau (1946), Barbara Hammer (1939-2019), Lynn Hershman Leeson (1941), Alexis Hunter (1948–2014), Mako Idemitsu (1940), Birgit Jürgenssen (1949–2003), Kirsten Justesen (1943), Anna Kutera (1952), Ketty La Rocca (1938–1976), Leslie Labowitz (1946), Suzanne Lacy (1945), Katalin Ladik (1942), Suzy Lake (1947), Natalia LL (1937), Lea Lublin (1929–1999), Karin Mack (1940), Dindga McCannon (1947), Ana Mendieta (1948–1985), Annette Messager (1943), Rita Myers (1947), Senga Nengudi (1943), Lorraine O’Grady (1934), ORLAN (1947), Gina Pane (1939–1990), Letícia Parente (1930-1991), Ewa Partum (1945), Friederike Pezold (1945), Margot Pilz (1936), Howardena Pindell (1943), Ingeborg G. Pluhar (1944), Angels Ribé (1943), Ulrike Rosenbach (1943), Martha Rosler (1943), Brigitte Aloise Roth (1951–2018), Victoria Santa Cruz (1922–2014), Suzanne Santoro (1946), Carolee Schneemann (1939–2019), Lydia Schouten (1955), Elaine Shemilt (1954), Cindy Sherman (1954), Penny Slinger (1954), Annegret Soltau (1946), Gabriele Stötzer (1953), Betty Tompkins (1945), Regina Vater (1943), Marianne Wex (1937-2020), Hannah Wilke (1940–1993), Martha Wilson (1947), Francesca Woodman (1958–1981), Nil Yalter (1938), Jana Želibská (1941).

that other world, the world of the teapot. tenderness, a model

Kestner Gesellschaft, Hannover
25. Juni - 25. Sept. 2022

https://www.kestnergesellschaft.de

FLOWERS! Blumen in der Kunst des 20. und 21. Jahrhunderts

30.April bis 25.September 2022
Museum Ostwall, Dortmund

https://www.dortmunder-u.de

Flowers in the art of the 20th & 21st century

Rendezvous mit der Sammlung

21.05.2022 – 05.02.2023
LANDESGALERIE NIEDERÖSTERREICH, Krems

https://www.lgnoe.at

Rendezvous with the Collection
Art from 1960 to today