F*ck U! In the Most Loving Way

Catalog cover and logo designed by Priscilla Otani

Catalog interior designed by Karen Gutfreund

Copyright 2017 by Northern California Women’s Caucus for Art

ISBN# 9781976336249

F*ck U! In the Most Loving Way online

F*ck U! In the Most Loving Way

ABOUT NCWCA (SPONSORING ORGANIZATION)

Founded in 1972, Women's Caucus for Art is an affiliate society of the College Art Association and founding partner of the Feminist Art Project. The Northern California Women's Caucus (NCWCA) is one of its earliest chapters, formed in the same year as national WCA. It is one of six California chapters and serves members in San Francisco, East Bay, Marin and all parts of Northern California. Our Mission is to create community through art, education and social activism.

We are committed to:

• Recognizing the contributions of women in the arts

• Providing women with leadership opportunities and professional development

• Expanding networking and exhibition opportunities for women

• Supporting local, national and global art activism

• Advocating for equity in the arts for all

ABOUT ARC

Arc Gallery & Studios features ten artist studios, a 1,000 sq. ft. art gallery, along with the Kearny Street Workshop office, the San Francisco Artist Network office and Vega Café . Arc is located at 1246 Folsom Street, between 8th & 9th streets in San Francisco’s SOMA neighborhood.

Arc supports the making of quality art in all media, provides a nurturing environment for artists to create their work, builds a community of artists to encourage exploration of art, provides resources for the professional development of visual artists, and promotes appreciation of the visual arts in the city of San Francisco.

Visit www.arc-sf.com

EXHIBITIONS CHAIR STATEMENT

Like many projects, the idea for this exhibition was conceived in the process of planting seeds elsewhere. While doing research for a personal project, I became intrigued with Womanhouse, a 1972 exhibition organized by Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro and featuring the works of students in the Fresno State College's Feminist Art Program. The project was notable for being the first feminist art installation and was a groundbreaking exhibition in so many aspects. It gave young female artists the opportunity to talk about hidden or overlooked experiences and greater recognition for the feminist art movement.

I was inspired to both further explore the topics addressed in Womanhouse and expand the voices that were heard there. My experience has been that the recognized voices of feminism have been those of white women, and this was reflected in the makeup of the artists of Womanhouse. What has not been traditionally amplified are the voices and unique experiences of women who are Black, Brown, Trans, Poor, Asian, and women who had lives beyond traditionally defined domesticity. Though I could broadly relate to many of the themes of Womanhouse, many subjects were left to be explored, and I knew that by opening the seats at the table, we would have more to discover. After giving the exhibition further thought, I considered what could be next and who would be involved in a contemporary conversation. I also wanted to ensure that voices that were absent from the 1972 dialogue would be heard today. So in 2016, I suggested to the NCWCA board members that we continue and expand upon the Womanhouse themes. They agreed.

During our initial meeting to discuss the focus of the exhibition, we quickly settled on the title Fuck You! In the Most Loving Way. Understandably, the title of the show met with different responses ranging from rousing approval to disgust, and at times confusion, especially about the use of "In the most loving way." I leave everyone to have their individual interpretations, but I will say that love is at the heart of every struggle for justice and freedom. Without love, no progress is possible. Love pushes back against patriarchy. Love is the promise that follows the “Fuck You.” “In the most loving way” is the warning of the challenge to come.

This exhibition would not have happened without the contributions of the F*ck U! committee members. A special note of recognition to Priscilla Otani and Tanya Augsburg, who worked on nearly every aspect of this project for almost nine months. Also, to Karen Gutfreund for producing this fine publication and leading the exhibition installation. Finally, to my partner, Russell C. Petersen, who provided both input and support. I am ever grateful for the dedication and vision of all of these remarkable women (and man). Thank you.

Leisel Whitlock

ARC GALLERY MANAGING PARTNER STATEMENT

Each year-end, the Arc Gallery partners donate gallery space to a non-profit. In 2016, we invited the Northern California Women’s Caucus for Art (NCWCA) to mount an exhibition. As both a gallery partner and member of the NCWCA board, I was responsible for the smooth operation of the gallery space and participated in the show’s development and administration.

When Exhibition Chair Leisel Whitlock first proposed an activist exhibition that referenced Womanhouse, the NCWCA board members were immediately intrigued. Each of us had an idea of what the exhibition might focus on, but many of us did not know enough about the history of the original Womanhouse. After some readings and viewing Johanna Demetrakas's documentary video, we discussed what the physical possibilities of such an exhibition might be at Arc Gallery. The gallery is not a house as was the original exhibition site of Womanhouse. It is a former industrial space converted into a multi-use building that includes two galleries, artist studios and micro-businesses. This meant that the display and artwork in our main and project galleries could not create an obstacle course or a fire hazard for the tenants. We abandoned the original concept of converting the gallery spaces into separate rooms with two exceptions. The Arc consulting office had its own four walls that could be used as a symbolic room. My studio upstairs was large enough and available to be used as a performance space.

At the first (and only) exhibition committee meeting on June 5, 2016, we made key decisions and agreed to roles that drove the project from beginning to end. This exhibition would explore women's relational roles through racial, cultural and gender perspectives and would be given the provocative title of F*ck U! In the Most Loving Way. This would be a national juried exhibition open to all women; additionally, works of a few featured artists would be included, one or more original Womanhouse artists would be invited, there would be some aspect of community involvement and we would allow for a wide range of media including video and performance. We wanted to have either a professor or gallerist to jury the national submissions, as well as to hire a professional publicist to publicize the show and events, and later to create a comprehensive catalog and documentary video. As the discussion progressed, the exhibition became ambitious. Complexity was added only when an individual committed to owning that added scope. These agreements were critically important because NCWCA is an all-volunteer organization. With less than six months to opening reception, our project would have been disastrous if a key player dropped out or did not meet her commitments.

The F*ck U! project was managed through a project plan. Leisel Whitlock and I developed step by step actions and milestones which were updated and enhanced from time to time. Leisel’s key responsibility was to make sure each committee member met the schedule’s deliverables and deadlines. I also developed a budget and income/expense spreadsheet so that we could track our finances.

Our financial goal was at the minimum, break-even; at best, end up with a small profit. Updating and maintaining this spreadsheet helped us manage unanticipated expenses and income. I trained committee members on exhibition management and our hired publicist trained us on publicity. All committee members met their commitments to the project, which included project management, administration, artist interface, management of featured artists, publicity, financial management, installation and de-installation of gallery, gallery curation, catalog, video, reception logistics, and event logistics. Equally important, we were flexible, assuming multiple roles and assisting others when help was needed.

The community involvement aspect of our project was undefined at the beginning but began to take shape as the project progressed. In the end, we came up with three types of involvement. The first was a response to the Now Be Here project in Los Angeles where more than 700 women artists posed together in a photoshoot by Kim Schoenstadt on August 28, 2016. We decided to hold our own Creating Space photoshoot at Yerba Buena Gardens on October 2, 2016. We invited our members and randomly posted a call on Facebook for Bay Area artists to show up and be photographed. About 33 artists came, and committee member Mido Lee took the group portrait. This group shot was supplemented by selfies of women outside of the Bay Area and we created a group poster. The second was an invitation by Tanya Augsburg to her students to help videotape and photo-document the opening reception and performance by Emma Sulkowicz and Violet Overn. The third was a performance by Augsburg titled Kitchen Table Talk where the audience was invited to participate in brainstorming and discussion. All of these expanded participation in our exhibition.

This project was a marathon and the committee faced challenges each step of the way. They included negotiating with original Womanhouse artists on their vision of the show vs our vision, the amount of time it took to follow up and manage each juried and featured artist, managing the project on a tight budget and determining when we could/could not allow for scope creep, overcoming a steep learning curve on publicity, providing backup when a committee member could not attend an event or work on the project due to travel, work or family conflicts, finding a venue for our video screenings, performance and Womanhouse reunion, changing the focus and tone of the exhibition when Hillary Clinton did not win the Presidential election, figuring out staffing alternatives when not enough people signed up to volunteer for all of the events, dealing with low attendance on some of our events, and realizing that we would have to cancel our closing panel, reception and party because they coincided with the Women’s Marches all over the country on January 21, 2017. That we worked through them as a collective speaks to how professional and well-organized we were. In the end, we produced F*ck U! In the Most Loving Way, a successful exhibition that was ahead of other anti-Trumpism shows of protest, resistance, and nasty women.

Priscilla Otani

GALLERY CURATOR and EDITOR STATEMENT

I love activist art, and in particular, I love women’s art. It has such a narrative quality that I gravitate towards. The stories, emotion and passion from the artists feed my soul. So, I was pleased and honored to be on the exhibition committee and asked to layout the main gallery and project gallery of the exhibition for F*ck U! In the Most Loving Way. Having created over thirty national exhibitions for women artists individually, with the Women’s Caucus for Art and Gutfreund Cornett Art—the “designing/layout” of the works is by far my favorite part. It’s magical, having all the work together from the group show and then placing it to tell “the story.”

I’m always asked how do I do it? Well, it is a lot of work, takes a good amount of time and one must have the eye for it. I move the works around and around in the room, placing the strongest works in key places to direct the flow around the exhibition space. Group shows can be challenging because the works can be so different and sometimes disparate. But they eventually tell me where they need to be and flow beautifully, telling a remarkable story.

In addition to curating the gallery, I also was the editor for this exhibition catalog. To date I’ve created over 30 exhibition catalogs but this one was an extensive labor of love. Documenting and correctly acknowledging the work, the essays, the exhibition and the programming is so important. The exhibition was up for a month but this catalog will last forever, so to speak.

In regards to activist, feminist art—with this turbulent time of political changes, women's rights, social, racial, gender and economic inequality, and reproductive choice/health care issues—how do we effect positive change through art? How do we listen, speak our minds, include, and act in collaboration or alone across generational differences, races, identities and cultures, to build our future, locally and globally? I think this exhibition spoke eloquently to these subjects. Art can be a powerful, productive force and instrumental in sparking change or critical thinking. As a feminist curator, I am committed to promoting women’s art and supporting local, national, and global art activism. Art can produce a visceral response and can provoke, inspire, or disturb, and opens your eyes to worlds other than your own. While the artist may not consider themselves to be a revolutionary, by bringing to light issues and concerns, art can effect change. We need art that help us to understand what is happening in our society, who we are, where we come from and where we’re going.

Karen Gutfreund

VOLUNTEER and DONOR ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

NCWCA thanks the following individuals and organizations without whose help and support F*ck U! In the Most Loving Way would not have realized its full potential.

Donors

9th Street Independent Film Center, 145 Ninth Street, San Francisco, CA

Homestead, 4029 Piedmont Avenue, Oakland, CA

Kay Kang

Priscilla Otani

SOMA Trader Joe’s, 555 9th Street, San Francisco, CA

Juror

Prof. Shannon Rose Riley

Volunteers

Elizabeth Addison, MGP Andersen, Tanya Augsburg, Dio Chen, Gabriel Docto, Jorge Donate, Kathy FujiiOka, Karen Gutfreund, Josefin Jansson, Rebekah Johnson, Judy Johnson-Williams, Kuo-Chen Kacy Jung, Linda Kattwinkel, Jennifer L. King, Gayle Lorraine, Monica Maser, Chanel Matsunami Govreau, Julie

Mevi, Patricia A. Montgomery, Priscilla Otani, Bryon Roche, Sawyer Rose, Lena Shey, Judy Shintani, Mary Shisler, Kamaljit Singh, Colette Gunter Standish, Yuriko Takata, Jeffrey Thatcher, Victoria Veedell, Leisel Whitlock, Sandra Yagi, Tanya Wilkinson and Michael Yochum.

Consultant

Sally Douglas Arce, Media Relations

Gallery Staff

Tory Antoni

Tamiko Sidori

Zachariah Greer Hauptman

Technicians

Jon Bastian, projectionist, 9th Street Independent Film Center

Mido Lee, videographer & video editor

Tsering Norbu, videographer

F*CK U! EXHIBITION COLLECTIVE

Leisel Whitlock, Exhibitions Chair

Tanya Augsburg, Featured Artist Curator & Programming Chair

Sawyer Rose, PR Chair

Priscilla Otani, Arc Gallery Managing Partner

Karen Gutfreund, Artist Liaison, Gallery Curator & Catalog Editor

Mido Lee, Tech Specialist & Documentarian

Judy Johnson-Williams, Gallery Logistics

Sandra Yagi, Treasurer

Patricia Montgomery, Event Logistics

Elizabeth Addison, Event Logistics

Lena Shey, Volunteer Logistics

F*CK U! VOLUNTEERS & STAFF

F*ck U! Installation

December 13 - 15, 2016

Volunteers: MGP Andersen, Tanya Augsburg, Karen Gutfreund, Josefin Jansson, Judy JohnsonWilliams, Gayle Lorraine, Priscilla Otani, Lena Shey, Judy Shintani, Colette Standish, Victoria Veedell, Leisel Whitlock, Michael Yochum

Opening Reception

December 17, 2016

Volunteers: Elizabeth Addison, MGP Andersen, Tanya Augsburg, Gabriel Docto, Jorge Donate, Kathy Fujii-Oka, Josefin Jansson, Rebekah Johnson, Linda Kattwinkel, Jennifer L. King, Julie Mevi, Patricia Montgomery, Priscilla Otani, Sawyer Rose, Mary Shisler, Jeffrey Thatcher, Leisel Whitlock, Michael Yochum

Videographer: Tsering Norbu, Sandra Yagi

San Francisco State Lecture by Emma Sulkowicz and Violet Overn

December 19, 2016

Speakers: Emma Sulkowicz and Violet Overn

Organizer: Tanya Augsburg

Photographers: Priscilla Otani, Kamaljit Singh

Videographer: Tanya Augsburg

Docent Tour of Exhibition

January 13, 2017 1:00 - 3:00 PM

Docent: Tanya Augsburg

Photographer: Priscilla Otani

Gallery Assistant: Tory Antoni

Womanhouse Reunion

January 13, 2017, 6-9:00 PM

Womanhouse Artists: Faith Wilding and Karen LeCocq

Womanhouse Documentary Videographer: Johanna Demetrakas

Volunteers: Tanya Augsburg, Elizabeth Addison, Patricia A. Montgomery, Priscilla Otani, Mary Shisler, Yuriko Takata, Leisel Whitlock, Michael Yochum

Photographer: Mido Lee

Videographers: Chanel Matsunami Govreau, Mido Lee

An Afternoon of Performance

Saturday, January 14, 2017, 1:30-3:00 PM

Performers: Tanya Augsburg, Faith Wilding and Viêt Lê

Volunteers: Tanya Augsburg, Josefin Jansson, Monica Maser, Priscilla Otani.

Photographer: Kuo-Chen Kacy Jung, Bryon Roche

Videographers: Chanel Matsunami Govreau, Mido Lee

F*ck U! Video Screening

January 14, 2017, 7-10:00 PM

Volunteers: Tanya Augsburg, Priscilla Otani

Photographer: Mido Lee

Videographers: Dio Chen, Sandra Yagi

Gallery Assistant: Zachariah Greer Hauptman

De-installation

January 22 -25, 2017

Volunteers: Karen Gutfreund, Judy Johnson-Williams, Priscilla Otani, Tanya Wilkinson, Michael Yochum

Gallery Assistants: Tory Antoni, Tamiko Sidore

Donors

Kay Kang

Priscilla Otani

9th Street Independent Film Center

Homestead

Trader Joe’s

NCWCA PRESIDENT STATEMENT

WCA has always been a feminist activist group. We were formed in 1972 when women artists, critics and professors were very underrepresented at professional conferences. Our early founders included women who were part of Womanhouse, the Feminist Artist Program at Cal Arts.

WCA is now a nationwide organization with chapters in many states. California, for example, has five. Each chapter in California has its own personality but the Northern California chapter (NCWCA) is regarded as the most activist. NCWCA has hosted shows on the environment, reproductive rights, and now the legacies of feminism art with the current exhibition's two-fold tribute and critical examination of Womanhouse. Back in the summer of 2016 when we were planning the exhibition we thought, as many did, we’d be celebrating the election and inauguration of the first U.S. woman President during the exhibition. When that didn’t happen, we quickly switched to flexing our protest and marching muscles. And, of course, we made art.

We hope you enjoy this show and are inspired to create your own artistic response to the current political scene.

Judy Johnson-Williams NCWCA President 2017

F*ck U! In the Most Loving Way Prospectus Summer 2016

The primary goal of the exhibition F*ck U! In the Most Loving Way is to revisit the critiques of women’s relational roles presented in the 1972 landmark feminist Womanhouse exhibition by showing works that address women’s ongoing challenges to build their lives and thrive within ongoing structural and intersectional systems of oppression.

In 1971, under the direction of Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro, 25 students in the Feminist Art Program at California Institute of the Arts began work on an old deserted Hollywood mansion. The exhibition was open to the public from January 30 to February 28, 1972, and is widely known as one of the first major public exhibitions of feminist art. Numerous room installations were created to highlight women’s experiences, gender stereotypes, social expectations for women, and the exploitation of women’s roles such as unpaid domestic affective laborers, i.e., “homemakers.”

In the years since this project was realized, much has changed. The majority of women now have lives that expand far beyond traditional domestic walls either by choice or by necessity. Despite their social advances, women find themselves at odds with ongoing expectations of ableist heteronormative patriarchy that refuses to recognize transwomen and genderqueer individuals as women; denies queer women their rights to marry and have children; and discourages women with disabilities from living on their own with dignity. Married and single mothers continue to take primary responsibility for domestic chores, childrearing, and familial caretaking–even as they work outside the home as the sole or primary breadwinners in their families. Meanwhile, women who embrace leadership roles outside the realms of domesticity still encounter disrespect, pity, or both.

At a time when crude, rude, and sexist discourses in the public sphere seem to be increasingly the norm, this exhibition explores how women are choosing to express their discontent with prescribed and outdated binary gender roles. F*ck U! In the Most Loving Way surveys the range of possible responses women can select when confronted with conflict within relationships. Can we reply in ways that lead to resolution and more love? Or is it important that women strive to win debates from which they were previously excluded? Since women have been silenced for so long, this exhibition provides a platform for women to air their grievances in manners of their choosing while reminding the viewer that identity is fluid, relational, intersectional, performative, and participatory. This exhibition aims to foster dialogue about where women position themselves centrally yet in relation to others. It features artworks that confront traditional gender roles, express what a “woman” is today, and depict what a woman’s life is currently really like.

Opening shortly after the 2016 United States presidential election, this timely exhibition welcomes all points of view about female individuals seeking and possessing power, which includes political power, but also self-empowerment. This exhibition spotlights women’s artistic endeavors to overcome and put a stop to emotional abuse, physical abuse, domestic abuse, sexual abuse and violence, sexist insults, unrealistic demands, sexual harassment, discriminatory refusals, online trolling, psychological manipulations, and microaggressions of all kinds. F*ck U! In the Most Loving Way celebrates utopian and revolutionary visions about women’s voices, focusing on women’s self-expression, self-respect, and self-care. The provocative artworks in this historic feminist exhibition foster dialogue, whether shocking, confrontational, polite, healing, or well-reasoned. Ultimately, the exhibition promotes further investigation of positive and productive ways to overcome what is often dismissed as women’s hysterical overreactions, bitchy rants, unjustifiable anger, or passive aggressive resentment.

Tanya Augsburg is a humanities-trained, interdisciplinary feminist performance scholar, critic, and curator who can be occasionally persuaded to perform. She teaches at San Francisco State University, where she is currently Associate Professor in the School of Humanities and Liberal Studies in the areas of the Humanities and Creative Arts. She is a proud member of NCWCA, serving on the board as Art Historian in Residence. She served on the Executive Exhibition Committee as Featured Artists Curator and Programming Chair for NCWCA’s recent national exhibition, F*ck U! In the Most Loving Way. The performance she premiered during F*ck You in the Most Loving Way, Kitchen Table Talk (2016), is a work in progress that has been continually revised in urgent response to current political events. It was selected in 2017 to be on the calendar of 100 Days Action, an online project that serves as a counternarrative to the current administration’s 100 Day plan.

Dr. Augsburg is additionally Vice-President, Relations, of the Association for Interdisciplinary Studies (AIS). Dr. Augsburg is author of Becoming Interdisciplinary: An Introduction to Interdisciplinary Studies, 3rd Ed. (Kendall/Hunt, 2016) and co-editor of The Politics of Interdisciplinary Studies (McFarland, 2009). Her survey book chapter on the interdisciplinary arts is published in The Oxford Handbook of Interdisciplinarity, 2nd Edition (2017). Other publications have appeared in TDR: The Drama Review; Text and Performance Quarterly; Issues in Interdisciplinary Studies; n.paradoxa: International Feminist Art Journal; World Futures; Colorado Critical Review; theartsection: An Online Journal of Art and Cultural Commentary; and Critical Matrix: The Princeton Journal of Women, Gender, and Culture. Her current scholarly projects include completing a booklength manuscript on the interdisciplinary arts and a book-length manuscript on what she is calling feminist ars erotica.

Tanya Augsburg

TANYA AUGSBURG/BIO:

Installation at Arc Gallery, 1246 Folsom St, San Francisco, December 13-14, 2016

Images top row left to right:

• Opening Kellie Krouse’s shipped work, photo by Priscilla Otani

• Leisel Whitlock and Victoria Veedell putting up vinyl lettering, photo by Priscilla Otani

Images bottom row left to right:

• Kay Kang hanging her work, works by Emma Sulkowicz flanking Kay’s work, photo by Priscilla Otani

• Judy Johnson-Williams and Judy Shintani setting up Leisel Whitlock’s work, photo by Priscilla Otani

Installation at Arc Gallery, 1246 Folsom St, San Francisco, December 13-14, 2016

Image left:

• Judy Johnson-Williams, Michael Yochum and Judy Shintani hanging Susan Ahlf’s work, Tanya Augsburg taking a photo, photo by Priscilla Otani

Images right top to bottom:

• Karen Gutfreund curating gallery, Judy Johnson-Williams assisting, photo by Priscilla Otani

• Tanya Augsburg, Colette Standish, Josefin Jansson, photo by Priscilla Otani

Opening Reception: Arc Gallery, 1246 Folsom St, San Francisco, December 17, 2016

Images first row, left to right:

• Gallery entrance with exhibition title and Creating Space poster, photo by Priscilla Otani

• Phoebe Ackley, photo by Jeffrey Thatcher

• Kellie Krouse, photo by Priscilla Otani

• Judy Shintani, photo by Jeffrey Thatcher

• Nancy Roy Meyer’s work, photo by Priscilla Otani

Images second row, left to right:

• Dwora Fried, photo by Jeffrey Thatcher

• Blond Jenny and Priscilla Otani, photo courtesy of Blond Jenny

• Karen Gutfreund, photo by Jeffrey Thatcher

• Leisel Whitlock, photo by Jeffrey Thatcher

• Kay Kang, photo by Jeffrey Thatcher

Images third row, left to right:

• Susan Ahlfs, photo by Jeffrey Thatcher

• Shannon Rose Riley, photo by Jeffrey Thatcher

• Blond Jenny’s lips, photo courtesy of Blond Jenny

• Tanya Augsburg, photo by Jeffrey Thatcher

• Gallery crowd, photo by Blond Jenny

Images fourth row, left to right

• Leisel Whitlock’s work: photo by Priscilla Otani

• Violet Overn, photo by Jeffrey Thatcher

• Elizabeth Addison, Leisel Whitlock, Patricia Montgomery, photo by Priscilla Otani

• Emma Sulkowicz, photo by Jeffrey Thatcher

• Jennifer Colby, WCA Past President, photo by Priscilla Otani

Images fifth row, left to right

• Rokudenashiko’s works: photo by Priscilla Otani

• Blond Jenny and Victoria Helena Mihatovic, photo by Blond Jenny

• Judy Shintani and Priscilla Otani, photo by Blond Jenny

• Audience viewing Rulers performance by Sulkowicz and Overn, photo by Blond Jenny

• Measurement left on plant, photo by Priscilla Otani

Opening Reception at Arc Gallery Saturday, December 17, 2016

Rulers. Performance by Emma Sulkowicz and Violet Overn—Saturday, December 17, 2016

Image left: Emma Sulkowicz and Violet Overn, photo by Blond Jenny

Image top right: Emma Sulkowicz and Violet Over, photo by Priscilla Otani

Image bottom right: Measurement left in Priscilla Otani's studio, photo by Priscilla Otani

Humanities Room 133, San Francisco State University, 1600 Holloway Ave, San Francisco

Artists Emma Sulkowicz and Violet Overn discussed their work, including their new collaborative performance piece, Rulers. The lecture was sponsored by the School of Humanities and Liberal Studies, SF State and cosponsored by the SF State School of Art in San Francisco. Location is HUM Room 133 in the Southwest Quad 3 on the SF State campus. The address of SF State is 1600 Holloway Ave, San Francisco.

Images top row, left to right:

Images bottom row, left to right:

Lecture at SFSU with Emma Sulkowicz and Violet Overn—December 19, 2016

• Tanya Augsburg, photo by Kamaljit Singh, and Violet Overn, photo by Kamaljit Singh

• Emma Sulkowicz, photo by Kamaljit Singh, and Emma Sulkowicz and Violet Overn, photo by Priscilla Otani

Images top row, left to right:

• Tanya Augsburg speaking in front of works by Susan Ahlfs and Patricia Olson

• Visitors viewing works by Judy Shintani, Emma Sulkowicz and Kay Kang

Images bottom row, left to right:

• Tanya Augsburg discussing Ester Hernandez’s work

• In the Womanhouse Revisited room

Docent Tour of Exhibition Friday, January 13, 2017

Tanya Augsburg lead a lecture tour of the F*ck U! exhibition. The public was invited to attend, held at Arc Gallery, San Francisco, CA. All photos taken by Priscilla Otani.

Womanhouse Reunion — December 17, 2016 and January 13, 2017

Arc Gallery and Ninth Street Independent Film Center, 145 9th Street, San Francisco

Two Womanhouse videos were screened and original Womanhouse artists Faith Wilding and Karen LeCocq together with filmmaker Johanna Demetrakas attended, held at the Ninth Street Independent Film Center, 145 9th Street, San Francisco.

Images top row, left to right:

• Nancy Youdelman’s work in the “Revisiting Womanhouse” room, photo by Priscilla Otani, and Karen

Le Cocq viewing Johanna Demetrakas’ Womanhouse video, photo by Priscilla Otani

Images bottom row, left to right:

• Nancy Youdelman with her daughter in front of her work, photo by Maria Karras, and Karen Le Cocq, Faith Wilding and Johanna Demetrakas at the Womanhouse Reunion, photo by Mido Lee

Performance Afternoon—January 14, 2017 at 9th Street Independent Film Center, 145 9th Street, San Francisco, CA

Images top row, left to right:

• Audience participating in Tanya Augsburg’s Kitchen Table Talk, photo by Bryon Roché

• Mido Lee documenting work produced in Kitchen Table Talk, photo by Bryon Roché

Image bottom row:

• Faith Wilding, photo by Priscilla Otani

Video Festival and Screening—Saturday, January 14, 2017 at Ninth Street Independent Film Center, 145 9th Street, San Francisco, CA.

Images top row, left to right:

• Tracy Brown, and Chanel Matsunami Govreau, photo by Mido Lee

Images bottom row, left to right:

• Amy Finkbeiner, and Amy Finkbeiner, Chanel Matsunam Govreau and Tracy Brown, photo by Mido Lee

Some Untidy Truths: On Curating the “Revisiting Womanhouse” Space in F*ck U! In the Most Loving Way

Tanya Augsburg

Origins

F*ck U! In the Most Loving Way is an exhibition organized by the Northern California Women’s Caucus for Art (NCWCA) that took place at Arc Gallery in San Francisco from December 17, 2016 to January 21, 2017.

The members of NCWCA had for some time discussed doing a show that referenced the 1972 landmark feminist installation Womanhouse. NCWCA Exhibition Director Leisel Whitlock originally proposed that NCWCA put on an exhibition that would be a critical response to Womanhouse’s focus on the domestic spaces and experiences of white middle-class heterosexual housewives. More specifically, Whitlock envisioned the show as a contemporary artistic exploration of the social and domestic roles of all those who self-identify as women and/or female in 2016 (and not just white heterosexual ciswomen), which included considerations of how the concept of domesticity has evolved since the early 1970s.

When the Exhibition Committee, which renamed itself as the Exhibition Collective for this exhibition, met in NCWCA President Judy Johnson-William’s home on a warm Sunday afternoon in early June 2016, the rest of its members and I brainstormed about possible titles for the show.

As we talked about our own experiences, as well as our concerns over current American politics, Leisel Whitlock suggested the title Fuck U! In the Most Loving Way.

Not all of the Exhibition Collective members were initially enthused about the provocative exhibition title. Some objected to the profanity. Others were concerned about press and publishing as the word “fuck” is not one that can be uttered or published in mainstream media. However, when Judy JohnsonWilliams pulled out the Summer 2016 issue of Art Forum and pointed out Ara Osterweil’s article “Fuck You! A Feminist Guide to Surviving the Art World” we knew we were on the right track.1 We also had enough media savviness to insert an asterisk into our exhibition title, replacing “Fuck” with “F*ck.”2

After the meeting, I wrote the exhibition prospectus with input from the other Exhibition Collective members.

“Revisiting Womanhouse” was not part of the initial vision of the show that the NCWCA Exhibition Collective worked on during the summer of 2016. The idea for “Revisiting Womanhouse” emerged out of my email exchanges with Womanhouse co-director and artist Judy Chicago in late August and early September 2016. xo

In response to Judy Chicago’s feedback, the Exhibition Executive Committee (Leisel Whitlock, Priscilla Otani, and I) decided conjointly to expand the show to include a critical tribute to Womanhouse in a designated space.

The major problem with expansion was the dearth of exhibition space. Arc Gallery has a main gallery and a side project gallery for exhibition space. Most of the works selected by the juror, Shannon Rose Riley, were to be exhibited in these two spaces. The only available space to exhibit additional artworks was the office space adjacent to the gallery.

Truth be told: NCWCA’s annexation of the office space for the duration of its exhibition was probably a bit more than what was originally envisioned when the four Arc Gallery’s partners agreed to donate its space for the exhibition. Nevertheless, Priscilla Otani as Gallery Managing Partner persuaded Arc’s three other partners that it would be in their best interest to temporarily convert the gallery office into an additional exhibition space called “Revisiting Womanhouse.”

Early Steps

The planning for F*ck U! In the Most Loving Way coincided with the later stages of the 2016 U.S. Presidential Campaign, election, and immediate aftermath. Our hopes for the outcome of the election influenced our decision-making, as did our dismay about what we regarded as the deterioration of civility in public discourse that was trickling down to the private sphere. The NCWCA Exhibition Collective refined its ideas for the exhibition continuously leading up to the opening; however, we also had some fixed ideas right from the start. As already mentioned, we wanted the exhibition to be a critical reconsideration of the issues presented and implied in Womanhouse from a myriad of contemporary feminist perspectives to reflect current realities for all those who identify as women.

We aimed to include multiple mediums in the show, including painting, drawing, sculpture, assemblage, fiber art, performance, video, and film. Given the gallery’s limitations, we reluctantly decided against exhibiting new media, internet art, and installation art. As part of the exhibition programming we would ultimately organize an afternoon for performance and two evenings of video and film screenings. We were honored that the 9th Street Independent Film Center donated its space for exhibition performances and screenings over two days on January 13-14, 2017.

We all agreed that it was crucial for the show’s success to exhibit work that was chosen through a blind jury process with an outside juror. We were also serious about putting on a show comprised of multiple voices, which is why it was organized by a committee of a numerous key players and decision makers. It would be a bit of an experiment, but we were confident that this collaborative multidisciplinary process would create a synergy that would be greater than any of its individual parts or contributions.

We had done our research on the history of Womanhouse: we knew that while its concept was

originally suggested by art historian Paula Harper, the installation was created by 21 students in the Feminist Art Program at CalArts under the direction and tutelage of their teachers, artists Judy Chicago and Miriam Shapiro, with contributions from three other artists. The two-month process of getting Womanhouse ready was neither easy nor smooth, and we did not expect ours to be any different. We were up to the task, willing to take on the challenges of collaboration in order to reap its benefits.

Aiming to strengthen the links we were creating between Womanhouse and F*ck U! In the Most Loving Way, we sought to include as featured artists those who were part of the original Womanhouse exhibition. We were thrilled when original Womanhouse artists Faith Wilding, Nancy Youdelman, and Karen LeCocq accepted our invitations to participate in our show, as did filmmaker Johanna Demetrakas, who had made the documentary about Womanhouse, also titled Womanhouse (1974). Although we did invite Wilding to perform again her iconic Womanhouse performance Waiting, she had another idea. She proposed to perform welcome-waiting, a collaborative performance with San Francisco artist Việt Lê, with collected images by Michelle Dizon. The performance, welcome-waiting addresses a number of political issues that concerned Wilding during the time when Womanhouse was created, such as American colonialism and the Vietnam War. According to Wilding,

Womanhouse did not explicitly exclude the larger issues of the day some of the performances certainly alluded to them as did collages hidden in the kitchen drawers that showed anti-war protests, Angela Davis speeches, civil rights marches, etc. . . . Waiting was more a statement of the status quo of the gendered division of labor (women’s work) and a drama of a women’s (supposed) passive role in life as experienced in the modern white Western world.

The collaborative welcome-waiting text looks at Waiting very differently as a possible work of solidarity, of being with others, in like-minded expectation, coalitions and struggles. Thus, I think it has everything to do with the state of identity and gender politics today, as well as world-wide conditions of exclusion, emigration, imprisonment, gender discrimination and violence, racism, and sexism. I imagine welcome-waiting as an action of recognition, welcoming and making common cause with others. It is about a kind of self-care that sees the self as inextricably connected with other sentient beings and the world. Corny as this might sound it is what “loving” means to me. It is for this reason also that I think it could be meaningfully connected to “welcoming” in the sense of active invitation, engagement and connection (not just of “tolerance”). It is overwhelming to think of how many prisoners and refugees are “waiting” all over our country and the world.3

Supplementing Wilding’s comments, Lê has eloquently detailed their collaborative process for welcome -waiting:

As for how the collaboration evolved, artist-scholar Michelle Dizon asked me to write poem in response to a series of National Geographic images, in which she excised the original text,

highlighting the implicit gendered, racial and sexual structures of the archive. Appropriating these textual fragments, the extended postcolonial poem unearths and connects the long shadows of the U.S. empire, intimacy, violence then and now. Faith and I then collaborated on a “performative reading” of this piece, selecting key moments, and adding music and gesture to think through the state of refugees then and now, and the highly political personal acts of waiting (as subalterns, refugees, immigrants), and welcoming each other.4

Wilding additionally offered to bring her copy of another documentary on Womanhouse, Lynn Littman’s Womanhouse Is Not a Home, which aired on Los Angeles public television in 1972, for a screening during the exhibition. Like her artist mentor Judy Chicago, Faith Wilding challenged us to expand our thinking about F*ck U! In the Most Loving Way and helped make it a better show with richer programming.5

In order to call attention to the fact that Womanhouse had been created by young women artists who were at the time also students, the Exhibition Collective sought to feature at least one rising young contemporary feminist artist who was either a current student or a recent graduate. More specifically, we wanted our exhibition to raise awareness about intergenerational issues within feminism by encouraging gallery visitors to reflect on how feminist issues have changed since Womanhouse. We immediately thought of Emma Sulkowicz, who performed her durational feminist Mattress Performance (2014-2015) while she was an undergraduate at Columbia University. We invited Sulkowicz, who was a Whitney Fellow during the 2016-2017, to exhibit her work in addition to doing a performance. She not only agreed, but expressed interested in collaborating with another young feminist artist and graduate student, Violet Overn, who has become known for her performative photographic self-portraits staging her passive resistance in front of fraternity houses in protest of campus rape culture.6

Additional featured artists included Sheila Pree Bright, whom Leisel Whitlock helped to bring into the exhibition. Priscilla Otani helped bring in Rokudenaishiko, the Japanese artist who was jailed in Japan for her vulva-themed or “manko” art. Otani also helped bring in the renowned artist Ester Hernandez. Finally, I invited my San Francisco State colleague and Guggenheim award recipient Cheryl Dunye to exhibit her important short film, Black Is Blue (2014).

Originally I had only signed on to help with featured artist invitations and negotiations. My tasks quickly multiplied as I found it incredibly rewarding to witness the ever-growing buzz and interest about the show.

I quickly discovered that with expansion came an exponentially greater workload. Priscilla Otani, who along with Leisel Whitlock served as the exhibition’s project managers, asked me to take curatorial responsibility for “Revisiting Womanhouse.”

As the juror Shannon Rose Riley finalized her selections, the Exhibition Collective brainstormed a number of ideas about how the gallery could reference the original Womanhouse installation, which had been housed in an abandoned Los Angeles mansion that the Womanhouse artists renovated from November 1971 to January 1972. Would we, or perhaps more accurately, could we, “update” any of the Womanhouse rooms in the gallery? We quickly concluded that trying to recreate any part of the original Womanhouse installation in an art gallery would be neither prudent nor feasible.

But what about “Revisiting Womanhouse”? As its curator I had a very clear vision about should be done to the borrowed office space. I wanted to “revisit Womanhouse” foregrounding, rather than covering up, the fact that the space is actually a gallery office. In so doing, I wished to underscore both visually and materially how women’s relations to their homes have changed over the past 45 years by creating a living space that did not yet exist at the time of the original Womanhouse exhibition.

Then and Now

At this point it would be worthwhile to review the situation for the majority of American ciswomen during the early 1970s. To gain a better understanding of the historical context of Womanhouse, we have to turn to what has been widely acknowledged as one of its primary sources, Betty Friedan’s watershed 1963 book The Feminine Mystique. Friedan pointed out that the home has been historically and cross-culturally gendered as female, particularly after World War II with the normalization of the presumptive white stay-at-home middle-class suburban heterosexual American wife and mother. Friedan termed this situation, with its insidious consequences for women, “the problem that has no name.”7 Womanhouse addressed this problem with its critical interrogations of the home as a gendered “female space.”

Over the years Womanhouse has been inaccurately derided by some critics for its putative biological determinism or essentialism given its attention to ciswomen’s biological functions such as menstruation and its psychological depictions of women’s despair and feelings of invisibility. More recently it has been vindicated, finding its rightful place within art history not only as the first major feminist installation but also, according to Temma Balducci, as an early feminist deconstruction of the idea of home as “dollhouse” with its parodic performative iterations of women’s stereotypical roles.8 An alternative, more sociological-based interpretation would reconsider how in the early 1970s the home was at least demographically still the domain of women. According to the U.S. Department of Labor’s website, which offers longitudinal data regarding the U.S. labor force since the 1950s based on its Bureau of Labor Statistics Surveys, only 43.9 percent of American women worked outside the home in 1972.9 Despite the fact that historically African American women have always worked at a higher percentage than any other ethnic group in the U.S., according to Bureau of Labor Statistics Surveys only 48.7 percent of African American women worked in 1972. Even as some may question the accuracy of these survey results particularly for working class women of color, it is relatively safe to assume that in 1972 the majority of American women were at least presumed or expected to be homemakers.

Suffice it to say that women’s place and status in the home are very different today. According to the Department of Labor’s statistics, in 2015 the majority of all American women sixteen and older (56.7%) worked outside of home. In 2015 59.7% of African American women worked.10 The percentages are even higher for mothers. In 2015 the overwhelming majority of American mothers of children under the age of 18, married or not, worked (69.9%).11

The Rise of Multipurpose Live-Work Spaces

As women have increasingly worked outside the home, clear divides between home and work have irrevocably eroded, especially with the increase in part-time work, outsourcing, freelancing, and telecommuting. According to the Department of Labor’s American Time Use Survey, 24 percent of employed people did some or all of their work at home in 2015.12 Not only has work crept into the home, but it is no longer limited to a designated area, such as a home office or, to borrow from Virginia Woolf, a room of one’s own. Artist couple Newton and Helen Mayer Harrison made this last point abundantly clear already in 1983 with their performance installation, The Work Place at Home, which recreated their living room at their home in San Diego at the Long Beach Museum. The Harrisons sat in red chairs facing each other and worked during the At Home exhibition, which was an investigation of the home a decade after Womanhouse. 13 More than thirty years after the Harrisons’s performance, work emails are answered compulsively while watching television or minding the children (even when they shouldn’t). The home has mutated into multiple multipurpose live-work spaces. Reflecting this recent spatial reconfiguration of the “traditional home,” the space of “Revisiting Womanhouse” depicts a hypothetical working mother’s multipurpose live-work space where art is also displayed.

Setting Up “Revisiting Womanhouse”

Curating and installing “Revisiting Womanhouse” was a joint effort. Priscilla Otani and Leisel Whitlock helped me keep on track with the many logistical details. With their expertise, exhibition volunteers Colette Standish and Josefin Jansson contributed greatly to the installation of and arrangement of the artwork with “Revisiting Womanhouse.” Exhibition volunteer Linda Kattwinkel contributed several key curatorial aspects of the space.

In the “Revisiting Womanhouse” space, Colette Standish, Josefin Jansson, and I repurposed some of the office furniture and equipment. For example, we reclaimed a table that typically functions as a desk. On the table was a binder of readings about Womanhouse, selected by me but beautifully assembled by Linda Kattwinkel, who also graciously and dutifully cleared all the copyright permissions.

Linda Kattwinkel also proposed the idea of pink lighting in the space. Turned out that while it was possible, the lighting didn’t look quite right. Priscilla Otani suggested correctly that a small table lamp with a pink bulb next to the binder on the table would do the trick. Otani even located and purchased the specialty bulb. The lamp bathed the space with a soft pink glow an appreciative nod to the pink Nurturant Kitchen of Womanhouse created by Susan Frazier, Vicki Hodgetts, and Robin Weltsch.

A row of white cubby storage units adorned the back wall of the space. Usually, binders, gallery supplies, and office supplies can be found in the cubbyholes. We added additional office supplies such as a large three-hole puncher and blank notebooks. Gallery and exhibition supplies such as tape and scissors were displayed in plastic bins.

Relevant books about feminist art and communication styles were placed in several cubbyholes to create a tiny library that visitors could peruse at their leisure. Included in the makeshift library was a reproduction of the original Womanhouse catalog, which was exhibited on loan by Linda Kattwinkel.

Behind the table, a flat screen monitor placed on one of the back cubby units played continuously Joanna Demetrakas’s 1974 documentary, Womanhouse. The iconic film documented not only the installation but also the performances that took place, such as Faith Wilding’s Waiting as well as Karen Le-Cocq and Nancy Youdelman’s joint performance Lea’s Room.

During our early email exchanges Judy Chicago suggested that Demetrakas’s Womanhouse be included as a featured artist in the F*ck U! In the Most Loving Way, and for her suggestion (among numerous others) I am eternally grateful. Not only does the film provide viewers with a sense of the experience of visiting Womanhouse, but its continuous play in “Revisiting Womanhouse” was a reminder of how much moving images on screens have invaded the domestic realm.

Two office chairs were strategically placed next to the table in “Revisiting Womanhouse.” Visitors could sit at the table and look at art, read the binder, view the video, or do other things such as converse, rest, or post selfies on social media from their smart phones.

What was very important to me from a curatorial standpoint, was that the objects in the cubbyholes would be arranged (or not arranged, depending on your point of view) in a ever-so-slightly disorderly fashion. The “Revisiting Womanhouse” space was to look, as much as possible, utilitarian and purposeful, as a hypothetical lived-in room.

One could say that the space of “Revisiting Womanhouse” itself was curated as an installation or environment that could evoke personal memories of home for each gallery visitor.

Nonetheless, to claim that “Revisiting Womanhouse” was an installation would be inaccurate because the room’s primary function remained as an exhibition space where numerous artworks were displayed.

Making Visible the Psychology of Women’s Immaterial Labor

The Exhibition Collective was interested in probing how societal changes since 1972 have affected women. Indeed, the Exhibition Collective engaged in an exploration of how to express these effects …….

during its process of choosing the exhibition’s title. I was aware of the concepts of “affective labor” and “emotional labor” having seen the Berkeley sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild speak in May 2016 at the Oakland Book Fair. I had read Hochschild’s 1989 book with Anne Machung, The Second Shift, in which Hochschild demonstrates that women continue to be burdened more with “second shifts,” i.e., domestic labor, after their “official” workdays are done. Moreover, as Hochschild has pointed out, despite all advances towards gender equality women remain the primary caretakers of their homes.14

Previously in her 1983 book The Managed Heart Hochschild examined how women are responsible for their families’ private emotional management home once they return home after performing “emotional labor” at work, i.e., smiling and acting upbeat to create positive emotional experiences for others. Such immaterial labor, Hochschild argues, comes at a psychological cost.15 Inklings of that cost can be discerned in many of the works exhibited throughout F*ck U! In the Most Loving Way.

Featured Art in “Revisiting Womanhouse”

Within “Revisiting Womanhouse” featured artworks were exhibited along with a small number of artworks by the national artists selected by the juror, Shannon Rose Riley. Installation curator Karen Gutfreund selected the juried works that were exhibited in “Revisiting Womanhouse.”

Featured artist Nancy Youdelman’s three works exhibited in the “Revisiting Womanhouse” space were literally and figuratively, brilliant. Indeed, her works were strategically placed to catch the eyes of gallery visitors as they entered the space.

I selected Youdelman’s coat-shaped sculpture, She Made It Herself (2005) as it immediately reminded me of one of Hillary Clinton’s signature coat jackets. I was not alone in anticipating incorrectly during the summer of 2016 that Mrs. Clinton would be elected the first women American President a month before the F*ck U! In the Most Loving Way’s opening. She Made It Herself was created by the artist as a tribute to her mother, a seamstress, and embedded in the work are sewing tools such as safety pins and buttons. Photographs of Youdelman’s mother highlight the works interplay between personal, familial, social, and universal histories. She Made it Herself celebrates the multiple “hats” her mother wore during her life, which made the piece very “fitting” for “Revisiting Womanhouse.” In the context of the exhibition, its apt title underscores the importance of acknowledging the labor of working mothers.

Youdelman generously offered to exhibit two more works, Speaking in Colors (2015) and Ice Warrior (2015), both of which address gender identity and childhood. Speaking in Colors, with its carefully arranged discarded costume jewelry, suggests alternatives to impulsive (and often hurtful) communication.

For those of us of a certain age, it is nearly impossible to view Ice Warrior and not immediately be reminded of Xena, the warrior princess of the popular 1990s television series of the same name. The

bejeweled doll appears ready for combat. With her defensive stance, Ice Warrior is both resilient and resplendent in her dazzling self-care.

Ice Warrior’s gestures of self-defense and self-care parallels those of the featured artists whose respective artworks were displayed in the main gallery: Ester Hernandez’s humorous assemblage El Palote (The Rolling Pin) (2016), Violet Overn’s photographs #2 and #5 (2016), and Emma Sulkowicz’s Newspaper Bodies (Look Mom, I’m on the Front Page!) series (2015). Each artist’s unique response to possible and actual threats of domestic and sexual aggression, abuse, and violence within typical domestic spaces, such as the kitchen, as well as college “home away from home” spaces, such as the fraternity house and the dorm room, is a revelation as well as a testimony to women’s strength, creativity, and resilience. What is interesting is that all these works in very different ways attest to the fact that domestic spaces are not always safe spaces.

Youdelman was not the only featured artist who showcased children’s clothing and toys such as dolls. Indeed, the importance of childhood domesticity for gender identity emerged as a central theme throughout F*ck U! In the Most Loving Way. A striking example is Plastic Bodies (2003), Sheila Pree Bright’s digitally manipulated photograph of a hybrid Barbie calls attention to the challenges of identity formation for young African American girls.

We were honored to include featured artist Karen LeCocq’s iconic Feather Cunt (1971, remade 1996) pillow, which added to a sense of comfort, sensuality, and eroticism to the space.

We converted a metal file cabinet into a display table for Rokudenashiko’s numerous artworks and artifacts, some of which were placed on top of kitschy pink and red heart-shaped paper doilies that I managed to find at a neighborhood dollar store. Aside from Vagina Cellphone Covers, Rokudenashiko has transformed her plastic vagina mold (one of which was also on display) to create other utilitarian objects, ranging from a whimsical Insect Cage Manko (2012) to toys, such as her Remote-Controlled Gundaman (2012).

Rokudenashiko’s 2016 graphic novel about her arrests and trials in Japan, What Is Obscenity: The Story of a Good for Nothing Artist and Her Pussy, was also displayed, as were her Free Manko pins, which were available for sale. Her so-called “pussy art,” which we had been a bit concerned would be considered a bit frivolous, gained unexpected and new political significance after Donald Trump’s “grab them by the pussy” remarks that were released by The Washington Post on October 8, 2016. Rokudenashiko’s The Buddha Manko (2012) offers meditative contemplation as well as peaceful resistance within ongoing gender wars. Situated in a staged domestic space, The Buddha Manko reminds the visitor of the importance of finding a place for peace, meditation and contemplation in the home despite our busy and at times, chaotic lives.

Such ideas are hard to achieve, particularly for working woman artists who are also mothers.

The slightly disordered books and art supplies on the back shelves were in my mind to reflect women’s ongoing struggle to “have it all.” Moreover, the minute disarray was also meant to suggest that it is perfectly fine to not obsess about every detail when thinking about the bigger picture.

Rokudenaishiko’s work points to the Buddhist practice of gratitude, as not everyone is fortunate to have a home. After the 2008 economic collapse many who were previously securely housed had their homes foreclosed. Economic precarity has resulted in many living one paycheck or illness away from homelessness. A defiant response to the economic injustices and threats of bank(ster) foreclosure is addressed in “Revisiting Womanhouse” by an acrylic painting that Shannon Rose Riley selected as one of the juried works, Phoebe Ackley’s My House (2016).

In her short film Black Is Blue (2014), featured artist Cheryl Dunye considers the challenges of homelessness faced by a transman of color named Black. With its challenges to transphobia, economic injustice, racism, and heteronormativity, Black Is Blue can be regarded simultaneously as a comprehensive critical response to Womanhouse, an invitation to viewers to check their own privileges and biases, and an intersectional queer transfeminist call to action and activism. Black Is Blue was shown outside of “Revisiting Womanhouse” as the featured presentation for the exhibition’s video showcase that took place at the Ninth Street Independent Film Center on the evening of January 14th , 2017.

Tidy Aftermaths

The next time I returned to the gallery after the exhibition opening I observed that the cubby holes in “Revisiting Womanhouse” had been tidied up. Apparently someone did not approve of the disordered books, the cluttered papers, and haphazard piles of supplies. Everything had been straightened up perfectly. Some of the more unsightly items were missing or had been removed, such as a Trader Joe’s reusable plastic shopping bag that I stashed for safekeeping into one of the cubbies as the opening was about to start. The bag contained my personal exhibition notebook with all of my exhibition notes that I had been accumulating for six months. After several extensive searches the shopping bag’s fate as trash was a foregone conclusion.

It wasn’t the first time objects in a gallery were thrown out by mistake.

In 2001 a cleaner at Eyestorm gallery in London threw out the impromptu installation that Damien Hirst arranged during a pre-opening reception party. The installation consisted of ashtrays, coffee cups, beer bottles, paintbrushes, and more. Hirst’s installation was allegedly a recreation of an artist studio...and arguably a reflection of the presumptive chaos of the artistic process of some artists.16

In 2004 a janitor at the Tate Britain in London threw into a compactor a clear plastic bag filled with crumbled paper and cardboard, presuming it was trash. Turned out it was part of the installation

Recreation of First Public Demonstration of Auto-Destructive Art by the late artist Gustav Metzger, who

is known for coining the term “auto-destructive art.” The bag was found damaged, so the artist replaced it.17

More recently, in 2015, a recently hired team of cleaners at Muesion Bozen-Bolzano in northern Italy discarded 300 empty champagne bottles and other items such as confetti and cigarette butts that were part of Sara Goldschmied and Eleonara Chiari’s Dove Andiamo a Ballare Queste Sera? (Where Shall We Go Dancing Tonight?), mistaking the installation for the detritus left after a gallery reception. Since the materials, which the cleaners had sorted out for recycling, had not yet been picked up to be thrown out for good the installation was able to be quickly reinstalled.18

I found the minute changes to “Revisiting Womanhouse” intriguing. The alterations opened up an unintended durational aspect, as the exhibition space changed over time. Granted the tidying up was not a big deal—it was not a violation of the integrity of the space as when a self-identified housewife from South Wales attempted to make the bed and clean the sheets in Tracey Emin’s installation My Bed when it was first exhibited at the Tate Museum in 1999.19 Nevertheless, the every-so-slightly altered “Revisiting Womanhouse” as a perfectly arranged space communicated something other than what I had intended.

That someone made a judgment that the room’s arrangements were not complete or “neat” enough speaks volumes about how women (and here I am making some gender assumptions) feel compelled to clean up after others.

Rather than try to “fix” the room and return it to its previous, originally intended arrangements, I chose to let it go. I also elected not to say anything. What would making the tidying up an issue accomplish? It didn’t really matter who had done the tidying. It could have been anyone: a gallery visitor, a fellow exhibition committee member, one of the exhibition artists, a gallery employee, or one of my student volunteers. I would have bet money that whoever straightened up probably believed that I was too much of a slob to notice.

I’m also pretty certain that whoever cleaned up was concerned about the show’s aesthetics, not realizing what the aesthetics informing “Revisiting Womanhouse” actually were.

Admittedly, I curated “Revisiting Womanhouse” not considering the possibility that the space was still being used as an office since gallery viewing hours for the public were limited. In retrospect I acknowledge that what was viewed by some as a critical provocation for the exhibition could have been seen by others as a deterrent for business as usual.

The experience of curating “Revisiting Womanhouse” spotlighted for me perhaps one of the bitterest political lessons of the 2016 U.S. Presidential election. Differing perspectives can have consequences, that can range from nothingburgers such as the tidying up in “Revisiting Womanhouse” to

catastrophic global crises.

“Revisiting Womanhouse” was never untidy or unclear, unlike the current political situation, particularly for women, people of color, LGBTIQ people, and the undocumented. But its few hints of untidiness (while they lasted) were intentional, signifying the often underlying, unspoken, and unvarnished truths from multiple feminist perspectives that the exhibition as a whole sought to bring to light.

NOTES

1 Ara Osterweil. "Fuck You! A Feminist Guide to Surviving the Art World." Artforum International 54, no. 10 (Summer 2016): 320-329.

2 As I was finishing up writing this essay in late July 2017, Anthony Scaramucci’s obscenity-laced rant to a New Yorker reporter was published. The New York Times editorial board decided to write about their decision to publish his language:

The Times published Mr. Scaramucci’s profanity after top editors, including our executive editor, Dean Baquet, discussed whether it was proper. We decided that it was newsworthy that a top aide to President Trump used such language.

We also knew that many of our readers would want to know what Mr. Scaramucci said, and we did not want them to have to search elsewhere to find out (The Reader Center, “Why The Times Published Scaramucci’s Profanities,” The New York Times, 28 July, 2017, accessed August 1, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/28/reader-center/ times-published-scaramucci-profanities.html?_r=0).

It is interesting to note that over one year earlier in Jun 2016 the NCWCA Exhibition Collective had similar conversations about using profane language.

3 Faith Wilding, email message to author, August 24, 2016.

4 Lê adds: “This text for Michelle Dizon’s images has been revised for the performative readings by Faith Wilding and Việt Lê for the following exhibitions/events: F*ck U! in the Most Loving Way, Ninth Street Independent Film Center, San Francisco (January 14, 2017); Vermont College of Fine Arts, Montpelier (January 29, 2017) and Ours Is a City of Writers, Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, Barnsdall Art Park, Los Angeles (April 4, 2017). Việt Lê, email message to author, August 2, 2017.

5 As part of its public programing, F*ck U! In the Most Loving Way held a Womanhouse Reunion on January 13, 2017 at the Ninth Street Independent Film Center that featured screenings of both Womanhouse Is Not a Home and Demetrakas’s Womanhouse. After the screenings I moderated a discussion panel with Faith Wilding, Johanna Demetrakas, and Karen LeCocq. Wilding performed welcome-waiting with Việt Lê, and with collected images by Michelle Dizon at the Ninth Street Independent Film Center on January 14, 2017.

6 In addition to showing artwork, Sulkowicz and Overn debuted their Dadaist conceptual performance Rulers during the exhibition’s opening on December 17, 2016.

7 Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique (New York: Norton, 1963).

8 Temma Balducci, “Revisiting “Womanhouse”: Welcome to the (Deconstructed) `Dollhouse,’” Woman’s Art Journal 27, no. 2 (Fall-Winter, 2006): 17.

9 “Labor force participation rate by sex, race and Hispanic ethnicity, 1948-2015 annual averages,” Graph by Women’ Bureau, Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor, Occupational Employment Statistics, accessed July 30, 2017, https://www.dol.gov/wb/stats/LForce_Race_sex_Hispanic_Ethnicity_48_15_txt.

10 “Labor Force Participation Rate by Sex, Race and Hispanic Ethnicity, 2015 Annual Averages and 2024 Projections, Graph by Women’ Bureau, Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor, Occupational Employment Statistics, accessed July 31, 2017, https://www.dol.gov/wb/stats/Laborforce_par_rate_sex_race_hisp_ethnic_2015_txt.htm.

11 “Employed Parents by Full- and Part-Time Status, Sex and Age of Youngest Child 2015 Annual Averages,” Graph by Women’s Bureau, Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor, Occupational Employment Statistics, accessed July 31, 2017, https://www.dol.gov/wb/stats/ Employed_parents_full_part_time_sex_age_young_child_2015_txt.htm.

12 Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor, The Economics Daily, “24 Percent of Employed People Did Some or All of Their Work at Home in 2015 on the Internet,” July 8, 2016, accessed July 31, 2017, https://www.bls.gov/opub/ ted/2016/24-percent-of-employed-people-did-some-or-all-of-their-work-at-home-in-2015.htm

13 Arlene Raven, At Home (Long Beach, CA: Long Beach Museum of Art, 1983), 50.

14 Arlie Russell Hochschild and Anne Machung, The Second Shift: Working Parents and the Revolution at Home (New York, N.Y.: Viking, 1989).

15 Arlie Russell Hochschild, The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling, Updated ed. (Berkeley and London: University of California Press, 2012).

16 Warren Hoge, “Art Imitates Life, Perhaps Too Closely,” 20 July 2001, The New York Times, July 30, 2017, http:// www.nytimes.com/2001/10/20/arts/art-imitates-life-perhaps-too-closely.html; “Cleaner Bins Rubbish Bag Artwork, BBC News, 27 August 2004, accessed July 27, 2017, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/3604278.stm.

17 “Cleaner Bins Rubbish Bag Artwork.”

18 Sarah Cascone, “Janitors Mistakenly Throw Out Champagne Bottle Art Installation,” ArtNet News, October 26, 2015, accessed July 20, 2017, https://news.artnet.com/exhibitions/janitor-throws-out-art-installation-347937; Nick Squires, “Art Installation in Italy Ended up in the Bin by Cleaners Who Thought It Was Rubbish, The Telegraph, October 26, 2015, accessed July 20, 2017, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/11956330/Art-installation-in-Italy-ended-up-in-the -bin-by-cleaners-who-thought-it-was-rubbish.html

19 “Cleaner Bins Rubbish Bag Artwork.”

FEATURED ARTISTS

*On loan from the Collection of Leisel and Russell Petersen

WOMANHOUSE is an historic documentary about one of the most important feminist cultural events of the 1970s. Judy Chicago (best-known as the creator of The Dinner Party and Miriam Shapiro rented an old Hollywood mansion and altered its interior through decor and set-pieces to "search out and reveal the female experience...the dreams and fantasies of women as they sewed, cooked, washed and ironed away their lives." WOMANHOUSE is a fascinating historical look at feminism, its reception in the 1970s, and the ever-important relationship between art and social change.

Black Is Blue is a short narrative that tells the story of Black—an African American Transman, who works as a security guard inside an apartment complex in present day Oakland, California. On the night of a “stud party,” Black is forced to confront his pre-transition past, struggling to make his outside match his inside.

In this assemblage, I attempt to explore and keep alive issues of resilience, domestic violence/right to self-defense for self and family, PTSD /anti-war and its impact on women. I have been told by MesoAmerican anthropologist that this palote giving tradition dates back thousands of years and is part of a beautiful shared women-centered ritual for passing on knowledge for maintaining personal respect, dignity and survival, especially in times of war.

Ester Hernandez

El Palote (The Rolling Pin) Mixed media assemblage 30 x 22 x 5 inches

Karen LeCocq

Feather Cunt

Wood, plastic, velvet, feathers

12 x 10 x 19 inches

1971 remade 1996

In the Feminist Art Program at California Institute of the Arts in the early 1970s, we were exploring the experience of what it means to be a woman. We were looking at societal stereotypes, the positive, negative and downright degrading. We explored the "bad" names and slurs that labeled and degraded women, reframing them to be positive even celebrated. "Feather" may be "a cunt," but she is lovely, she proud of her name and cannot be harmed by the hateful words of others.

I wanted to visualize the forgotten, to capture the crime scene when no one else could, to trespass on the institution.

I wanted to represent a body, a female body, a female body that had been harmed.

I wanted for my body to symbolize a non-violent protest, a sit-in, against the institution, a male-power driven institution.

I wanted to say something—someone needed to say something.

We needed to start somewhere. We need to keep saying something. We need to keep acting.

I wanted to visualize the forgotten, to capture the crime scene when no one else could, to trespass on the institution.

I wanted to represent a body, a female body, a female body that had been harmed.

I wanted for my body to symbolize a non-violent protest, a sit-in, against the institution, a male-power driven institution.

I wanted to say something—someone needed to say something.

We needed to start somewhere. We need to keep saying something. We need to keep acting.

Emma Sulkowicz

Bed

From Series, Newspaper Bodies

(Look Mom, I’m On the Front Page!)

Silkscreen on inkjet print (Limited edition of 8 per print, 8 sets of 4 prints) 25.75 x 24 inches

2015

Newspaper Bodies (Look, Mom. I'm On The Front Page!) is a four-part silkscreen series. Parts 1 and 2, Bed and You can take my story, but my body won't be overwritten, feature a reproduction of a New York Times article from May 4, 2014. This was the first front page NYT article to report on the story of Sulkowicz's alleged attack and Columbia University's adjudication of her complaint. Parts 2 and 3, Fuck Her. Believe This. and Attack, feature a reproduction of the second front page New York Times article, from December 22, 2014, which presents the accused's version of the story. The silkscreened images reflect upon and call the papers' textual depictions into question, reminding us of the ubiquity of bias. The overlaid silkscreen images, like the reporting they satirize, depict their subjects as caricatures, mirroring the flattened representations that circulate in the media.

You can take my story, but my body won’t be overwritten From Series, Newspaper Bodies

(Look Mom, I’m On the Front Page!)

Silkscreen on inkjet print

(Limited edition of 8 per print, 8 sets of 4 prints)

Silkscreen on inkjet print

(Limited edition of 8 per print, 8 sets of 4 prints)

25.75 x 24 inches

2015

Emma Sulkowicz

Emma Sulkowicz

Fuck her. Believe this. From Series, Newspaper Bodies

(Look Mom, I’m On the Front Page!)

Silkscreen on inkjet print

(Limited edition of 8 per print, 8 sets of 4 prints)

25.75 x 24 inches

2015

Attack

From Series, Newspaper Bodies

(Look Mom, I’m On the Front Page!)

Silkscreen on inkjet print

(Limited edition of 8 per print, 8 sets of 4 prints) 25.75 x 24 inches

2015

Emma Sulkowicz

Rokudenashi means “useless” or “good-for-nothing” in Japanese. Japanese mangaka make silly pen names for themselves all the time, and I am no different. I came up with this dumb penname without much to it when I started my career in “reality manga.” Manko Art, as it happens, was also just a silly thing I did for the publicity, but I was NOT prepared for the reaction from Japanese men. “It’s dirty!”

“It’s gross!” “I bet it stinks.” they spewed at me. Others would leer at me: “Show me more!” “You perverted little girl!” “Let me fuck you.”

There is something wrong when what amounts to an organ in every cisgender female, is treated with such overdetermined derision or obsession. Come to think, even the utterance of “manko” was a taboo, and absolutely forbidden since I was a child, and I’ve found myself respecting the archaic convention against saying it, even despite myself.

Since I’ve started my work in Manko Art, I’ve been fighting back against the old men who complain about it. I’ve decided to keep making even more ridiculous work, with all seriousness. Though this was kind of a joke at first, now, I am joking with every ounce of my body and soul. My ideas have infuriated a bunch of small-minded men, but the number of people who think it’s fun, silly, happy and hilarious has also grown.

Still, I have been arrested twice by the police in Japan. They’ve claimed my work is an “obscenity that stimulates reckless sexual impulse” and therefore a crime. The claim has caught the attention of the world and I’ve been asked numerous times by foreign media if artists in Japan can seriously be prosecuted for something like this.

This is what I always tell them: “Yes, Japan does actually arrest people for this, as I was actually taken away on Christmas Eve 2014 (December 24). But it is definitely messed up. My Manko is definitely not obscene. I firmly object to these claim as I do not believe I have done anything wrong, and I will defy the claim in my own frivolous way.”

Per my word, I am currently fighting these claims in court. I have absolutely no idea what to expect. But no matter how many times I am arrested, I will never forget the smiling faces, I won’t back down. Manko is not an unusual or special thing, and it is actually an obvious part of life and that is precisely why we should care about it. And I swear…the Mankos the police have confiscated and refuse to give back to me will one day return to my rightful possession, and I will continue to make fun of those very same police with along the way.

I encourage you to look out for me during this trial process. I frequently update my status on my blog (6d745.com) as well as my Twitter (@6d745), where I appreciate all your attention.

September 2015

Rokudenashiko (Megumi Igarashi)

Mannichiwa, America! I am MANKO (pussy) artist Rokudenashiko (Megumi Igarashi)

Remote-Controlled Gundaman (Remokonde Hashiru! Gandaman)

Plaster, acrylic, remote control

7.5 x 5 x 3.5 inches not including remote control

2013

Rokudenashiko

The Buddha Manko (Daibutsu-man) Resin, acrylic, diorama figurine 7 x 4 x 5 inches

2012

Rokudenashiko

Insect Cage Manko (Mushikago-man) Resin diorama figurines 7 x 3 x 3 inches

2012

Rokudenashiko

Vagina Mold

Plastic mold

Rokudenashiko

The Decorated Pussy Song (Dekoman no Uta)

Video: Director Manko Chijo Tree Starring Rokudenashiko, Landlady, KinkyHouse

1:07 minutes

2016

Rokudenashiko

3-D Gundaman

Plaster, acrylic

3D Gundaman (3D Gandaman)

Polyurethane, lacquer

8”H x 4”W x 2.4”D

2014

Vagina Cellphone Covers

Plastic mold

A World Where Obscenity Has Become Obscene (Waisetsuno Imiga Okashikunatta Sekai)

Video: Director Manko Chijo Tree

Starring Rokudenashiko, Nobuko, Paisen, Ume, Poppy, Ika, Boss Landlady

4:35 minutes

2016

A discursive intermedia contemplation of the spaces between us, precarity, hospitality, and not being at home.

Faith Wilding with Viêt Lê and Michelle Dizon

Nancy Youdelman

She Made It Herself

Mixed media relief sculpture

42.5 x 28 x 3 inches

2005

She Made It Herself is an artwork that honors my mother and the life she made for herself. It represents her power as a woman; created from pins, buttons, zippers sewing implements and photos of from her life, then painted with metallic paints, this dress shape symbolizes the incredible strength she possessed. She was born in 1913, a time when women were not supposed to be strong. She was a registered nurse and a talented seamstress; both were “appropriate” based on her gender.

Photo credit: Michael Karibian

Ice Warrior

Mixed media with encaustic 17 x 11 x 6 inches

2015

A forgotten cloth doll is given a new life; she is outfitted in “ice” clear rhinestones with a whisk as a staff, she is bold and ready for anything.

Nancy Youdelman

Photo credit: Michael Karibian

Nancy Youdelman

Speaking in Colors

Mixed media with encaustic 22 x 24.5 x 4.5 inches

2015

To me, the sparkle of old rhinestone jewelry has a beautiful but sad quality. Pairing it with a child’s dress, much like the ones I wore in the 1950s elaborates on the sad beauty and the bittersweet memories of life.

Photo credit: Michael Karibian

ABOUT THE JUROR:

Shannon Rose Riley is an interdisciplinary artist and scholar. She is Professor and Chair of the Humanities Department at San José State University where she teaches classes in Humanities, Creative Arts, and American Studies. She has a PhD in Performance Studies and Critical Theory from the University of California, Davis (2006); an MFA in Studio Art (performance, video, installation) from Tufts University and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (1998); and a BFA in Sculpture and Art History from Maine College of Art (1995). Professor Riley’s visual and performance works have been exhibited/staged internationally at numerous venues, including the Institute of Contemporary Art (Portland, ME), Mobius (Boston), Randolph Street Gallery and Artemisia Gallery (Chicago), the Cushwa-Leighton Library (Notre Dame), Performance Studies International/PSi in Mainz, Germany (2001) and Stanford (2013), the Festival Nacional de Pequeño Formato (Santa Clara Cuba, 2006), and Month of Performance Art-Berlin (2013), among others. Dr. Riley continues to perform and record with the Chicago-based gospel/noise/performance group, ONO and is the author of Performing Race and Erasure: Cuba, Haiti, & US Culture, 1898-1940 (Palgrave, 2016). Her essays appear in Theatre Topics, English Language Notes, Performing Arts Resources, and Baylor Journal of Theatre and Performance as well as in the edited collections, Practice as Research in the Arts: Principles, Protocols, Pedagogies, Resistances (Palgrave, 2013), Kathy Acker and Transnationalism (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009), and Mapping Landscapes for Performance as Research: Scholarly Acts and Creative Cartographies, which she co-edited with Lynette Hunter (Palgrave, 2009, 2nd edition 2014). Her book reviews appear in The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era (2013) and TDR: The Drama Review (2015).

JUROR STATEMENT

It has been a great pleasure to jury F*ck U! In the Most Loving Way I am grateful to NCWCA for the invitation and to all of the artists who submitted works in response to the call. All told, we received over 300 submissions in a variety of media and I had the rather daunting task of selecting no more than 15% for exhibition. Many excellent pieces were not included, so let me say a bit about my process and the criteria I kept in mind when making selections.

My first consideration was the strength of the image or the work’s formal power: I responded almost viscerally to the images that grabbed me in some way—sometimes the pull was immediate and at other times it built more quietly and persistently. Next, I considered the exhibition theme and how the work responded to it. I kept in mind that the show intends to serve as “a platform for women to air their grievances” and as such, I did not turn away from uncomfortable content. I especially looked for works that are in some dialogue with feminist art of the 1970s—Womanhouse in particular—as well as for works that speak to our own historical moment. My final consideration was the artist’s written statement. While I juried the show, the Trump “pussy-grabbing” scandal unfolded, as did his “nasty woman” comment. In the days that followed, “Nasty Woman” was seized as a kind of rallying cry for yet another feminist stance—and Pussy Riot released their video, “Straight outta Vagina.” The timing is indeed perfect for the theme of this exhibition.

Many of the works confront stereotypical gender roles and challenge just who or what constitutes a “woman” today. Many deal with the subject matter of abuse: sexual, physical, emotional, domestic, financial and racial violence; the constant barrage of micro-aggressions; and outright discrimination. There are incredibly brave enactments of the kinds of horror and violence that women, trans, and genderqueer people as well as people of color experience these works are not always easy but demand that we bear witness. Others articulate radical self-care, self-respect, and other savvy strategies for survival. And of course, there is still a good amount of humor in the works. Like much feminist art of the 1970s, many of these works are concerned with woman’s labor whether creative, productive, domestic, or reproductive—as well as with issues of violence and sexuality. There are material explorations in textile, self-portraiture, and installation that also harken back to Womanhouse strategies. One thing becomes clear when looking at the works and reading the statements: and that is that the personal is still political.

Shannon Rose Riley, juror November 2, 2016

This woman stands in firm knowledge and possession of her home. Anchored by her children, she defies the banksters who would rob her of it. My House is a positive affirmation of the right to our homes. And an indictment of the perverse greed and fraud of the banksters in the ongoing foreclosure crisis.

My Big Brazen Beauties drawing, promotes self acceptance through body acceptance. I use models who have some low self-esteem or a more negative relationship with their own body and present it in a view that showcases their natural beauty. These larger than life drawings forces the model and the viewers to see these bodies empowered while creating the intimacy to view my models as natural, beautiful beings. This series specifically is meant to challenge the social pressures from society of body image and what is beautiful.

Susan Ahlfs

Susan Elizabeth Ahlfs Graphite on paper 132 x 50 inches 2013

The girl in My and Those is a commodity. The status of women has improved since 1972, but too often we are still just the playthings and servants of men.

Please Break My Heart HD video

18:14 minutes

2016

Auditions for Please Break My Heart HD video

15:16 minutes

2016

Please Break My Heart examines the power structure within a relationship. It is seemingly a way of making myself a victim–the result is well known, I am asking to be heartbroken, and therefore my heartbreaker is the one in control of the situation. However, this is my project, I am the one hiring and paying the actor and he has signed a contract saying that within a few weeks he must leave my life forever. It is a way of taking control over my own heart.

Red Vines: Always Fat Free Red Vines, red belt 16 x 16 x 8 inches

2016

The cherry fragrance stimulated my appetite. The cherry red is a delicious looking color. With a stick of Red Vine, it will be twenty calories each. Without being conscious, I could easily eat the whole box. However, on the package of the Red Vines, it is labeled as ALWAYS FAT FREE. This sculpture is a symbolic object of a woman to stay shapely, yet constantly being tempted by sugar. Sugar is fattening, but the industry has buried the fact. The diet industry manipulates women to retain the culturally favored slim figure.

Pamela Belknap

Rabbit Food, The Dummification of Modern Women illustrates pent up anger and aggression over the minimization of women’s achievement particularly in film. Far too often in interviews great female performers are asked the lowest common denominator of questions while their male counterparts are handed thought provoking, philosophical and existential questions.

Mansplaining, Please

Tell Me Bout It Bout It

Mansplaining, Tell Me Bout It Bout It pokes at a cultural phenomenon far too many women are familiar with. The short video bitingly and sarcastically points out the absurdity and stupidity of this sexist mode of operating which is an everyday method of oppressing and maintaining power over woman.

Tracy Brown Balls

Video art 1:50 minutes

2016

Balls. The repetition of imagery has a real and adverse effect on the human psyche. Consistently sexist, violent, and derogatory images and messages diminish a women’s place in society while promoting violence on them; a trend that needs to end.

Six years ago, I was raped and beaten by someone I had known for seven years. Then his friend attempted to rape me before I was able to escape running half naked down the street at three in the morning. Watching a United States Presidential candidate, one who has been deemed a batterer, a groper, and possibly a child rapist joke about, condone and encourage assault against women, in 2016, leaves me 100 million thoughts and feelings and then leaves me numb. Consent cannot be bought or forced or taken. I do not consent.

Sara Cole

Consent 1

Acrylic and graphite on paper, mounted on canvas 42 x 29 inches

2016

Pink Skirt

Oil on wallpaper

24 x 32 inches

2016

There is a scarcity of images of female leg hair spanning from the classics of art history to our current visual culture. This perpetuates the oppressive and unrealistic beauty standard of compulsory depilation. The more images of something one sees, the more normalized that thing becomes. I want to use my paintings to normalize female leg hair.

Madelyn Covey

14.7 x 22 inches

2016

“Virgin, Whore, and Mother” are the categories women have been, and still are, placed into. This perpetuates slut-shaming, as well as places exceptional emphasis on a woman’s sexuality in a way that is limiting. In this piece, I reference the women subjects of Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres’s Neoclassical portraiture, oppressive fashion in the form of gut-squishing Victorian corsets, Philipp Otto Runge’s Romantic paintings of ideal mornings, current attitudes, and emojis to break through these categories.

Grace Fechner

Her

Acrylic, cut paper, graphite, India ink pen on paper

The Eternal Incantation is a chanting ritual with accompanying regalia. I use it to focus on and ostensibly purge the soundtrack that plays in my mind as I internalize everything that happens to me, either blaming or congratulating myself for random occurrences or other peoples’ actions towards me. The soundtrack, and thus the ritual, can fluctuate wildly. My efforts at purging this tendency have been unsuccessful so far; but then again, rituals do operate mysteriously. This futility seems to strike a chord with a great many women.

Amy Finkbeiner

Hansel and Gretel

Wooden box, metal, vintage dolls, photograph 8 x 12 x 3.5 inches

2016

My assemblage mixed media boxes create miniature rooms that reflect the feeling of a woman growing up in the fifties. Yes, I do consider myself to be a feminist, but that lingering feeling of not being taken seriously, of not really mattering, of not being truly equal is hard to get rid of. I communicate that feeling in my art, my daughters are much more powerful and assertive and I am proud to have raised them.

Dwora Fried

Our work deals with aspects of the female figure from the perspective of both artist and muse simultaneously. We utilize our own bodies interchangeably as descriptive forms of engagement and connection. Representing self as generic instead of specific, the notion of identity and authorship is challenged and slippage occurs. Restraints inhibit gesture, heightening the desire for release. The gap is bridged between separate and divisive bodily containers of personality and personae, allowing spirit to flow freely.

Laura Gelsomini with Susan Duby

A Not So Androgynous Toy

Copper, dough, plastic

10.5 x 3 x 1.25 inches

2004

Society has this idea that the toys a child plays with will define their gender. I made this penis vagina extruder because play-doh is non gender specific, and I found it a playful way to communicate my idea of how ridiculous this thinking is. Being a non gender conforming queer woman who lived this toy debate as a child it was a piece I felt I was born to make.

Brandon Harrell

Identity. I am fascinated by the ability for some to establish a strong independent mentality early in life while others wander through life feeling incomplete. Being a young woman, I continuously observe the growing chasm between the traditional expectancies of a woman. The expectations that were instilled within me as a child, such as the new age of empowerment, and the encouragement that society is slowly understanding the strength of independent women.

Blond Jenny

What did we learn? Pigment print 30 x 40 inches

2016

What did we learn? Mass media and society give us so many misleading images of women. They try to force us to be docile and compliant. Women aren’t free. We are expected to fit a mold defined by men. I want to show that we are ready to remove our masks, air our sadness and positively support each other.

Kay Kang

Jungwhan (For the Girls)

Acrylic and charcoal embedded in mixture of sand on 70 panels

69 x 48 inches

2002-ongoing

Jungwhan consists of series of charcoal pieces embedded in a mixture of sand and pumice on a 6” x 6” x 3” panel, on which I have written the names of each of my university classmates. Of these numerous women in my class, approximately 17% possess what are typically considered male names. Jungwhan are tribute to the women in my class of Ewha Women’s University in Seoul, Korea who were given male names at birth, in hope that their mothers would bear sons instead of daughters in the future.

Charcoal, hemp rope, rice paper, oil and sand on panel 45 x 48 inches

2004

Gateway speaks to an old Korean tradition for communicating the gender of a new born. When a female is born, charcoal is attached to a hemp rope and hung outside of the front door, signaling disappointment; but when a boy is born, red chili peppers, signaling joy are treaded in these hemp ropes in addition to charcoals. Written on these charcoal pieces are Korean female names of my college classmates.

Kay Kang

Gateway

My work responds to the fluidity of gender in this day and age, and the mode by which one woman capitalizes on androgyny. I complicate the notion of binary (male vs. female, masculine vs. feminine), presenting gender as performance. In my last body of work I photograph my daughter and her babysitter, who also works as an androgynous fashion model for both male and female brands. Describing herself as a “gender capitalist”, the model takes advantage of opportunities given to people based on their perceived sex or gender.

Daniela Kostova

8 x 6 inches, approx. each 2016

As a female in society, childhood is a critical time for navigating how the label of “female” dictates the rest of your life. This includes an understanding of sexuality as presented by everyday objects. I have found that children’s underwear is a hotbed for this very idea. In these pieces I give weight to their content through physical and visual tensions, both literally and through a material translation capturing the range of sexuality placed on the “panties.”

Kellie Ann Krouse

Untitled Glass

follow the rules

Children’s underwear, rope 53 x 60 inches

2016

As a female in society, childhood is a critical time for navigating how the label of “female” dictates the rest of your life. This includes an understanding of sexuality as presented by everyday objects. I have found that children’s underwear is a hotbed for this very idea. In these pieces I give weight to their content through physical and visual tensions, both literally and through a material translation capturing the range of sexuality placed on the “panties.”

Kellie Ann Krouse

If you are a woman or self identified woman your worth in society is measured through your body. The heteronormative power structure effects women in every aspect of life: family, work and the right to choose. Feminists and feminist artists have sought to disrupt and decolonize corporeal politics. Deciding not to enter into parenthood has long been considered a subversive act. Given the forces of consumer baby culture, childhood poverty and overpopulation, not procreating can still be a revolutionary act.

Liz

Waacking, an urban dance style originally created by Gay men of color, is a form of radical self love that emphasizes the use of pose, facial expression and emotion. Waacking is wildly popular in Asia amongst young women. During the filming of this video the participants call out, scream and direct to create a space of loving and joyful support for the performer to explore sensuality, anger, fear, sluttiness, beauty and self love. Basically to say, “F*ck you, I can love myself and my bitches are here to support me.”

Manipulated found quilt, linen, silk thread, gourd, cotton rope 14 x 7 x 8 inches

2016

Schism is a part of my most recent body of work titled Fawn. The term fawn refers to one still unweaned or retaining a distinctive baby coat. The anthropomorphic figure scrutinizes the interdependent and maternal role of myself as partner and mother. Schism deals the continual opposing feelings that result from domesticity. These challenges range anywhere from fulfilling the normative gender role for each parent to the ability to have a sexually gratifying relationship with your partner after having a child.

Colleen Merrill Schism

Rachel ODonnell

I’ll Eat You!

Acrylic paint on magazine (Teen Vogue)

9 x 6.6 inches

2016

Sexuality, femininity and violence all clash in my newest series, “Femme Fatales.” Inspired by the art of old pulp fiction novels, these pieces utilize ‘titles’ filled with double meaning. Behind the feigned femininity lurks a truer monster, much more powerful and fearsome than the oppressive world she operates in.

Rachel ODonnell

Bury Me Deep

Acrylic paint and oil paint markers on nylon 1960s slip 17.5 x 25 inches

2016

Sexuality, femininity and violence all clash in my newest series, “Femme Fatales.” Inspired by the art of old pulp fiction novels, these pieces utilize ‘titles’ filled with double meaning. Behind the feigned femininity lurks a truer monster, much more powerful and fearsome than the oppressive world she operates in.

Self-Portrait at 60 is based on Max Beckmann’s Self-Portrait in Tuxedo. Beckmann paints a confident but guarded presentation of the modern artist at this time in history defined as exclusively male. This painting transposes the gender of the artist, to project this male presentation of self and power via an aging women’s body, at turns surprising, empowering, pathetic. Where Beckmann holds a cigarette, this figure holds a tampon, symbolizing femaleness and, after menopause, the loss of fertility and traditional female power.

Patricia Olson

Self-Portrait at 60 [after Beckmann] Oil on panel 55 x 37 inches

2011

It Becomes Her Book board, Stonehenge cream paper, ink 16 inches across (open), 8 inches closed 2016

It Becomes Her is a book about the removal of female pubic hair, often due to societal pressures and expectations of appearance. Its intention was to examine why we may choose to alter our bodies in this way, and to change some of our reasons for doing so—to make room for choice: choosing to play, to experiment with your hair (or lack thereof), choosing to do what feels right for you. To embrace your body as it is or as you make it, both can be forms of radical self-love—a “f*ck you,” if you will, “in the most loving way.”

Jessi Presley-Grusin

Women Laughing at Salad

Acrylic on canvas 64 x 35 inches

2014

2014 I stand before cake contemplating its meaning as if it is the most pressing issue of our time. In response to a weight phobic American culture that encourages fat shaming as ones civic duty, I celebrate abundance as an alternative to the policing of a restrictive and regulated lean existence. From an obese woman’s perspective who is pathologized and marginalized by society I question, what is beauty, who and what is grotesque?

Nancy Roy-Meyer

Zona Sage

The Good Old Days?

Vintage crazy quilt fragments, silk, photo transfer, beads, embroidery, handkerchief 15 x 10 inches

2010

When people speak of nostalgia for “the good old days” or “making America great again” they usually have a very narrow vision of who is included and ignore the realities for many segments of society, and women in particular. This small piece invites the viewer in. Upon closer inspection, the embroidery reveals its true sentiments: “Contraception is illegal,” “I am my husband’s property,” and “I cannot vote.” Hidden under the handkerchief is embroidered, “I am a lesbian.”

When you period blood all over Dollhouse objects, menstruation blood, and existing data from user generated social media sites

5:46 minutes

2015

Patriarchy still whispers in the lives of everyday women. I am politely reminded that some things are best left unsaid and unseen, like my period. This work explores the ways in the act of “playing” can subvert shame. Additionally, how the Internet and User Generated social media platforms provide the opportunity for women to cope with the shame inscribed on their bodies. This performance and production of “self” on social media sites is an opportunity for women to understand and reclaim their identities and bodies.

Lucy Sexton

Rarely do we honor the women who labor to support families, allowing future generations to thrive. This is a portrait of my Grandmother, a devout Christian and very proper, strong woman. When my Grandfather was imprisoned in Hawaii during WWII for being a Japanese American community leader, she became the sole breadwinner, supporting her family by ironing and taking in laundry. The sharpness of the dowels reflects her vigor and prickliness, and my reaction to the unjust, racist actions of the US government towards its citizens.

Bang

Mixed paper collage, screen shot Tinder conversation, wooden frame 9.25 x 14 inches

2016

This project stems from my own personal experience using the dating app Tinder. Using real messages from the app, it examines the differences between the superficial hopes of romantic love, the stark reality found on dating sites and trying to reconcile the two while combating the misogyny of “hook up” culture. It explores how anonymity and the app’s perceived promise of sexual encounters allow men to treat women as objects meant to satisfy their needs. I also include my own voice pushing back, through wit and irony, against the sexual intrusions.

Dafna Steinberg

Though the female body is often depicted for its beauty, my interest in it is in a physical manifestation of the female mind. I want to create a space where women are free from the gaze of society. In our everyday lives we are plagued by irrational impulses which would remind us we are alive—such as the desire to jump into a fountain of water with all of our clothes on or to throw our lunches at a wall to see what it looks like. The women in these paintings are all following through with those impulses in an alternate reality imagined exclusively for the purpose of consummating their irrational behavior.

Rebecca Sutton

Though the female body is often depicted for its beauty, my interest in it is in a physical manifestation of the female mind. I want to create a space where women are free from the gaze of society. In our everyday lives we are plagued by irrational impulses which would remind us we are alive—such as the desire to jump into a fountain of water with all of our clothes on or to throw our lunches at a wall to see what it looks like. The women in these paintings are all following through with those impulses in an alternate reality imagined exclusively for the purpose of consummating their irrational behavior.

Rebecca Sutton

Temple of the Virgins

Vintage dolls, ragged cotton quilt, crochet doilies, tulle, ribbon, rhinestones, dress pins

18 x 22 x 4 inches

2016

Focusing on the conventions of marriage, virginity, housewifery, and incidents that are womanly and feminine I’ve revisited Womanhouse 45 years later. Womyn have been the keepers of everyone’s sugarcoated skeletons in the cupboard, including our own. F*ck U is my prayer of contempt. No other reaction is appropriate when reprehensible deeds have ensued. My assemblage depicts my story of molestation and sexual assault as a three year-old child by my maternal Uncle, a retired evangelical minister who resides in California.

Rhonda Thomas Urdang

Still Holding Up-Womanhousevessel Cardboard, paint, thread 7 x 12 x 7 inches

2016

Why are women so often still the caretakers and connectors of the world? How do we communicate with others, both directly and indirectly, about the roles we are willing to assume? How often do we say yes when we mean no, ignore our internal truths, follow paths that are not ours? How do we confine ourselves, and how can we live differently? What do we need to do in order to take our places with more power and to promote this for others, too?

Wendy Tigchelaar

Arbitrary Selection

iPad and mounted box - small video installation

2.5 x 11.75 x 3.5 inches (4 minutes)

2015

Arbitrary Selection is a re-creation of a racial violent act that has been historically practiced in the U.S as late as 1998 (RIP James Byrd, Jr). The film is 4 minutes long, played on a iPad with a customized app that interrupts the viewer from watching.

This body of work addresses many issues regarding woman’s bodily function issues and how women handle and feel about these issues. Having my own uterine problems that are heightened during ovulation, I have found how not only how society views abnormal uterine and vaginal issues, but how regular menstruation is perceived.

Cate White

Christmas Prison Visit Acrylic, house paint on wood panel 45 x 65 inches

2015

This painting depicts a photo from a Christmas visit a friend and I paid to a third friend doing time in a Louisiana prison. I stood between them for the photo as the woman usually does, acting as both focal point and placeholder. I am interested in what the naked female body provokes when its role or social position is unclear: Ally or object? Soldier or spoils of war? And who decides what her body “means?” Me or the viewer? As with most of my work, I am interested in confusing the language and symbols of power.

Self-love is learned. And for those who exist outside the margins of the “white” (male, heteronormative young, thin and rich) ideal, it is learned in the process of rejecting messages that you are not sacred or of significant value. But what is to be done when some of those lessons are inadvertently taught by those who are most dear and then reinforced by oneself? With this piece the participant/ viewer is asked to consider five questions and leave a note if so inclined. Comments will be compiled for online February 2017 viewing.

Leisel Whitlock

Mary in the Outhouse

Colored pencil on paper 24 x 30 inches

2016

Mary in the Outhouse is a work of colored pencil on paper that mocks the social practice of breastfeeding in public restrooms to avoid the dirty looks of embarrassed patrons and staff. This piece is a part of a series of self-portraits of the artist as Mary who had a little lamb, but did not necessarily want one. Mary feeds her lambs in the outhouse, with a twisted version of her rhyme scrawled on the wall behind her.

Joni Wildman

KITCHEN TABLE TALK

Written and performed by Tanya Augsburg

Production Assistant: Josefin Jansson

January 13, 2017

Ninth Street Independent Film Center

San Francisco, CA

Kitchen Table Talk is a participatory feminist performance for creative envisioning in uncertain times. I have been creating platforms for public debate for over twenty years. Usually those platforms are in the form of conference panels. I have occasionally performed rituals, but many of these have been participatory and relational. Kitchen Table Talk is an attempt to forge what I have done in the past with my ongoing belief that we have to work collectively to create new possibilities.

Kitchen Table Talk was originally created for NCWCA’s F*ck U! In the Most Loving Way and was first performed on January 13, 2017 at the Ninth Street Independent Film Center. The performance links a traditional form of problem solving for women gathering around the kitchen table with more recent methods, such as feminist consciousness raising, brainstorming, and rolestorming while also being formed by the conversational method modeled by the television show The View and the Lean In Circles inspired by Sheryl Sandberg’s 2013 book Lean In. The performance also gives a nod to the Post-It Walls of Empathy that sprouted up around San Francisco BART Stations after the 2016 U.S Presidential Election. They in turn were influenced by the New York City subway wall Post-It mosaics instigated by artist Mathew Chavez.

The performance at Kala Institute in Berkeley, CA on March 25, 2017 was produced by NCWCA member Elizabeth Addison, who helped greatly with all aspects of the performance, including set design. I was prompted to make some last-minute changes to the performance after seeing the photograph that the Vice-President tweeted on March 23, 2017 of the House Freedom Caucus sitting around a conference table to discuss women’s health. For the Kala performance the photograph was projected on a wall throughout the performance as a point of reference.

One never knows how audiences will react to a performance, and the audience at Kala was interested in sitting around the kitchen table and talking. Our conversations about our current concerns for women were wide-ranging and insightful. The performance at Kala ended with the group reenacting the House Freedom Caucus meeting, which some of us then posted on social media. I am grateful to Elizabeth Addison, Amber Hoy of Kala, Robert Schmitz and my two student volunteers, Daniel Bird and Raquel Christian, for their assistance. I am honored that the website 100 Days of Action selected the performance for their calendar.

F*ck U! In the Most Loving Way: The Documentary (2017)

I believe we had a good fight.

F*ck U! In The Most Loving Way short film is a half-hour film which documented feminism and feminist art in 2016 and 2017. The film highlighted the process of curating, producing, and behind the scene secrets from NCWCA curatorial committee. The film is filled with fun, fucks, frustrations, and forever love.

The F*ck U! exhibition planning took place during the 2016 United States presidential campaign season. Donald Trump won the 2016 election during the show and the women's march happened on the day the show closed. As I worked through the video editing, I re-lived my depression and disappointment about the election results. On the other hand, I was also re-living the support from the women artist's community. To preserve those footages and edit them into a watchable format is for the future generation to see to see the leadership of brilliant women, the problem-solving skills we had, the diversity of our community, and the strength of supporting each other as a group of women.

F*ck U! In The Most Loving Way was curated and produced by a group of volunteer women artists and helped by all gender equality fighters. I am proud to be part of it.

Mido Lee Tech Specialist & Documentarian

F*ck U! In the Most Loving Way: A National Feminist Art Exhibition

Dec. 17, 2016 – Jan. 21, 2017

Media Report

Calendar Listings

Nov. 9, 2016 SF Arts Monthly

The F*ck U! event listing is on the Arts Monthly website: https://www.sfarts.org/event.cfm?event_num=70254

Berkeley Patch

F*ck U! In the Most Loving Way Events

http://patch.com/california/berkeley/calendar/event/20170113/82743/f-ckuin-the-most-loving-way-events

Nov. 22, 2016 KPFA-FM

The event was posted to KPFA's Community Calendar: https://kpfa.org/event/fck-u-loving-way/

Dec. – Jan. issue Central City Extra

Posted online on Dec. 15, 2016

Calendar announcement on page 8 of the print edition, as well as photo of Blond Jenny’s pigment print. See PDF file titled CCX-173-8.pdf http://studycenter.org/test/cce/index.html

Print and Online Articles

Dec. 8, 2016 San Leandro Times

Headline: “San Leandran Directs Feminist Art Show”

Story ran on page 2 with a color photo of Leisel Whitlock’s installation work.

Dec. 16, 2016 Golden Gate Express

Headline: “Feminist Art Exhibit Tackles Patriarchy and Roles of Women Today” http://goldengatexpress.org/2016/12/16/feminist-art-exhibit-tacklespatriarchyand-roles-of-women-today/

Sat. Dec. 17, 2016 Mission Local

Headline: Feminist Art Gives Middle Finger to Misogyny, Opens Tonight”

Story posted online. Tanya Augsburg and Ester Hernandez were interviewed. http://missionlocal.org/2016/12/feminist-art-exhibition-gives-middlefingerto-misogyny-opens-tonight/

Thurs. Dec. 22 to Wed, Dec. 28 SF Weekly

Leisel Whitlock and Tanya Augsburg interviewed on Friday, Dec. 2.

Posted the evening of Tues. Dec. 20, 2016

http://www.sfweekly.com/culture/giving-fck-art-makes-womens-invisibleconditioninvisible/

Page 32, paper of Thurs. Dec. 22 to Wed. Dec. 28 as part of a larger arts piece. Headline: Gorilla Glass –Xiaoxiao Zeng’s “Humanimal” seeks to approach the animal kingdom on its own terms.

Sun. Dec. 25, 2016 SF Examiner

Headline: Arc Gallery exhibit raises a feminist middle finger in uncertain times http://www.sfexaminer.com/arc-gallery-exhibit-raises-feminist-middlefinger-uncertain-times/

Jan. 3, 2017 SF Arts Monthly

Online write up by their galleries curator. See attached screen shot from the SF Arts Monthly web site.

Radio

Wed. Dec. 14 from 9 – 9:30 a.m. KKUP (91.5 F)M

Shannon Rose Riley and Tanya Augsburg were interviewed for a half-hour.

Sat. Dec. 17 from 11 a.m. to noon KALX (90.7 FM)

Women Hold Up Half the Sky

Guests interviewed were Liesel Whitlock, Tanya Augsburg, Elizabeth Leger, and Judy Shintani

https://kalx.berkeley.edu/programs/women-hold-half-sky

Sat. Dec. 17, afternoon and evening KCBS (740AM and 106.9 FM)

Tanya Augsburg was interviewed at Arc Gallery.

Two different audio clips aired on KCBS.

Wed. Jan. 11, 2017 KALW (91.7 FM)

Sights and Sounds

Sights & Sounds airs on Thursdays at 7:45 a.m. and 4:45 p.m.

Tanya Augsburg spoke about three upcoming art events.

http://kalw.org/post/sights-sounds-tanya-augsburg#stream/0

Thurs. Jan. 19, 2017 KALW (91.7 FM)

Cross Currents

Tanya Augsburg was interviewed about the F*ck U! art exhibit

Cross Currents airs from 5-5:30 p.m. Mondays thru Thursdays

http://kalw.org/post/fck-u-most-loving-way-women-artists-speak

Left to right: Leisel Whitlock, Judy Johnson-Williams, Mido Lee, Tanya Augsburg, Karen Gutfreund, Priscilla Otani, Veronica Yazmin, Lena Shey, Patricia Montgomery. Photo by Mido Lee

WOMEN’S MARCH NATIONAL—January 21, 2017

Washington DC, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oakland

Images first row, left to right:

Bus to Washington, photo courtesy of Karen Gutfreund

Samanta Tello and daughters at Women’s March in San Francisco, photo courtesy of Samanta Tello

Natasha Stillman (daughter), Zona Sage, Marina Carlstroem (granddaughter) at Women’s March in Oakland, photo courtesy of Zona Sage

Women’s March in Washington, photo by Amy Finkbeiner

Unidentified woman, Woman’s March in Washington, photo by Amy Finkbeiner

Images second row, left to right:

Karen LeCocq, Women’s March in Washington, photo courtesy of Karen LeCocq

Miriam Fabbri, Kelly Hammargren, Mary Shisler, Women’s March in Oakland, photo courtesy of Mary Shisler

Patricia Olson and friends, Women’s March in St. Paul, Minnesota, photo courtesy of Patricia Olson

Linda Joy Kattwinkel with husband and friends, Women’s March in San Francisco, photo courtesy of Linda Joy Kattwinkel

Sign in Manhattan, Women’s March in New York City, photo by Wendy Tigchelaar

Images third row, left to right:

Rachel O’Donnell, Women’s March in Los Angeles, photo courtesy of Rachel O’Donnell

Ruth Petersen Shorer, Women’s March in Oakland, photo courtesy of Ruth Petersen Shorer

Women’s March in Washington, photo by Amy Finkbeiner

Sign in Manhattan, Women’s March in New York City, photo by Wendy Tigchelaar

Amy Finkbeiner, Women’s March in Washington, photo courtesy of Amy Finkbeiner

Images fourth row, left to right:

Jeannette Kiel with her sons, Women’s March in Walnut Creek, photo courtesy of Jeannette Kiel

Karen Gutfreund, Women’s March in Washington, photo courtesy of Sally Edelstein

Marya Roland, Ann Rowles, Cherie M. Redlinger, Women’s March in Washington, photo courtesy of Cherie Redlinger

Ester Hernandez, Women’s March in San Francisco, photo courtesy of Ester Hernandez

Karen Le Cocq and friend, Women’s March in Oakland, photo courtesy of Karen LeCocq

Images fifth row, left to right:

Unidentified woman, Women’s March in Washington, photo courtesy of Amy Finkbeiner

Brandon F Harrell and David, Women’s March in Asheville, NC, photo courtesy of Brandon F Harrell

Kathy Fujii-Oka and Tracy Beckerley, Women’s March in Oakland, photo courtesy of Kathy Fujii-Oka

Ruth Petersen Shorer and friends, Women’s March in Oakland, photo courtesy of Ruth Petersen Shorer

Women’s March in San Francisco, photo courtesy of Karen LeCocq

WOMEN’S MARCH PHOTOS from around the USA. January 21, 2017

WOMEN’S MARCH PHOTOS from San Francisco Civic Center. January 21, 2017

All photos courtesy of Mido Lee

REFLECTIONS FROM THE WOMEN’S MARCH 2017

Amy Finkbeiner

We got all the way to the White House. He must have heard us.

Kathy Fujii-Oka

It was a phenomenal day marching in peace and solidarity with a passionate crowd of anti-Trump individuals. How empowering it felt, a global day of love and honor in support of human rights and beliefs… loved the pink hats and wonderfully creative signage!

Karen Gutfreund

The ground swell in Washington was amazing, with thousands of women walking from every direction towards Ground Zero... the main stage. Early morning, with a bit of a chill in the air and overcast, yet the air sparkled with electricity. We were trying to meet up with friends and unfortunately as more and more people assembled most all cell phone service went out. Somehow the gods were smiling on Sally and me, and as we inched around a building in search of our friends we actually ended up just 30 yards from the mainstage. Although people were packed in like sardines (and if you had to get out it would have been impossible) the crowds stretched out a mile in all directions, the mood was jubilant and accommodating no matter how many more people try to squeeze in. The speeches were incredibly inspiring, and I plan to use the poem by Nina Mariah Donovan, age 19, that Ashley Judd performed into a text painting (giving credit of course!) But what affected me the most was Sophie Cruz, a 6-year-old immigration activist and daughter of two undocumented immigrants, who spoke at the March. She is the little girl who "initially attracted attention when she slipped through the security barricade to get to Pope Francis during a procession when he visited the U.S. in 2015. She handed the pope a letter about immigration reform, in which she expressed her fear that her parents would be deported." She said, "We are here together making a chain of love to protect our families...Let us fight with love, faith and courage so that our families will not be destroyed. “I also want to tell the children not to be afraid, because we are not alone, There are still many people that have their hearts filled with love.” She then repeated it in Spanish. It brought me to tears.

Later I discovered a song from a flash mob that has gone viral "I can't keep quiet," www.icantkeepquiet.org that is just so incredibly inspiring and makes my heart swell. So while I am very tired today, I keep playing it and it is energizing me. To bring her music to the march, The performer MILCK formed an all female choir comprised of 26 women from Los Angeles and D.C. I think it will become the anthem to this movement. Now that it has started it will not be stopped or silenced. And then the actual March began. The creativity and slogans on the signs were just unbelievable. I'm thinking of making a compilation book (as soon as I get the copyright issues sorted out) with photos of signs from around the globe, and then selling them as a fundraiser for Planned Parenthood. The chance were very inspiring and fun too. I think my favorite was "we are here to stay, welcome to your first day." The sea of people stretched on for miles and the roar of the crowd was like a turbulent ocean. Whenever a helicopter would go overhead people would stop, hold their signs to the sky and roar. It felt larger than life, and I felt embraced in collective humanity that wants peace and progress. And while there were many marches in my own backyard in California I thought it was so important to be a part of history and make the effort to be in Washington. I know I am very lucky and privileged that I have the means to do so.

Now while my arms are aching from holding them above my head for hours, my heart is full with hope for positive change and what we can and will do when we come together.

Brandon F Harrell

Me and my friend David at the march in Asheville, NC. Couldn’t make it to DC. Much love to all. United we stand alone we can fall. Stand united!

Blond Jenny

My day started at 3:30am when I boarded my first bus to NYC with a dozen other women on board. An hour later we joined 582 other men and women at the NY Port Authority where we filled a dozen buses. When we arrived in D.C. at RFK Stadium every parking lot was filled with what looked like more than 1,000 other buses all carrying people on the same mission to join the Women's March.

So many pink women kitties came to Washington D.C.. We looked like a sea of kitties as we made our way across town to Capitol Hill. Along the way we were greeted by the locals, friendly police offers and the military. Everyone knew it would be a busy day but I don't think anyone anticipated how busy.

From young girls being carried by their mothers to the elderly we united on Independence Ave. with pride and courage. We raised our voices together to sing about what we want for our country and the world. The March didn't end when all the crowds and buses were dispersed. Our voices and songs remain in Washington D.C. and the world will continue to feel our unity.

I am overwhelmingly positive from speaking with artist friends who were there with me, back home in New York, Las Vegas, and Santa Cruz. We have proven that we are connected and empowered! Before the March I was depressed and wasn't happy about the election but now I feel revitalized.

I met my Senator, Cory Booker, during the March and I have plans to mail him as my first of 10 Actions in 100 Days. I will vote for him and continue to fight for a better future for us.

Jeannette Kiel

Walnut Creek women's march: I march with/for my sons. I teach them about love, respect, and fighting for what they believe in. I tell them that they are a part of history, we are all equal, and that love always wins.

Karen LeCocq

In both marches (Oakland and San Francisco), I felt the most positive energy, hopefulness and complete respect for one's fellow marchers. It was crowded, so crowded in San Francisco, that you had to walk in tiny baby steps through the assembled at the initial gathering point when you could move at all. Most of the time one was wedged in like a sardine in an over-packed can. However, there was no pushing, shoving, rude behavior or negative remarks from anyone. We were all so happy to see each other turn out. I was so moved to see the signs from all these different factions: women, men, children, LGBT's, Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, immigrants...the one good thing TRUMP did was to unite all people against him into beautiful marches all across the country and even the world. That may be the one positive thing about his disastrous reign...and hopefully, because of the marches, it will be a short one.

Cherie Redlinger

It was a day of amazing women coming together for love, healing, and a day to hear powerful speeches like the one Gloria Steinem did that rocked the rally filled with YES WE CAN!

Zona Sage

I was at an all day meeting of the board of the ACLU on the day of the march, planning the organization's response to the new administration, but on the lunch break joined my daughter and granddaughter at the demonstration in Oakland! It was great to be at the march and to later see the whole world rising up in unison for the good.

Mary Shisler

I was nearly in tears as 100,000 strong marched by. My group was late because BART was so overcrowded, so we waited until the crowd thinned out to join the march - nearly 2 and 1/2 hours after we took our positions on the corner. I am so proud and so invigorated. As many of you have found out, I have turned myself into a one woman petition machine. This is a lot more fun and please when you receive those petitions, please, please, please sign. We are having an effect.

Ruth Shorer

It was a beautiful rainbow of people coming together for equality and justice. The biggest question people have in retrospect is, “Will we be heard?”

Samanta Tello

The march in San Francisco has been really important for me, my husband and my daughters. Even at their young ages, 8 and 5, they followed the presidential election closely and with a great deal of interest. They were very excited about having the opportunity to see a woman running for the presidency and, as many of us, they were expecting the election day with enthusiasm. The result of the election was scary to them and made them feel unsafe. Their father and I had many conversations with them regarding the situation and how this could affect the world. Trying of course, to give them a sense of safety, even amidst of all the scary changes happening. To me, as a mother, the march was a bonding moment with my daughters and also a learning moment for all of us. I felt proud to show them that, even if things don't go well, we are still powerful and don't have to agree with the circumstances.

Going to the march made my daughters feel that good people were on their side, the side of girls, the side of the women that they are going to become. At this age there is a really strong sense of what's right and what's wrong, and they can't understand how someone mean can be in charge of our country. Going to the march made them feel proud, powerful and happy to be on the good side. And of course, they absolutely loved feeling the attention of people around them taking their photo with the sign they worked so hard on making.

Wendy Tigchelaar

Walking up Lexington Avenue toward the NYC Women’s March, Patti Smith’s song lyrics fill my head…..I believe everything we dream can come to pass through a union, that we can turn the world around, we can turn the earth’s revolution, we have the power, people have the power…. On the small island of Manhattan, people of all ages and classes and colors and genders and identities and abilities press together as we march. We are imperfect, all. Yet our numbers fill the streets, our signs color the air above our heads, our chants swell in a heart-lifting roar.

We’re not here for catharsis. We are here for a much larger purpose: to remember that we need each other. For who will speak out with me when my truths are obliterated and my rights are violated, if not you? Who will stand with you when your identity is shamed and your vulnerability is abused and your body and soul are harmed, if not me?

ARTIST ESSAYS

The Princess and the Presidency

by MGP Andersen

When I was out of town recently I noticed that hardly any women wore bangs, and everyone’s hair was shoulder length or longer. When I returned to San Francisco I told my hairdresser and she laughed and said that was because straight women always want “fucking princess hair.” Being a straight woman with bangs and sometimes purple hair, I took exception to this, but then my brother sent me a picture of my niece. She is only fourteen years old but her long hair was up and she had on a long dress and lots of make up and high heels. And she wore a crown.

My hairdresser was right. Many straight women do want to be princesses and they pass this longing along to their daughters. The problem is that in most of the fairy tales princesses are valued for their beauty and breeding, not for their brains. These qualities help them snag a prince, but then what? Nobody really lives happily ever after, so they snag a lot of disappointment, too. They try again. And again. In their desperation they settle for dukes, then earls, then twice divorced game show hosts with appalling manners.

Many of the princesses voted for Trump. He may be uncouth and inept, but he is wealthy, and therefore royalty. Their unfounded faith in their newest savior may ruin the country during the next four years. Even more frightening, after he has disappointed them, they will be waiting to embrace their next champion.

The only way to stop this cycle is to do away with princesses and replace them with women. So cut your hair and put on your boots and go out into the world and find out what you are good at. Don’t wait for anybody to make you happy. And tell your daughters to do the same thing. Champion yourself and the whole country will be stronger.

War Bride.2015. Courtesy of Artist, MGP Andersen.

My Turn to Speak by

Blond Jenny

Throughout history women haven't been free. For me, I wanted to be an artist so I left my home in Korea where it is the tradition to have a lack of respect for women. When I was a child, my mom prepared the table setting and served my father and brother with silver utensils while my mom and I used stainless steel. I wondered why I couldn't eat with silver too. In some families men and women would even eat in separate tables or at different times. In times when we fought many wars, men were needed more than women but in modern society the stigma of war has continued to infect gender bias. In Korean society people still want boy babies over girls since they still have a traditional idea about bloodlines. Mother-in-laws and husbands often ridicule women that only bear girls and don’t have boys. There is a similar outcome in the arts and in business. So many women graduate from art school but most successful artists are men. Every business woman feels that she has to fight with men for equal respect. Most people, even women, agree with this unfair sentiment.

How are women defined in Korea? Beauty. I had to deal with so many traditional ideas and was forced to go on blind dates with family friends because as I aged and had not married people looked down on me. So many Korean women believe their beauty can change their life so they undergo surgery in hopes of a Cinderella story. We are brainwashed from childhood to want the same face, lifestyle, and ideas.

Koreans cultivate a group mentality over individualism but I wanted to be an artist and to have my own freedom in expression. That's why I moved to New York to better my life. I know here I can speak up for women and be proud of myself at the same time.

These days despite having a female President in Korea, men continue to lead more than women. People don't recognize her for her achievements and only blame her for the problems she has caused. I couldn't vote in the recent US election since I am not yet a citizen. If I had the chance, I would have voted for Hillary. I want to show how women can change history. Also, I believe women can have a better life. I don't want to vote for a man who doesn't respect women and I am concerned about the long term change he will bring to America.

Cauldron. Menstrual blood drawing and resin on photo print canvas, 3 x 12 inches, 2017. Courtesy of the artist. A self-portrait as Trump decorated with menstrual blood. The idea behind this is inspired by witchcraft and the use of a talisman along with a rare or precious potion.

The Most Loving Way I Can Think of to Say, “Fuck You.”

by Amy Finkbeiner

I hate myself because I've known about this for weeks, this opportunity to write an essay for F*ck U! In the Most Loving Way, and have been straining miserably at my computer; but I have been totally unable to do it. I hate myself because I'm so tired from my job that I can't jump on an opportunity to write about an exhibition I’m so proud to be in and the revisiting of a seminal feminist project that I love, when it should come out all magical-organic like it’s imprinted on my DNA. Shit. I hate myself for whining when in fact I have a job and a roof over my head and am in significantly less peril than so many people are at this moment. I hate myself for thinking I having nothing to say.

Not unlike this feeling of jumping up, suddenly, wanting to say or do…oh, something impactful!…but collapsing like my torso is a misshapen lump of lead. Sinking back into my chair under a flat burden of futility and hopelessness that anything at all can be done to fight the white supremacist, misogynist, hateful, corrupt tyranny that is about to be installed in the executive branch of this nation.

Not unlike the new untethering, a new wandering (wondering?) sensation, in my abdomen since November 9 when my period did not come. And would not come. For the first time since I was twelve. It did not arrive at its customary mid-afternoon hour on the 28th day. It did not even come later that week after I’d been at work for long hours with a group of women, several of whom were having their periods, a sure-fire trigger for mine in the past. The releasing of the heaviness and fatigue, the clearing of the fog all in a rush of grinding emotions and churning hormones that is a period—it never came. For real: it appears my menopause started on November 9. My body decided to end an era that day. It gave up. It said to me (because it does talk to me), “Our world has changed.”

I’m crying as I write this, something I haven’t been able to do for many weeks. Crying because I’m finally saying it, saying that my period is gone. Crying for the end of the world I knew, or didn’t know. Crying for the Bill of Rights, so screwed up and imperfect but also a kind of gravitational force. For Hillary, standing up there, maintaining her grace while being forced to swallow all the eons of hatred for all women, in a way that only women can ever understand. For all the people who are going to be frightened, limited, cut off, harmed, disappeared. For all the men I’ll never fuck. For all the women who are choosing to die by their own hands rather than submit to rape. For the destruction of this planet. For all women’s bodies. For my body, which I love and worship so dearly. For my period. For everything.

I seem to recall a conversation not so long ago--I was talking to someone about something and I think I called myself a pacifist. It was such crap. I am not a pacifist. Please forgive me.

How can I say "fuck you" to misogyny in a loving way when I don't feel at all loving? When I feel like the most extreme opposite of loving? When in fact I’m sick to fucking death of having to “create” ways to respond to the hatred that is leveled at all women so that I won’t piss off the men doing the hating and give them even more reason to hurt me or hurt some other woman or hurt all women? When in fact I want to beat the shit out of misogyny? And beat the shit out of each and every man who perpetrates it seriously, beat the shit out of them, smash their skulls with a crowbar? And I’m sitting here fretting even now that the crowbar thing sounds insane and will be dismissed as hysterical raving from a menopausal woman, like if maybe I just frame it in just the right way…and I’m about to delete that part but no hell no. I won’t. I won’t. No.

NO.

I’m sorry.

This is not pro-active or uplifting or even positive. I’m saying bad things. This is bad. But no.

I will not be loving towards you, misogyny.

I am not loving.

Fuck you.

Exclusion from Inclusion

by Nancy Roy-Meyer

Feminism has a longstanding history of advocating for marginalized groups. It continues to be important in the 21st century. As a feminist, I believe in an inclusive society where every ‘body’ should have equal access to the pursuit of happiness. Being a fat woman, I experience discrimination on a daily basis. In recent times the body positive movement reminds us that girth does not equal worth, as seen in my painting, BULLY. In my artwork, I address fat discrimination through a first-person account. It is important to note I do not intend to debate the health and medical criticisms governing weight, but rather advocate that “sizeism” be added to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act as a protected class. I propose fat-phobia is an ideological position and political issue fueled by mass media and patriarchal power.

February 28, 1972 marks the last day of the now historic Womanhouse exhibition in Los Angeles, California that was designed to give women a stronger presence within the art world. On that same day I celebrated my 11th birthday.

Nancy Roy-Meyer, BULLY (close-up detail), Mixed media, 2015. Courtesy of the Artist.

As a pre-teen I was developing a sense of self-worth. This was a time of great change for women. Female status in society was evolving. Thanks to the efforts of the 1960s and 70s women’s liberation movement, I grew up with many more options and career choices for my life than the women of the generations before me who were generally not allowed to pursue any option outside the home.

Nancy

However, during that same timeframe where women were being freed to pursue options outside the traditional domestic role, we continued to adhere to the male-dominated ideal of what the female body type should be. Fashion in the late 60s featured a doe-eyed female British teenage model known as Twiggy. She was more than stick thin every bone in her body seemed to protrude prominently through the clothing she was modeling. She was on every major magazine cover and was presented to us as the body we needed to achieve.

Television brought into our homes the American ideal; what we needed to buy, how we should behave, and what we should look like. A prominent cigarette brand, Virginia Slims known for their 1970s slogan, “you’ve come a long way baby,” encouraged women to smoke as a symbol for feminine power and sex appeal. It’s hard to imagine today, but at that point in time many physicians recommended that women smoke to prevent weight gain. (It would seem that in their eyes the risk of lung cancer was preferable to weight gain.)

A memorable 1980 lyric advertising Enjoli perfume for the modern woman, “I can bring home the bacon and fry it up in the pan and never let you forget you’re a man because I am a woman” illustrates the cultural direction corporate America sold women you can be successful, but you must continue to be the male ideal of what was considered sexually attractive at the time. In other words, women could have it all and do it all, as long as they looked “good” while doing it. It’s no wonder that I learned from an early age that my not-so-skinny body was not acceptable.

As a fat female child I experienced daily bullying in school and snide comments made by wellmeaning (?) adults concerning my weight. A familiar chant often heard as I boarded the school bus, “fatty and skinny went to bed fatty rolled over and skinny was dead” (Unknown author) still echoes in my ears today. As I continue to experience discrimination in a fat-phobic American culture all my successes fade to the background and that childhood experience jumps to the foreground. The adult woman that I am continues to be devalued by a continuing culture that negatively stereotypes corpulent people, thus affecting equal access to advancement in employment.

Roy, 11 years old, 1972.

In the United States, a heavy person is often discriminated against in the work place. It is much more widespread than most realize. A war has been declared on those whose bodies are not considered “normally weighted.” It has given many people the green light to make it their civic duty to shame these already marginalized people. To what end? To make them comply? With what? And, for what reason? Health? I think not. Rather, I think it is a way to continue to hold women down. Indeed, many women today know there is a double standard for males and females. Women are still the spectacle of the male gaze with self-worth tied to a cultural appearance and behavior that defines femininity— by whom? It is a proven fact, bullying through shaming is psychologically destructive.

One only has to look to the recent presidential season for this to be reaffirmed. President elect, Donald Trump reportedly caused emotional stress and made discriminatory comments regarding former Miss Universe, Alicia Machado’s weight and she acknowledges the years of therapy she has endure due to the abuse. When politicians in the U.S. model this behavior it is all the more imperative for fat people to be included in anti-discrimination laws. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is a federal law that prohibits employers from discriminating against employees on the basis of sex, race, color, national origin, and religion. By adding “sizeism” or over-weight to the aforementioned list, heavy people will not be excluded from protection under federal anti-discrimination law. It won’t be a cure all against marginalization, but as one step closer towards an inclusive society.