Art & The Body

I celebrate YOU Hannah!!!!!!



Hannah Wilke (1940-93).
Intra-Venus Series #7, August 18, 1992 (right panel of diptych).
Performalist self-portrait with Donald Goddard.
Chromogenic supergloss print, 47 1/2" x 71 1/2".
Courtesy Ronald Feldman Fine Arts.


Zhang, Huan: 1/2, 1998





Carolee Schneemann. Meat Joy, 1964.

MACLA’s Performance Art Program presents Cabaret Unkempt
In residence from October 5 - 11

In their week long residency made possible with the support of the National Performance Network, Miami-based performance art duo Jennylin Duany and Elizabeth Doud kick things off by leading a series of community workshops related to performance and body-image at the Billy De Frank LBGT Community Center. Later in the week they perform Cabaret Unkempt, an irreverent and satirical theater piece which uses projected media, music, and poetry to explore Duany's Cuban-American background, her body, her self-image and her moving, often hilarious, experiences as a performer of "size" in a culture where size definitely matters. The work offers audiences a voyeur's pleasure of peeping into a world of sensual audacity to explore moments when all of us, regardless of size, must confront our body-trappings and face our deepest insecurities.

The performers ruminate on the bombastic expectations of control, body mass, plastic surgery and self acceptance in a world obsessed with body image. The work surveys the landscape of "unkempt women," and creates a cartography of her body's journey.

The photograph “Untitled (Glass on Body Imprints — Face),” above, made in 1972 by Cuban-American performance artist Ana Mendieta, is one of more than 60 works of art depicting the body or traces of the human figure in the Princeton University Art Museum’s exhibition “Body Memory,”


For most women in the 60's and 70's, being acknowledged as an artist and not a woman artist, was what they worked for... so, what is happening today? Have we truly broken the barrier of gender specificity when defining the artist?

Why does art need to be analyzed as man or woman great? Why can't it be human great?

I ask why does Abramovic choose to make her art about feats of endurance, risk, and self control? pg 219 I am enthralled by her focus and ability to try to have "transcendence through corporeal action." pg 220

The book says, "performance art suggests the transgressive potential of the body as an art medium--" pg 221 Is this symbolic? Challenging and deconstructing gender also?

I was intrigued and disturbed by Hannah Wilkes Intra- Venus. Does Hannah transcend feminism and bring a quality of humanism by baring her soul like this?