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IA&A at Hillyer is proud to feature a series of newly selected DC area artists during the months of March, April, July, and August. This special group of rising artists were selected from an annual call for proposals that began in 2020. This month we are featuring artists Noah McWilliams, Mary Baum, and Liz Vorlicek. You can find more information about these artists here. 

Fleishig, Hidden Creatures, and Poetry in Still Life will be on view at Hillyer until March 27th, 2022.

When were you first approached by Hillyer to exhibit your work?

Noah McWilliams. Seed. 2020. video. dimensions variable.

What is the meaning behind the body of work currently on view and how is it similar and/or different from your other works?  

Mary Baum. Creature III. 2019. wood. 18 x 36 x 14 inches.

If there was one thing you would like visitors to remember after seeing your exhibition, what would it be?  

Vorlicek

Elizabeth Vorlicek. Our Shared Abundance. 2021-2022. Porcelain, stoneware, cone 10 reduction, cone 6 and cone 04 oxidation, found objects, mixed media. 52 x 108 x 24 inches.

What plans or ideas do you have for the future? 

by Timothy Brown

There is a widely-held notion that art should not be informed by politics. In this view, politics is seen as propaganda that undermines the integrity of art, which should rise above practical concerns of the state. Reality Check, an exhibition of work by Anna U Davis, challenges this perception by embracing their interconnection. As Davis states:

“Art serves a dual purpose for me. It is a vehicle to express my socio-political views and a coping mechanism.”

For Davis, this duality involves her subjectivity, working through traumatic experiences, coupled with a keen sense of the objective conditions that impact our lives on a systemic level. Her dialectical approach to art therefore begins with an awareness of art and politics as a “perceived” contradiction, which (ultimately) is a false dichotomy that must be overcome through direct action—most importantly, through her art. As Karl Marx once remarked about dialectical materialism:

“The philosophers have interpreted the world, the point however is to change it.”

Anna U Davis. Diffusion of Responsibility, 2021, acrylic, ink pen and cut paper collage on canvas 74 X 147 inches

Davis addresses the passivity and indifference that hinder human action in her monumental work Diffusion of Responsibility. “Diffusion of responsibility” is a sociopsychological phenomenon whereby an individual assumes that other people are responsible for taking necessary action. The work contains 36 of her signature Frocasian characters, all rendered with gray-toned skin inspired by her interracial marriage. These gray tones unite them in their common humanity, yet each figure is a floating signifier, conceptually tied to their existential moorings, yet revealing a degree of “slippage” that leaves their unique situations in flux. Rather than be anchored to a resolute state of being, they function as dyadic “signs” that embody decision and indecision. Collectively, the paintings engender a process of signification (semiosis), as the “diffusion of responsibility” passes from one subject to the next. The irreducibility of each representation suggests that any one of these “personas” can be us as well.

By inviting us to acknowledge the implications of our actions, Davis offers a feminist critique of society—one that illuminates the complex relationship between our individual struggles and larger issues, such as gender inequality, racial discrimination, and climate change. In other words, “the personal is political.” By placing her art at the intersection of these three societal challenges, Davis echoes views held by other feminists, such as bell hooks, who articulated the interconnection of race, class, and gender by what she termed the “white-supremacist-capitalist-patriarchy.” As hooks explained:

“I wanted to have some language that would actually remind us continually of the interlocking systems of domination that define our reality and not to just have one thing be like, you know, gender is the important issue, race is the important issue…”

Anna U Davis. Shark-cuteri, 2016. acrylic, ink pen and cut paper collage on canvas. 72 x 96 inches.

Another work informed by Davis’s own tripartite model of feminist critique is Shark-cuteri. The painting features a reclining nude woman whose body parts are labeled like slabs of meat. The limbs of this figure are like cut-out appendages reminiscent of commodity fetishism. Four male figures with voracious appetites loom over her fragmented and dehumanized body as they partake of this display of meat and female flesh. As discussed earlier in Notes on the Female Gaze, this depiction speaks to a long tradition of patriarchal sensibilities that serve to normalize the male gaze while objectifying women for pleasure and consumption. Normally, the male gaze is hidden, but Davis artfully dissects for us a hyperreal vision of her body, giving visceral form to the psychological and ideological underpinnings of these projections. The sexualized nature of this tradition is thereby extended into the marketplace, revealing the dual manner in which the objectification of women is perpetuated by sexism and capitalism.

Anna U Davis, Biosphere, 2021, acrylic, ink pen, pumice and cut paper collage on canvas, 72 x 72 inches

The conceptual depth of Davis’s work is vividly defined by her strong command of multimedia and the ingenious techniques by which she renders her subjects. Similar to what Clemente Greenberg called the “self-critical” tendency in modernist painting, Davis’s technical facility spurs her to push the boundaries of her art, leading to surprising results. For example, you may notice that the glossy surfaces of her work give the illusion of having been painted on glass rather than on canvas; this involves a technique of adding varnish to each layer or application. When viewed as dyadic signs, these glossy surfaces provide a window/mirror effect. For instance, in her work Biosphere, which addresses climate change, what appears as a “window” into a picturesque and timeless landscape (reminiscent of Claude Lorrain) also functions as a “mirror” that compels us to look at our own reflection and consider the temporality of our existence, as well as the consequences of what may happen if we do not take climate change seriously.

The works of Anna U Davis offer a wealth of beauty unto themselves, but are also invitations to look, think, and act. Through a process of imaginative identification, viewers can connect to each painting subjectively and enjoy their unique aesthetic virtues, while never losing sight of the urgent social conditions that impact us all—regardless of race, class, gender, sexual orientation, region, or country of origin.

by Timothy Brown, Hillyer Director

The exhibition She Says, Her Story: Contemporary Women Artists from Taiwan, is an eye-opening tribute to the female gaze. The exhibition’s curator, Yu-Chuan TSENG, notes that during the nineteenth century, female artists were defined as “women in the bedroom.” This patriarchal view of the “male gaze” depicts women as passive rather than active, objects rather than subjects. In his analysis of European paintings, John Berger noted how this active/passive dichotomy is deeply rooted in Western art: “Men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at” (Ways of Seeing, 1972). The feminist theorist Laura Mulvey found the same binary structure in cinematic representations, which places women in an asymmetrical power relationship that constructs pleasure for the male viewer:

Woman then stands in patriarchal culture as a signifier for the male other, bound by a symbolic order in which man can live out his fantasies and obsessions through linguistic command by imposing them on the silent image of woman still tied to her place as bearer, not maker, of meaning. (Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, 1975)

These perspectives are informed by Sigmund Freud’s notion of scopophilia (the pleasure in looking), Lacques Lacan’s concept of the “mirror stage” (when one’s reflection becomes a substitute, or “misrecognition,” of the other), and the French concept of the “flâneur,” which places the male subject in the position of the all-seeing eye, yet remaining invisible: “The spectator is a prince who everywhere rejoices in his incognito” (Charles Baudelaire, “The Painter of Modern Life,” 1863). In summary, patriarchy establishes the male gaze as a normative way of seeing the world, grounded in a symbolic universe that objectifies women, while marginalizing female voices.

Trinh T. Minh-Ha offers a similar critique of this tradition in the context of Asian women and the binary trap that binds them:

In the realm of dualities where blinding brilliance is opposed to mysterious luminosity, or to use Taoist terminology, where the logic of conscious knowledge is set against the wisdom of real knowledge, she finds no place she can simply dwell in or transgress. (When the Moon Waxes Red,” 1991)

What does the term “female gaze” mean in the context of a patriarchal tradition? Some argue that the “female gaze” and the feminist interventions set out to overturn the canon which has defined our traditions and values.

What does the term “female gaze” mean in the context of a patriarchal tradition?

Norma Broude and Mary Garrard suggest that the goal is not to replace but to expand the discourse about art and gender representation, without resorting to “binary thinking” and “refusing to be trapped by theoretical absolutes” so characteristic of patriarchal culture (“The Expanding Discourse: Feminism and Art History,” 1992). Based on these insights, the “female gaze” is recognized as a way to expand how we see things, informed by a diversity of perspectives that are rich in subjective, historical, cultural, and intergenerational complexity.

Similarly, She Says, Her Story represents a collection of visual narratives by six contemporary female artists from Taiwan that supersede monolithic views of the male gaze by offering intergenerational stories that navigate and investigate the boundaries between reality and imagination, history and myth, past and present, and loss and recovery. These intersections enable female artists to explore freely the vicissitudes of time and space, to recover from loss, to share private moments publicly, and to reclaim the memory of the shamed and the forgotten. As Trinh T. Minh-Ha suggests, this in-between space can be empowering:

A trajectory across variable praxes of difference, her (un)location is necessarily the shifting and contextual interval between arrested boundaries. (“When the Moon Waxes Red,” 1991)

Among the six artists in the exhibition, Wen-Jen DENG weaves together migratory maps that explore her aboriginal roots in Taiwan and the intersection of history (“The Rover Incident”), myth, and legend. Ping-Yu PAN creates an installation of “family recipes” that serve as mythical archetypes and visual signs of love and healing. Ya-Lan YU uses woodcuts to capture indelible impressions of her mother, Madame Chung, who is no longer with us, yet whose persistent memory remains in the family and friends she represents. I-Chun CHEN uses video animations and arresting music to uncover the real and imagined life of her grandmother, Wang Shih, who was abandoned by an elite family, yet whose memory endures amid conflicting narrative accounts. Jui-Hung NI creates colorful light boxes that explore the intersection of ancient Chinese goddesses (notably Xiwangmu) and women of the Internet, inspirational guides that connect across time to support women and their aspirations. And Yi-Hsin TZENG takes us on a journey with Miss Circle and the Triangle, adopting the classic technique of cun (wrinkles) to show how landscapes (in the tradition of Chinese scrolls) emerge from the crevices of our memories and imagination.

As Trinh T. Minh-Ha suggests, these intervals function as a “safe space” in which to speak the unspeakable, a positionality that is reinforced by strong emotional connections and boundless love. As the curator, Yu-Chuan TSENG, concludes:

I feel that women always deeply integrate their emotion into the creative and research process. In the process of creation, they devote themselves into the story with love. They show compassion when they observe. Watch their works. You can feel not only the dedicated observation ability, but the meticulous creative skills and abundant emotion. They are not only telling a story, but also responding to the subject and their life experiences.

Timothy Brown

Hillyer Director

She Says, Her Story: Contemporary Women Artists from Taiwan will be on view at the Hillyer from November 6 through December 19. The exhibition is sponsored by the Ministry of Culture, Republic of China (Taiwan), and coordinated by International Arts & Artists, INFODATE Association (Taiwan Information, Design, Technology, and Education Association), and Taiwan Academy.