Contemporary feminist art

Hysteria has returned. We are witnessing a hysterical turn in the twenty-first century. In this chapter I will lay out preliminary thoughts on the relationship between hysteria and patriarchy. In particular, the interest is on a new and emergent form of hysteria activism in current feminism. This hysteria activism is a critical reaction to today's patriarchal misogyny and its widely spread ideology of hate. Weaving together observations on the multiple crises of our time and its politics of mass hysteria with the knowledge of etymology and insights into histories of hysteria as they are of importance to building an understanding for the new phenomenon of hysteria activism, the structure of this chapter builds on the historic legacy of the wandering womb. Historically, the idea of the womb, hystéra, wandering in the body was behind the notion of hysteria. This dates back to Ancient Greek medical thought and to practices in demonology. Such a wandering approach allows for me to connect our hysterical moment today to other, much earlier hysterical moments as they have been recorded in history.1 Wandering is borrowed from hysteria's history. The medical legacy of hysteria is firmly tied to the attack. Hysteria was understood as a form of attack on body and mind. French nineteenth-century neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot famously described and detailed the different phases of the hysteric attack.2 Here, attack is understood both as the attack suffered from patriarchy, which results in the diagnosis of hysteria, and the attack performed by hysteria which effectively exposes the traumas and wounds inflicted by patriarchy. Seen like this, the hysteric is both victim and agent of the attack. While wandering is behind the structure of this chapter, the attack serves as its motivation for analysis. The dual nature of the attack, tied to medical history just as much as to military history, is of interest. The attack, paradoxically, is therefore at once unplanned for and strategically prepared and planned out, unwanted and deliberate. The attack is also borrowed from hysteria's history, yet the motivation of this chapter is firmly rooted in the our present day and age. Structured in three

In 1968, Judy Chicago worked on a number of dome-shaped sculptures, each consisting of three acrylic hemispheres arranged symmetrically on a square surface. Made with new industrial materials and techniques, works such as Iridescent Domes #2 and Bronze Domes fit within the formal-aesthetic discourse of Minimal art. During the 1970s, Chicago and feminist critics positioned these sculptures—characterized by round forms and evanescent colors—as unconscious expressions of what they conceived as a feminine sensibility, which they opposed to the angular and cold language favored by male, Minimalist artists. This article argues that Chicago’s dome-shaped works were protofeminist due to their associations not with traditionally female forms but with contemporary engineering structures. I show that Chicago’s hemispherical sculptures, and her Minimal art more generally, referenced civil engineering projects at the forefront of technological innovation that were thought to advance human society and improve living standards for all. I thus expand the concept of protofeminism beyond notions of radical subjectivity, as theorized for art made by women during the 1960s, to a broader sociopolitical attitude intent on building a more just world. Interpreting Chicago’s Minimalist sculptures within the historically specific context of engineering, however, associates them with Western ideologies of modern progress that since the late 1960s have been questioned, reformulated, or discarded. Indeed, from the perspective of second-wave feminism, these ideologies not only seemed out-of-date but morally objectionable. The article reveals both the promises and pitfalls of Chicago’s techno-aesthetic, protofeminist practice.

Working to achieve gender, sexual, and racial equality in museum staffing,
collections, and programming is an important political and pragmatic
response to the continued, pervasive inequalities and structural
discriminations within the societies of which museums are a part. It is
fully appropriate that museums, which are associated with the fostering
of public values as well as knowledge and heritage, are scrutinised in relation to their equality practices. Recent examples of such investigations
have consistently demonstrated that women and other minoritised groups
continue to be disadvantaged in their representation and progression in museum organisations (Reilly 2015; Dymond 2019). Although museums are associated with a progressive social activity that seeks to share the advantages of knowledge and enjoyment throughout society, we are faced with stark evidence of the continued unequal status of women, people of colour, and LGBTQI+ identified individuals in the museum and heritage sectors. Why such progressive institutions should still be
haunted by unjust and outdated social segregation is a conundrum that suggests that there are deep and structural causes of museum inequality.

What happens when feminist activism turns art making into social practice? What happens when feminist conversations, at once joyful, contentious, conflictual, and generative, are being cared for through curatorial practice that mobilizes the archives of ephemeral, art-enabled conversations? Feminist artists of the 1970s concerned with developing a radical critique of heteropatriarchy used dinner parties and conversations for artistic exploration. The Dinner Party by artist Judy Chicago is the best-known example harnessing the representational power of a dinner party. Much less known is The International Dinner Party by Suzanne Lacy, who invited “sisters” around the world to hold dinner parties simultaneously on March 14, 1979 to create “a network of women-acknowledging-women”. This exemplar of feminist social practice rooted in activism is the starting point for this book. Feminist curatorial thought connects the archive of The International Dinner Party conversations to emerging archives of present-day conversations addressing feminist and queer-feminist politics tied to different histories, ideologies, and geographies. The present-day archives of conversations include Aktion Arkiv (addressing migratory realities in Sweden), radical practices of collective care (addressing caring labour conditions transnationally), Red Min(e)d (addressing the post-Yugoslav context), and Queering Yerevan (addressing local-diasporic Armenian realities).

מהי אמנות יהודית־פמיניסטית וכיצד היא תורמת למרחבי האמנות,
החברה והדת? הספר ביקורת נאמנה מציע מסגרת תיאורטית
להבנת אופייה, דרכי פעולתה ותרומתה של תנועת האמנות היהודית
הפמיניסטית הדתית, אשר התפתחה מאז סוף שנות התשעים של
המאה העשרים בשני המרכזים היהודיים הגדולים — ישראל וארצות
הברית. כמחקר ראשון מסוגו הוא עוסק באופן רחב ושיטתי באמנות
זו ודן בביקורתה כלפי המסורת היהודית, ההלכה והמוסדות היהודיים
הדתיים.
גיבורות הספר הן אמניות מישראל ומארצות הברית המבקרות
ביצירתן את הטקסט הדתי, את הממסד הרבני ואת הריטואלים
היהודיים. יצירותיהן מנותחות לאור האמנות הפמיניסטית הכללית
וההגות היהודית־פמיניסטית ובהשוואה לפרקטיקות אקטיביסטיות, תוך
ניתוח ההתקבלות של היצירות ובחינת הדיונים הציבוריים שהן חוללו.
הספר מראה כיצד האמנות היהודית־פמיניסטית משמשת סדנה
לבחינה חוזרת ונשנית של המסורת, תוך חתירה תחת הבניותיה
הממשטרות וניסיון לעצב אותה מחדש. מה שיכול להיתפס במבט
ראשון כפרובוקציה וכמעשה אנטי־דתי, מתברר במבט בוחן ומעמיק
יותר כעשייה דתית פנימית המכוונת לתיקון. העיון המשולב באמנות
היהודית־פמיניסטית הצומחת בשני המרכזים — ישראל וארצות הברית
— מאיר את ההקשרים המקומיים, את ההתפתחויות הדומות והשונות,
ואת ההשפעות של הגלובליזם, התפוצתיות וההגירה, על האמנות.

Joan Semmel

THE PENNSYLVANIA ACADEMY OF THE FINE ARTS MUSEUM

Joan Semmel's "Skin in the Game" at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts-her first retrospective-evinced a sustained, fearless, and lively studio practice, which the artist has maintained for more than six decades. She joyously examines the body, and often her own.

Baghdad Mem/Wars, a collaborative project by artists Sama Alshaibi and Dena Al-Adeeb, addresses emotional and intellectual concerns surrounding the wars in Iraq and ensuing historical displacements. The series, realized in photography and video, is comprised of three distinct suites that blur the line between art and activism. Alshaibi's and Al-Adeeb's reenactments of the personal signify collective narratives and shared moments. As the artists speak of parallels between their two experiences of leaving Iraq during the Iraq/ Iran war, many viewers will inevitably share their memories. (I am, in fact, reminded of my own emotions during that period.) More importantly, the artists deny viewers their comfort zone, forcing all who watch to reconsider political and cultural decisions or otherwise accept complacency. Baghdad Mem/Wars also explores gender and social issues beyond the wars in Iraq. The two women characters who appear in the videos speak to a multitude of historical and current migratory experiences; personification of wars, loss, and dislocation; while also of melancholia, and at times loss of hope. However , the sheer dynamism of the artists' performances as well as the rhythmic repetition throughout the work counter these feelings and signal hope and perseverance. While their abstract representation of displacement and the neutrality of their spatial constructions signify the universality of the experience, identity subtly permeates the work through various props, including dress and text. The notion of fragmentation (of memory, existence , and experience) to the point of disintegration is very strong in Baghdad Mem/Wars. The three desperate yet related moments chosen for the suites, as well as the duality present in their titles, heightens this feeling of fragmentation. Through the vibrancy of their performances, Alshaibi and Al-Adeeb force these dual spaces and concepts to merge. In Still/Chaos, two iconic figures dressed in black, yet strategically without veils, evoke images of pre-Islamic ritual mourning when women deliberately uncovered their heads and let their hair loose. The artists perform a choreographed dance of agony, where the contrast between their black dresses and white nondescript environment intensifies the tension. The two women are trapped in the same space yet appear isolated; they occasionally touch but never face each other or the viewer. They share and negotiate the dis-location but do not seem to be capable of comforting each other. Alshaibi and Al-Adeeb evoke the poetry of Iraqi icon Nazik al-Malaika in Efface/Remain. The inclusion of al-Malaika, a female poet, further emphasizes the femininity of the project and signifies a happier, more optimistic age. The artists' choice of poem, The Strangers, and the words that are most visible in the video-"the hours have passed"-reference the perceived current cultural amnesia and erasure. While the act of writing attempts to record history, the repetition of the few chosen words over and over signifies an obsessive need to remember or perhaps to cover up a memory rather forgotten. In Islamic ornamentation, repetition mediates harmony and contemplation of the unknown. In Efface/Remain, however, it conveys a sense of foreboding urgency. The superimposed yellow color the artists introduce appears to replicate at first what is written in white chalk, but it quickly begins to reference hiding and forced erasure, thus requiring the act of starting over in perpetuity. In Absence/Presence, the constantly changing horizon line pulls the viewer into the scene as it moves closer and slants, confusing the past and present. A woman (Al-Adeeb) wonders back and forth, alternately disappearing into the horizon and out of the frame, but perpetually coming closer to the viewer. The appearance of Alshaibi to reenact a specific memory (the throwing of water behind Al-Adeeb, which is a cultural superstition performed when loved ones leave wishing them good luck and safe return) implies both absence and the hope of return. The women are dressed in contrasting colors further signifying the binary and duality of the act. Throughout all three suites of Baghdad Mem/ Wars, Alshaibi and Al-Adeeb perform the psychological aspect of dislocation by visualizing and reenacting experiences made distant now by time and geography. Through movements and imagery, they create abstract representations of traumatic visual memories that echo their feelings and position them at once as both victims and witnesses. Ultimately, Baghdad Mem/ Wars reflects on the inexplicable trauma of an entire nation as it comes to terms with the aftermath of war rather than turning away.