<nettime> Housework, Gender, Subjectivity: Cultures of Domesiticity

[Molly Hankwitz <mollyhankwitz@gmail.com>]

*****************

Exhibition opening

Housework, Gender and Subjectivity: Cultures of Domesticity*
*Monday, October 29th, 2012 through November*
(See Reynolds Gallery website for map, dates, details)

*Opening reception*, 6:30pm in the Gallery, (on going after the panel
from 8 - 9pm)
*
Curators and artists panel,* 7 - 8pm, Art History Lecture Hall adjacent to
the gallery

*Where: *The Reynolds Gallery
University of the Pacific,
Stockton, California<http://www.pacific.edu/Academics/Schools-and-Colleges/College-of-the-Pacific/Academics/Departments-and-Programs/Visual-Arts/About/Reynolds-Gallery.html>

*
*
*About the Exhibition:

Housework, Gender and Subjectivity: Cultures of Domesticity* is an
exhibition inspired by the work of feminist media artists working with
issues of spectatorship, self, and identity. The exhibit, curated by
independent scholar/artist/curator, *Molly Hankwitz,* focuses upon
domestic space as site for the investigation of multiple aspects of
gendered subjectivity, from the experience of real women and their
performance as spectacularized subjects to notions of women's place
and our response to patriarchal, psychological and social oppression.

Across cultures, the role of the wife, the daughter, and duties of
domestic labor within the household from cleaning to cooking to
childcare and sex are frequently expected from women. In dominant
western media, especially commercial advertising working to maintain a
status quo, the stereotype of the perfect "housewife", her duties and
commitment to products remains a powerful ideology despite progress in
feminism to speak alternatives. This stereotype has been the object of
significant comment and critique for women artists in the history of
art.

*Housework, Gender and Subjectivity: Cultures of Domesticity *brings
together a group of contemporary feminist artists who dig into the
gendered emotional, experiential and psychosocial domestic realms
attached to 'house' and idealized versions of womanhood. The artists
examine domestic labor and women's place within it. Guest curator
and published feminist, Molly Hankwitz brings together borders and
boundaries of domestic space where stereotypes and the spectacle of
domestic labor can be revisited as an art historical idea.

*Installation, video and new media on view* * Maria Ezcurra's*
art is both humorous and sharply critical of domestic work, the
universalization of housewife imagery vis a vis global media,and
the oppression of Latin American women. *Perfect Housewife's
Wardrobe*(2008)is a series of large photographs in which the artist
enacts scenes from the patriarchal home. In *Liminal Beings** *(2011)
partly embodied household technologies are petite collage works made
from magazine and mailer images collected by the artist.

*Annetta Kapon's* art looks at womens'labor in the form of a
non-traditional installation,* Cornucopia* (2010) made from baguettes,
womens' clothing, and a plastic laundry basket which literally spills
forth from the corner of the gallery in an act of nurture and giving.
The work suggests a delicately controlled, even silent, at home and
alone, notion of women's labor which speaks to the private realm of
the household.

*Heidi Kumao's* Cinematic Machines, *Holding Pattern *(1999) and *Kept
*(1993) are glimpses of cinema and memory. Comprised of zoetropes,
projectors, screens, a child's chair, and small coffee table, these
pieces explore repetition and scale, use cinematic conventions and
ordinary furniture to express the psychoanalytic dimensions of gender.

*Annie Abrahams' *new media work,* Domestic Dancing* (2007), designed
for the computer screen in html and with sound files, contrasts
artistic pleasure with conventional domestic work to suggest
transformation in historic time for women artists.

*A selection of videos* which use household objects, food, household
materials, domestic sounds and elements of cinema to explore gender
and domestic space will loop.

*Featuring:*

*Perry Bard *- videos
*The Kitchen Tapes*, 2011, 3:55, color
*Secure Dining*, 2011, 4:42, color

*Evelin Stermitz* - video
*Hitchcock Dishing*, 2008,1:17, color

*Yin Ju Chen*- video
*Recycle System 1*, 2002, 2 min, color

*Annetta Kapon* - video
*Photography Lesson*, 1990, 7:00, color
*
Curator's and artists' panel, 7 - 8pm* in the Art History Lecture Hall
adjacent to the gallery. Exhibition curator Molly Hankwitz leads a panel
discussion on work in the exhibit with housework and domestic space as
topic in art, domestic materials and domesticating ideas in women's art
practices. Panel presented with artists Annetta Kapon and Heidi Kumao in
person!

*Participating artists' websites and additional links:*

*Annie Abrahams*http://www.bram.org/
*Perry Bard*http://www.perrybard.net/
*Yin-Ju Chen*http://www.yinjuchen.com/
*Maria Ezcurra*http://www.mariaezcurra.com/
*Annetta Kapon*http://www.annettakapon.com/
*Heidi Kumao*http://heidikumao.net/
*Evelin Stermitz*http://evelinstermitz.nethttp://artfem.tv

*Molly Hankwitz* and *Annetta Kapon* live
The Womens' Magazine <http://pcrcollective.org/?page_id=154>
Mutiny Radio <http://pcrcollective.org>,
Friday, October 19th, 1:30pm
*
Images: *

Cornucopia detail, Kapon
Holding Pattern, Kumao
Domestic Mythologies, Ezcurra
Still from Photography Lesson, Kapon

For 300 dpi images for print, or full image credit details, please
contact:mollyhankwitz@gmail.com
<https://fulvetta.riseup.net/sm/src/compose.php?send_to=mollyhankwitz%40gmail.com>

*Many thanks to Reynolds Gallery, Reynolds Gallery
board, Gender Studies, Film Studies, and Art History Departments of the
University of the Pacific for their support.*


-- 

*Molly Hankwitz *lives in San Francisco, California where she is a
researcher, writer, artist, and curator of new technologies and
experimental media. She was the principal research architect in the now
completed ad hoc design and research collaboration, Archimedia, (with David
Cox) from 1998 to 2007 and has worked at numerous festivals including Ars
Electronica, Multimedia Arts Asia Pacific and electronfringe festival in
Newcastle, Australia. In 2010, she co-curated the open wireless and
locative media arts exhibition, citycentered.org and in 2011, completed a
Ph.D. in Media and communications from Queensland University of Technology.
She is interested in networked political dimensions of social technologies
and questions of aesthetics and history in electronic media.
http://mollyhankwitz.org





-- 

            "The artist cannot and must not take anything for granted, but
must drive to the heart of every answer and expose the question the answer
hides."


James Baldwin

mollyhankwitz.org


*
*


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