WOMEN in the CITY

"Women in the City" is a viral public art exhibition spread throughout the streets of Los Angeles that will start in February 2008.

The work of four seminal women artists, who began to emerge... more >

"Women in the City" is a viral public art exhibition spread throughout the streets of Los Angeles that will start in February 2008.

The work of four seminal women artists, who began to emerge on the international art scene at the beginning of the '80s within the feminist movement, will penetrate the urban and social geography of the city.

Jenny Holzer, Barbara Kruger, Louise Lawler and Cindy Sherman disseminate their work in various locations in on-the-road billboards, video screens, storefronts, a movie theater and even propagation through widely distributed stickers.

Why "Women in the City"? One of the fundamental achievements of the historical feminist movement was the appropriation of the streets: thousands of women were invading the cities of the western world fighting for their rights. Now that those rights have been asserted and women have begun to fully permeate and influence politics, culture and the art system, "Women in the City" can showcase the art of women in empowered position. < less

Early in her career, Holzer began to use text to manipulate the language of pop culture. She developed slogans that were... more >

Early in her career, Holzer began to use text to manipulate the language of pop culture. She developed slogans that were appropriated from common colloquialisms. Truisms, a series started in 1977, were constructed deliberately to challenge the viewer to question the blank-faced consumption of stereotypes. Statements such as, "Men are not monogamous by nature," and "Enjoy yourself because you can't change anything anyway" invaded the city in a variety of media, such as posters pasted anonymously within the public sphere, oftentimes alongside works by graffiti legends. Later, she developed texts that were displayed on LED screens and projected onto buildings, transforming the street into a canvas for ideas, and confronting the audience with the status quo.

The Survival Series (started in 1983) is a set of aggressive phrases meant to propel the passive viewer into an act of questioning. Slogans such as, "The beginning of the war will be secret," "The future is stupid," and "Men don't protect you anymore," were printed on stickers that were widely distributed by hand to a common audience meant as a form of propaganda.

In Inflammatory Essays (1979-82), Holzer olzer wrote texts that were influenced by major political figures such as Emma Goldman, Mao Tse-Tung, and Vladimir Lenin. Inflammatory Essays were pasted on walls as posters throughout heavily populated areas of the city.

"Women in the City" conceives of contemporary Los Angeles as a site for the recontextualization of Holzer's political language within the social framework of the city because of its developing areas, its unique sprawl and the diverse cultures that inhabit it. To affect the topographical and social landscape both aesthetically and politically, "Women in the City" has taken into consideration the dense layers of ethnicities that reside within the megalopolis. Inflammatory Essays will be dispersed in both English and Spanish throughout all areas of the city in order to appeal to a prominent Latin American demographic. Posters will be placed in storefronts, alongside advertisement billboards and in pedestrian areas. Truisms occupy citywide LED screens, banners, and marquees. Survival Series are distributed as stickers throughout Los Angeles clubs, shops and will also be inserted into the LA Weekly on February 14. < less

Kruger's work emerged in the late 1970s, in an era that developed ideologies now considered postmodern, when... more >

Kruger's work emerged in the late 1970s, in an era that developed ideologies now considered postmodern, when the idea of the author and originality were debated and artists began to appropriate and deconstruct images already in circulation.

Kruger, having initially worked for Condé Nast publications as head designer at Mademoiselle magazine, buttressed a visual language informed by advertising. Reproducing the codes of mass media in an attempt to expose and disable them, she focused on the deconstruction of stereotypes and clichés through the pairing of images with text. For example, the sentence, "Your gaze hits the side of my face" is superimposed over an image of a female portrait head. In so doing, she forces us to question the stereotypes embedded within advertising, most often related to gender.

To further deploy methods of advertising as counter-propaganda, Kruger's work is not only shown in galleries and museums internationally but also appears within the mainstream, in public spaces such as bus stops and billboards. For "Women in the City," the artist has created a new work, Plenty (2008), with texts in a short sequence that deconstructs stereo- types of consumerism, such as spirituality and identity. The video uses seductive, recognizable images under the guise of advertising to address habits typical of Angeleno drivers, commuters, and consumers and to inject a public art piece into a space where it may be confused with advertisement.

Plenty is being screened in three different high-traffic areas citywide. The first is installed on a video billboard on the top tier of LACMA West, visible from Fairfax and 6th Street. The video is also visible on two preexisting electronic billboards on Sunset Blvd in West Hollywood, screened in fragments between actual advertisements. < less

Lawler's most renowned photographic work questions how an artwork becomes historicized, by capturing... more >

Lawler's most renowned photographic work questions how an artwork becomes historicized, by capturing the social framework that surrounds it. She photographs the works of other artists as they are displayed within private collections and museums, re-presenting the work through photography in a way that exposes the institutional context that gives the artwork its value.

Birdcalls, a sound piece from 1972/1981, mocked the inequity between male and female representation in the art market of the time. By recreating the phonetic pronunciation of the names of male artists as sounds that mimicked the cry of birds, Lawler transformed surnames synonymous with success into mating calls.

"Women in the City" restages Birdcalls at the Huntington Botanical Gardens in San Marino. The installation, normally shown in galleries or museums, is recontextualized within a natural environment where it is concealed by the institution that frames it. By deliberately displacing the installation within a simulated natural setting controlled by culture (such as a botanical garden), the work throws into question the power an artist retains when set outside of the museum.

A Movie will be shown without the picture, originally presented at the Aero Theater in Santa Monica in 1979, was an appropriation of a feature film. The film was screened as sound only. The intent was to withdraw the archetypal feminine image from the picture in order to suspend the satisfaction of visual pleasure and assert that the general gaze was a male gaze. Now, "Women in the City" rescreens A Movie will be shown without the picture at its original location, at the Aero Theater, on February 14.

By redisplaying it, "Women in the City" throws into question the legacy of Hollywood's feminine icon. What power does a film retain without an image? Will an audience be satisfied with sound alone, which ultimately brings a greater question to the fore: Is the male gaze still a prevalent power in cinema today? Does contemporary film still rely on woman-as-image to arrest the attention of its viewers? < less

She emerged onto the New York scene in the early 1980s alongside post-feminism and punk, yet her... more >

She emerged onto the New York scene in the early 1980s alongside post-feminism and punk, yet her language voiced through the medium of photography and self-portraiture was so unique that it defied categorization.

Acting as both auteur and subject in her early Untitled Film Stills (1977-1980), Sherman consciously emulated stereotypical roles of women and then reproduced them as excerpts from a film, appropriating the act of looking to transform it into a narrative in which all eyes were on Cindy, but it was Cindy's vision that directed what was to be seen. By casting herself as the object of desire, her work called into question constructs of identity, voyeurism, the role of a woman, and the role of the artist.

Whether using her image as a subject or objects in place of it, Sherman undeniably succeeded in transforming photography of the 21st century into a medium where representation could explore and transgress binaries of gender, sex and power inherent to art of previous generations. Proving mastery over this specific image-language early on allowed her to develop a genre that to this day is all her own.

"Women in the City" installs four images from this series atop billboards scattered citywide to propel art out of the context of the museum and into the public sphere, transforming a once intimate self-portrait as "film still" into an advertisement of the artist as film-legend. Cindy in various poses, as a nameless persona inserted into the history of the "iconville," Los Angeles, to be forever immortalized as post-feminist icon, mistaken for a nameless Hollywood starlet. < less