Gender, Politics & the Politics of Gender

press release: Video art is a type of art that developed in the 1970’s alongside other postmodern art forms, such as performance, body, and feminist art. In addition, video art has an unusually high number of women and LGBTQ artists. As such, video art lent itself well to the themes confronted in this exhibition. In choosing the themes for this exhibition, we wanted to focus on two things that have come to the forefront with the divisive 2016 election and increased prominence of social justice: gender, politics, and how both relate to how society functions.

Working within this framework, we put together a history of video art that deals with topics still applicable to the postmodern world. Among the topics are racialized gender, embodied in Lawrence Andrews’  “An I For An I”, masculinity, confronted in “Stanley”, and political resentment, shown in Max Almy’s energetic, sarcastic “Perfect Leader”. The works are ordered to carry the viewer through emotional highs and lows, with more serious works balancing out works with a sarcastic tone. We hope you come to this showcase of 40 years of video art!

Video Art Night Show List: 

➤Max Almy- Perfect Leader (1983) 4:00 mins

➤Martha Rosler- Semiotics of the Kitchen (1975) 05:30 mins

➤Lawrence Andrews- An I for An I (1987) 18:41 mins

➤Jim Finn- Decision 80 (2003) 10:00 mins

➤Janice Tanaka- Beaver Valley (1980) 06:50 mins

➤Steven Matheson- Stanley (1996) 15:00 mins

➤Mattis Dovier- “XXX- FLIGHT ATTENDANT” (2016) 03:51 mins

Warning: Some images may be offensive or disturbing to viewers.