Feminism Is Politics

Abstract

Feminism is Politics! PRATT MANHATTAN GALLERY NEW YORK CITY SEPTEMBER 28-NOVEMBER 23, 2016 This November, a woman from a major political party was on the American presidential ballot for the first time in history, and pundits predicted that the ultimate glass ceiling would finally shatter. In the words of this candidate's supporters, we would become a "pantsuit nation." During the several weeks prior to this unprecedented election, two news items featuring female protesters showed up in my Facebook feed. One occurred in Rhode Island, where more than three hundred women marched in solidarity for the right to wear yoga pants. The other culminated in Jerusalem, after more than 3,000 Israeli and Palestinian women marched for two weeks in solidarity for peace in the Middle East. The disparity between these two marches was so extreme I felt like I was being punked. A common slogan of second-wave feminists was "The personal is political!"--a catchphrase meant to underscore how a woman's daily life is shaped by the institutions that govern her, and I'm sure there must be a clever cultural theorist out there who could argue that wearing yoga pants is a step toward radicalization. But all I could think was first-world privilege, indeed. Is this what American feminism has come to? So invested in the personal that the right to wear athleisure with impunity is one of the few things that gets women mobilized? As far as I can tell, women have been wearing jeans for more than a quarter of a century, but we're still making three-quarters of a man's dollar. As patriarchy has proved time and time again, wearing pants does not make one politically enlightened, nor a feminist. Olga Kopenkina, curator of the thus timely exhibition Feminism is Politics! might argue that this is a perfect illustration of what American feminism has become--or at least the version of feminism that's visible in the media. As a depoliticized offshoot of the same neoliberalism that exonerates banks and corporations while shifting the blame and burden to the homeowners and the workers, what scholars now term "neoliberal feminism" abandons collective action and the commons for individual responsibility and the marketplace. (1) Not surprisingly, then, this feminism primarily benefits highly educated women who already have surplus capital. These are the women who can afford to "lean in," because a whole host of invisible and poorly paid laborers serve as the human scaffolding for their UCC and Starbucks-laden lives. Their artworld feminist darling is Cindy Sherman because her work affirms their struggles with fashion as a means to female identity. By contrast, the ten female artists--from ten different countries--in Feminism is Politics! look at the lives of those who are the scaffolding: the politically, economically, and socially dispossessed who are at the mercy of neoliberal global capitalism and its heartless, insidious governance. As Kopenkina states, "new" feminists ask, "What are the conditions within global capitalism that inform and reshape feminist concepts, paradigms, and statements in relation to labor, migration, capital, and democracy?" (2) These artists find their answers in the margins, suggesting that it is the very status of living precariously and being overlooked that may engender new ways of navigating the present and provide novel solutions for a more loving and humane future. It is clear that this is a feminism based on action, rather than theory, so it is not surprising that a majority of the works shown here are performance-based. As feminist artists of the 1970s demonstrated, the female body is frequently the site upon which a culture writes its laws and metes out its punishments; for that reason, it is the perfect medium to illustrate governmental domination. One of the most potent of these--despite or perhaps on account of its aesthetic paucity--was Liza Morozova's performance The Mother Russia (2014). …