Oh Girl, it's a Boy !
Art exhibition in Munich: traditions of the gender debate in contemporary art
In 1991 Judith Butler's book "The discomfort of the sexes" was published by Suhrkamp. In the years up to its second edition recently in 2007 it was built up to a kind of recipe book of the progressive view of the sexes. Judith Butler's core idea is a "performative deconstruction" of gender identity as a theatrical construct within and beyond given standards. The aim is not to deny conventions, but to change these 'deconstructive'.
In 1994, Munich's art assembly opened an exhibition "Oh Boy, It's a Girl" adopting the newly forced gender debates in contemporary art. In addition to a demonstration of the historical feminisms and their traditions in the art of the 60s and 70s primarily the then current anglo-american artistic practices were shown, that were already shaped by concept of the "performative nature of sexual identities and social norms“ and accordingly concentrated on general issues, not specifically concerning the sexuality of women.
Now, about fifteen years later, the exhibition "Oh Girl, it's a Boy!" consults the debates for a critical revision of the subject and its relevance. The Munich's art assembly sees on one hand a successful struggle for recognition and integration, on the other a devaluation of basic concepts such as difference and queerness, and others as product of today's lifestyle-economies.
In this framework, in particular in two specially equipped rooms cinema classics as well as new productions of the experimental Lesbian-and-Gay film are shown. Along with clips by John Cage and Cerith Wyn Evan's film "Pasolini Ostia Remix" (1994) the 13minute long, experimental film about a relationship between the masochistic house employees Hannah Cullwick and their "Massa" Arthur Mumby, who were living around 1860, can be watched. This film, called "Normal Work", a „Normal Work“ stages the relationship in the theatrical milieu of the early, painting-oriented photo studios and develops a kind of parody and genre-based representation of the ancestral roughness of Cullwick. The proletarian impulse and worker's pride, that let Cullwicks self staging perhaps be understandable, is almost violently undermined by the involvement in the belittling tradition of genre painting, as if a horse were forced to sit on a sofa like a house cat.
With an affinity for female roughness, but
beyond the masochism in a fantastic-idealistic relationship, the
Adma-und-Eva variants in Kaucyila Brookes "Tit for Twat"
(1993 onwards). The Los Angeles artist rewrites in her work
consisting of a continuing ensemble of photo-collages the biblical
genesis into a lesbian love story. This is displayed on the screen
and presented by emphatic moderators. „Tit for Twat“, 13
plates in the exhibition, is told in an encouraging fresh and
uncomplicated way, theatrically staged of course, and in a way
monstrous and unilaterally, but otherwise hardly more monstrous than
the traditional narration and like their representations in
historical art accomodated to the art's contemporary scene, perhaps
even used as an instructive instrument.
With completely traditional means and also with entertaining seriousness Ariane Mueller illustrates the book by Anne Cummings' „The Love Habit - The Sexual Confessions of an Older Woman", that was published in 1976 and told about the sexual experiences of a 50 years old woman with very young men. Ariane Mueller depicts a kind of visual summary of the novel in watercolors and pencil drawings. Classic male nudes like the Barberinische Faun or sensational works as the pornographic pictures that once decorated the bedroom of Madame de Pompadour serves as staging the love adventures of Cummings, with the reversal of the age difference, which in the book is not entirely irrelevant, but get some unimportance by Mueller's illustration.
Similarly entertaining, and from the perspective of fidelity to their own ideals John Giorno reports together with Antonello Faretta in a performance of his conviction "Just Say No to Family Values" – this in front of a strikingly mafiotic scenery. John Giorno wurde als Darsteller in Andy Warhols Film „Sleep“ weltbekannt. John Giorno became famous as a player in Andy Warhol's film "Sleep". As a close friend of William Burroughs and Brion Gysin, and also represented in their works in the exhibition, he founded 1968 the Giorno Poetry Systems with these associates.
Danh Vo presents the work "Good
Life" of 2007, that collects older archive material of Vietnam.
A strangely unreflected look at other ethnic groups, shows itself to be indistinct, whether the lens captures visual queerness to sexual behavior conventions based in the opinions and views of the observer or just unbiased observation.
A study of the habits and customs of the Vietnamese rural population, shows for example an archival document with a picture, depicting one of the (indirectly) described people in a randomly sportive and animale-like gesture at the pleasure of a hearty meal. The photography suggests that the process of archiving itself sets preferences, how and what kind of documents confirm to perhaps unconscious intentions of constructing history.
The works of the exhibition's twenty artists or groups of artists of the exhibition show sometimes more, sometimes less stylized context, but always outlines gender performance in everyday life, its culture, reflection, and considering. In fact it is obvious that almost all artists prefer uncomplicated formal means and substantive, non-abstract representations. But however, in the relation to the development of a formal language in the arts they are precisely interesting because of the explicative potential of patterns in classic representation, which they use and develop.
Oh Girl, it's a boy!
Kunstverein München
Galeriestraße 4
80539 Munich
Special events:
06.11., 07 pm: Homotoipia (San Francisco): „Queer/Violence“
20.11., 07 pm: Ninon Liotet & Olivier Schulbaum: "New power, new work (Transcodeur Express)" D 2002, 490 min.
Guidance Tours:
Every Thursday, 07 pm
01 + 15. 11. 07
+ 31. Januar 2008
Opening hours:
Tue-Fri: 12-07 pm
Sa + Sun: 11-06 pm
Admission prices:
Members free
Concessions: € 3, -
Regular: € 5, -
Duration of the exhibition: until 25th november 2007 and opening again at 12nd january 2008 until 10th february 2008.
Report and photos: Dr. Ulrike Ritter