Martha Wilson

Martha Wilson

Curated by Martha Wilson and presenting venue's curator

Martha Wilson’s career, spanning forty years, encapsulates the contestations inherent in feminist and socially engaged practices. In her work and throughout her life, Wilson has explored how identity and positioning are not just self-defined or projected, but also negotiated. The complex nature of her work encompasses her activities as an artist, creating conceptually-based performances, videos, and photo-text compositions since the early 1970s; her position as the founder and director of the non-profit space Franklin Furnace; her collaboration with other women to form the group, DISBAND; and her key role in jump-starting the activist feminist art group, the Guerrilla Girls. Wilson’s attitude to collaboration and openness to constantly redefining both personal and collective identities make her a central figure with which to collaborate on producing a series of exhibitions that selectively mine the various experimental practices, writings and shifting perspectives to explore current attitudes toward feminism, activism, and collaborative practice.

Written into and out of art history according to the theories and convictions of the time, Wilson first gained attention through Lucy Lippard, who contextualized her early work within the parameters of conceptual practice as well as among other women artists. A year later, in 1974, Wilson was denounced by Judy Chicago after a performance organized by Womanspace in Los Angeles for “irresponsible demagoguery.” She has also been regarded by many as prefiguring some of Judith Butler’s ideas on gender perfomativity though her practice, and more recently, in the words of the art critic, Holland Cotter, she was described as one of “the half-dozen most important people for art in downtown Manhattan in the 1970’s.”

This exhibition has been conceived to facilitate intensive collaborations between the curator(s) at each presenting institution and Martha Wilson. Working from the foundation of objects selected first by curator Peter Dykhuis in conversation with Wilson, each new curator is invited to select from this initial body of works, which provide an overview of the three overlapping stages of Wilson’s career, including a) explorations of her early solo photographic work; b) performance activities in New York, and c) thirty projects drawn from the Franklin Furnace archive, including a rich and compact body of documentation (videos, photographs, announcements, publications, and flyers) of projects by Eric Bogosian, Willie Cole, Jenny Holzer, Tehching Hsieh, Barbara Kruger, Louise Lawler, Ana Mendieta, Shirin Neshat, Dan Perjovschi, William Pope.L, Martha Rosler, and William Wegman, among many others.

Martha Wilson will work with curators of the presenting institutions to further explore ways in which identity and contested histories can be presented in the context of their local constituencies and according to each venue’s programming priorities. Martha will go to the institutions, work with the curator to select works from her own history and that of Franklin Furnace, as well as selecting works from the museum’s collection, or archive, or working with people in that community to develop an exhibition that explores the nature of visibility, or of what feminism means now, or the role of activist, socially engaged practice; the thematic focus will be determined by the local curator in discussion with Wilson. The size of each presentation will depend on space allotted by each venue, and works to be included will result from the conversations and selections made.

AVAILABLE January 2011 through 2012
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Martha Wilson, Martha Wilson as Barbara Bush, 1991

Artists

Martha Wilson and others

Additional Images

Martha Wilson, from A Portfolio of Models, 1974

Guerrilla Girls, Guerrilla Girls Review the Whitney, 1987

Martha Wilson, Posturing: Male Impersonator (Butch), 1973

Lisa Oppenheim, The Sun is Always Setting Somewhere Else…, 2006

Kelley Walker, Andy Warhol and Sonny Liston Fly on Braniff (When you got it-flaunt it), 2005-2007

Amanda Ross-Ho, Camera (Aerial View), 2008

Michael Patterson-Carver, Waiting for Obama, 2008

Raymond Pettibon, The Circle Jerks at The Fleetwood / Sat May 10, 1980

Raymond Pettibon, Black Flag at the Mabuhay / Fri Feb 27 / Sat Feb 28, 1981

Various fliers and zines from Raymond Pettibon: The Punk Years, 1978-86

Joseph Beuys, aus / from Saltoarte (aka: How the Dictatorship of the Parties Can Overcome), 1975 (printed bag)

Letter from Robert Morris, "Regarding Documenta V," Flash Art, May-June 1972

Installation view at Specific Object, New York

People's Biennial Blog

The People's Biennial blog follows and documents Harrell Fletcher and Jens Hoffmann's visits to Portland (OR), Scottsdale (AZ), Rapid City (SD), Winston-Salem (NC), and Haverford (PA), as the curators explore each community to conduct research, participate in lectures and roundtable discussions, and ultimately select works by local, non-established artists for the two year touring exhibition.

Visit the blog HERE

Touring Schedule

The DeVos Art Museum, Northern Michigan University

Marquette, Michigan
January 19, 2009 - March 30, 2009

The Ronna and Eric Hoffman Gallery of Contemporary Art, Lewis & Clark College

Portland, Oregon
September 11, 2008 - December 12, 2008

Joseloff Gallery, Hartford Art School, University of Hartford

Hartford, Connecticut
April 4, 2008 - June 10, 2008

Museum London

London, Ontario, Canada
January 5, 2008 - March 16, 2008

Richard E. Peeler Art Center, DePauw University

Greencastle, Indiana
September 14, 2007 - December 2, 2007

Contemporary Arts Center

Cincinnati, Ohio
May 5, 2007 - July 15, 2007

Smith College Museum of Art

Northampton, Massachusetts
February 2, 2007 - April 15, 2007

University Art Museum, California State University Long Beach

Long Beach, California
November 1, 2006 - December 17, 2006

Museum of Arts & Design

New York, New York
February 2, 2006 - May 7, 2006

Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago

Chicago, Illinois
October 6, 2005 - January 15, 2006

Related Events

Technical Specs