Wednesday, September 7, 2016

Judy Chicago at CAPC


(link)

"Why Not Judy Chicago?" answered by what appeared as Chicago's essentialist conservatism against more radical notions of gender performativity and less explicitly "feminine" imagery that seemed to only entrench gender roles in reacting to and thus confirming the overt power structure's definitions rather than just stepping aside, the same way many queer theorists rejected "Same-sex Marriage"* as simply the hetero-patriarchy asking a subaltern community to conform or perish, adopt its structures for its community or be forever exiled, like no one had read Adorno. That some women didn't want to be reduced their genitalia. Of course that was how it all appeared, and in hindsight Chicago's expressions of femininity - however they bent around the forms of stereotypical gender-roles - were still pretty radical expressions in their unironic brash political insistence of the "feminine" even if some were uncomfortable with imagery emanating lots of waves symbolizing the feminine ethereal power of "woman" sort of like you have op-eds in the NYT from feminist moms expounding their schizo position of raising daughters who demand to wear pink, our reactionary uncomfort to anything resembling gender roles, having become today's "not that there's anything wrong with that."

* What a fucking name.


See too: Lily van der Stokker at Koenig & Clinton