Suzy Gonzalez
What are the conditions the led us to this? by Suzy González 2015 Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Fine Arts in the Department of Painting at the Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, Rhode Island.
Approved by Master’s Examination Committee:
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Dennis Congdon, Graduate Program Director, Professor of Painting –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Craig Taylor, Thesis Advisor, Assistant Professor of Painting –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Dike Blair, Thesis Advisor, Critic, Department of Painting –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Joe Bradley, Artist, External Thesis Critic –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Martha Schwendener, Critic, External Thesis Critic
© Suzy González, 2015
Table of Contents Abstract..................................................1 Art and Activism.....................................2 Fourth-Wave Feminist Art......................4 Beyond Intersectionality.........................7 Cross-Species Reproductive Rights....12 Process................................................17 Discourse/ What are the conditions that led us to this?.................................................21 In Conclusion.......................................27
Illustrations: Cover. Detail from Figure 2 from What are the conditions that led us to this?, 2015, digital photo on cut panel, dimensions variable 3. Guerrilla Girls and Occupy Museums, Inauguration of the Fracked Gas Line Museum aka Whitney, 2015
Asco, Spray Paint LACMA, 1972
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Carolee Schneemann, Interior Scroll, 1975, performance still
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Ana Mendieta, Body Tracks, 1982
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Privilege, 2013, acrylic and hair on found wood, 24 in. x 17 in.
9. Logo from Neither Man Nor Beast Web Conference, 2014, digital image 10. Miss Drumstick, 2013, spray paint on canvas, cut panels, mannequin legs, hair, dimensions variable 12. Translation, 2015, acrylic, hair, and turkey claw on canvas, 24 in. x 24 in. 13.
Assault, 2013, oil on cut panel, 34 in. x 60 in.
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Tasty Chick, 2013, acrylic and collage on canvas, 40 in. x 30 in.
16. House Bill 2, 2013, found wood, canvas, plaster bandages, acrylic, hair, and hanger, 23 in. x 10.5 in. 17. HB2 Aftermath, 2014, found wood, acrylic, string, found fencing, female mannequin arm, 17.5 in. x 35 in. 18. Juicy Breasts, Tender Thighs, 2014, spray paint, acrylic, and collage on cut wood, dimensions variable 19. Feminized Protein, 2013, spray paint on canvas, oil on cut wood, female leggings on mannequin legs, dimensions variable 20. Art, Activism, & Community, Vegan-Feminist Perspectives, Chicana Feminism, My Spelled Out Strong Opinions, 2014-2015, self-published zines
21-22. Universal Constructs, 2013, Left: blood on paper, Right: watercolor on paper, 19 x 56 (diptych) 23.
Fantasy/Follices, 2013-2014, acrylic and hair on canvas and found box, spray paint and feathers on female mannequin legs
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Figure 7 from What are the conditions that led us to this?, 2015, chicken wire, newsprint, corn husks, corn silk
27-28. What are the conditions that led us to this?, 2015, installation 29.
Detail from Figure 1 from What are the conditions that led us to this?, 2015, beans on mannequin
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Detail from Figure 6 from What are the conditions that led us to this?, 2015, oil on canvas on cut panel
Abstract With a desire to combine art and activism, I search, through my work, for what might be named fourth-wave feminist art. In order to progress, it is necessary for artists to be critical without reinforcing exploitation. My concepts take feminist ideas of intersectionality further to include the category of species, and question what it means to be a human, animal, or object. The objects I make often manifest as hybrids of painting and sculpture, feeding on the middle ground and removing the human urge to create binaries. I consider notions of exploitation towards individuals based on their race, gender, and species, and examine the similarities and differences between these identity labels. I speak my mind through my work, but also embrace the complexities of creative interpretation. My studio practice thrives on my political motives, which are made explicit through my zine writing. I’m attracted to a collage aesthetic, as it allows for the healing of a violent fragmentation. Imagery is borrowed from popular advertising in order to observe consumption trends, be it sexual or literal. In my thesis project, What are the conditions that led us to this?, I create a utopic space of community discourse that proposes new ways of talking about the complexity of identity. The figures in this multimedia tableau each have stories to tell, and perspectives to share with one another. Using fine arts media next to found object media, I consider hierarchies of materials. I see it as the artist’s job to create a discourse revolving around social justice issues. We must realize our power as artists to create politically-influenced work with an empathetic demeanor. 1 1
Art and Activism My work exists on the line that separates art from activism, and refuses to choose a side. This metaphorical line may also pertain to grey areas within a number of socially constructed binaries (woman/man, human/animal, nature/ culture, black/white). As an artist interested in social change, I have wrestled with what is valued at this point in contemporary art. While activists tend to voice their opinions in a straightforward and unchanging manner, there is a general consensus that with respect to contemporary art, the audience should be able to think for themselves. Works of contemporary art are prized for the ways in which they avoid fixed meanings or didactic modes of address. The middle ground here is a place where an agenda is sensed, but the freedom to interpret remains. It’s a challenge to not dichotomize art and activism. Even when they cross into one another, works tend to lean to one side; they may be seen as creative activism or political art, for example. While political art may use social justice issues as content, activist art is more concerned with making real-world change through the work. Recently, we have seen an emergence of artists partaking in activist discussions, organizing, and protesting. Occupy Museums is made up of a group of artists who use their creativity to organize actions that point out the injustices within art museums. Rather than seeking acceptance into these institutions, they engage on the outskirts, challenging the status quo. People’s Climate Arts was able to organize the largest climate march in history in New York City this year, and brought together numerous 2 2
Frida Kahlo of the Guerrilla Girls works with Occupy Museums to protest the opening of the new Whitney Museum building, which incorporates fossil fuel infrastructure into its foundation.
Asco member names spraypainted on the LACMA Museum in 1972.
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artists and activists for a multitude of environmental causes. In 1972, the Chicano collective Asco was “angered over reports that a LACMA curator had not included Chicano artists in an exhibition, stating Chicanos did not make art but joined gangs, Asco spraypainted a part of LACMA with their names.”1 Many years later, their rebellions were seen as culturally influential and worthy of museum presence, and they landed a retrospective at LACMA in 2011. Ai Wei Wei has been able to publicly critique Chinese governmental policies while including it as content in his work. The Guerrilla Girls have been successful in speaking about racial and gender inequalities within the elite art world through public protest art that is often later displayed in museums. I currently want my work to find its way into galleries as well as to the general public, because I see the importance of diverse gallery and museum representation as well as a need to challenge social injustices both within and without the art world. The complex task of infusing activism with the language of contemporary art may prove to be difficult, but my desire is to allow the two to coexist.
Emily Colucci, “Before Occupy Wall Street, Artforum Remembers There Was Asco,” Accessed May 4, 2015. http://hyperallergic.com/37283/occupy-wall-street-artforum-asco/. 1
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Fourth-Wave Feminist Art My work challenges the viewer to consider issues of intersectional exploitation when it comes to race, gender, and species. We have seen feminist artists explore these issues before, but these artists have been less inclined to fight for human as well as animal rights. The time is now to advance the feminist discussion to a place where all beings are considered and respected. Agenda, in the work of feminist artists of the 1970s, was often supported by disturbing or erotic imagery. For example, Carolee Schneemann’s work, Interior Scroll (1975), involved her performing nude model poses and removing a long scroll from within her vagina. Her video work, Meat Joy (1964), included nearly nude people rolling around with dead animal fragments. Ana Mendieta’s Silueta series (19731980) provides a significant influence for me, but I’m conflicted when it comes to the Santeria-inspired performances in which she used chicken blood—once beheading the animal herself and letting it bleed on her unclothed body. There is an ecofeminist conversation here around the connection of women and nature, but the use of dead animal remnants is unnecessary. The feminist strategy of the explicitly grotesque or erotic is no longer as progressive as it once was.
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Forty years later, I see an evolution in the manner that feminist issues can be tackled, perhaps existing in a fourth wave of feminism. I propose an evolution in feminist art as seen through an empathetic lens. I am in no way against the explicit in art; ambiguity has been a popular and safe route for a great deal of contemporary art, and I find this to be problematic. What I want to see change is self-objectification and the objectification of others. How can we discuss issues of objectification, violence, and exploitation without enacting them ourselves? My work takes influence from various bodies without exposing them. I want to respect the lives and bodies of those whose images I represent, whether human or animal. By withholding information, my work provides a greater subjectivity to the figures. 6
From Ana Mendieta’s Body Tracks series, in which performances resulted in paintings. She would begin standing and kneel as her arms came together, in a bowing action. The painted result is reminiscent of female reproductive organs.
In critiquing historical nude painting, my work removes the chance for the viewer to sexualize the work. This is done by avoiding realistically rendered bodies. Flattened flesh tones provide the sense of a nude body without pointing to specific body parts. It contains the relatability of a wider range of body types rather than the specifically gendered or idealized person. Furthermore, I examine the complexity of what it means to portray a subject or an object. Using objects to create images of subjective hybrid beings confronts those complexities. 7
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Beyond Intersectionality Race, gender, and species are social constructs that overlap and reflect one another in profound ways. They are defined by characteristics that have essentially been invented and embedded into society. Intersectionality has been a buzzword in feminist circles since the late 1980s. It sees feminism as dealing not only with issues of sexism, but also of racism, classism, homophobia, ableism, and so on. I acknowledge that social hierarchies exist within the human species, but take concepts of intersectional feminism a step further to include speciesism. The decay of our environment and those within it could not be made possible without patriarchy. Human exceptionalism views the human species as greater than every other species on the planet. There are systems of power at hand that deny the equality of species. Speciesism has deeply rooted ties to patriarchy and colonialism. Natural lands are taken over to make space for factory farms. Consuming meat is seen as promoting strength, and thus, masculinity. Hierarchies within race, class, and gender are echoed when placed beside hierarchies of species. With the tendency of mass media to objectify women and to promote the eating of animals, we see that women are sexually consumed while animals are physically consumed. 9
In Miss Drumstick (2013), I challenge an animalizing beauty pageant that is meant to judge a woman’s “drumsticks.” In the actual pageant, which occurs around Thanksgiving, women each hold a cut-out image of a turkey and walk across the stage wearing high heels. In the installation, I use cut-out panels and mannequin legs as a reminder that to sexualize a singular part of a person’s body is to objectify the person. Although mannequins bare a resemblance to humans, they are, in fact, objects. Each leg is covered in various amounts and types of hair, allowing for acceptable difference.
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Like gender exploitation, treatment based on racial difference can be compared with the treatment of non-human animals. As Alice Walker put in the forward to Marjorie Spiegel’s The Dreaded Comparision: Human and Animal Slavery, “The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for whites or women for men.”2 Presumably, most people would feel offended by having their struggles compared to that of non-human animals. This stems from the distaste of being compared with those who are thought of as lesser beings—thus pointing out the ingrained speciesism that we all hold. With Translation (2015), I painted my own flesh tone on the canvas, covered it in a gradient made up of hair, and attached a turkey claw giving the middle finger above the horizon line. I purchased the turkey claw from a Native American tribe in Rhode Island, and they explained to me the need to use the entire animal; some people would use animal legs or turtle shells to make instruments, for instance. I thought how appropriate it was for the turkey to have died giving the middle finger, and felt as though I was in solidarity somehow. I was unsure how to feel about supporting the tribe while also being complicit in the death of this animal. This event confirmed for me how complicated ethics of human rights and animal rights can be.
Alice Walker, Foreword to The Dreaded Comparison: Human and Animal Slavery, by Marjorie Spiegel, (New York: Mirror, 1996), 14. 2
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Popular advertising informs humanity of what an acceptable lifestyle contains. When it allows for exploitation, oppression towards marginalized groups becomes normalized. When popular advertising and social injustices are observed side by side, it becomes quite clear that “consumption is the fulfillment of oppression.”3 A multitude of advertisements and current events allow me to examine the exploitative powers that make the consumption of human and non-human animals acceptable. My work provides criticality regarding notions of consumption through objectification, while maintaining the curiosity about what it means to be a human, animal, and/or object. In the words of Marjorie Spiegel, “As long as humans feel they are forced to defend their own rights and worth by placing someone beneath them, oppression will not end,”4 and this is an ongoing topic within my work.
Carol J. Adams, The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theory (New York: Continuum, 1990). 4 Marjorie Spiegel, The Dreaded Comparison: Human and Animal Slavery (New York: Mirror, 1996). 3
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In my series, Exposed, I illustrate the reality of explicitly advertised exploitation of the sexuality of both women and female animals. A good deal of this imagery is borrowed from the literary analyses of Carol J. Adams in The Sexual Politics of Meat as well as The Pornography of Meat.
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Cross-Species Reproductive Rights The most imperative connection between veganism and feminism for me is the systematic control of reproductive rights. As a native Texan, I am all too aware of the conservative agenda attempting to deny women their constitutional rights to reproductive health care. Wendy Davis’s 11-hour filibuster in 2013 was a strong action in demonstrating that Texas women will not back down on their rights to make their own choices about their bodies. Despite the incredible turnout of people who spoke out against the bill, House Bill 2 is still underway, and is said to bring the number of abortion-providing clinics in the huge state of Texas from about 40 down to about 8 this year. As a Chicana, my interest in objectification theory has become more specific in considering the objectified Latina. With the constant closing of clinics underway, women in south Texas must now travel all the way to Houston or San Antonio to legally receive the procedure, and this trip can be around 300 miles. “Over 60% of the residents of border colonias live in poverty or near poverty,” making it more difficult to obtain safe and attainable health care.5 Considering that south Texas is 81 % Latin@, the issues of health care for women are not just based on gender inequalities, but on racial and class inequalities. Thus, Latinas are those whose reproductive rights will be the most affected by HB2.
“A Profile of Texas Latinas,” Nuestro Texas: A Reproductive Justice Agenda for Latinas, May 15, 2015, http://www.nuestrotexas.org. 5
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My work titled House Bill 2 (2013) is a response to these particular injustices. Made up of wood and canvas scraps, plaster bandages, acrylic paint, hair, and hangers, it reads as one of my more violent works; it almost abstracts the figure altogether. Peter Saul once described a related work, HB2 Aftermath (2013) as “a pregnant beggar.� I was happy to see him translate the work with a lack of censorship, pointing to the realities of women who may unintentionally have children, with no choice but to raise them on a lower income.
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There is a direct link between the lack of women’s rights to choose what happens to their bodies and those of non-human female animals. Once again, those who are at the top are in control—mostly white men in office controlling women’s bodies, and mostly white men in high positions of monopolized food companies controlling animal bodies. As far as eating animals goes, those who regularly consume meat “subsist by and large on female flesh.” We eat female chickens because “males don’t lay eggs, and the flesh of these strains is of poor quality.”3 The reproductive organs of chickens and cows are exploited as they “produce eggs and dairy products for us during their lives before being slaughtered.”3 Stop Patriarchy, an organization whose goal is “to see the end to the enslavement and degradation of women (and) to patriarchy in all its forms,” has one slogan that reads “Women are not incubators.”6
“Who Is Stop Patriarchy?” End Pornography and Patriarchy: The Enslavement and Degradation of Women, Accessed February 12, 2015, http://www.stoppatriachy.org/who-is-stop-patriarchy.html. 6
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This always struck a chord with me as I recognize that animals are also not incubators. It is not the sole purpose of female beings to reproduce—and certainly not to reproduce in order to produce food for humans. Factory farmed cows are artificially inseminated by force, so they continuously remain pregnant and produce milk beyond their healthy capacity. The milk which would naturally serve to nourish the cows’ young (and which could easily be replaced in a human diet with a wide variety of plant-based milks) is mechanically sucked out in order to feed humans. When animals are both born and killed within a factory farm, they are never given a choice as to what happens to their body. They are objectified for their femaleness and are sent to slaughter when they are no longer able to produce as “dairy cows.” Exploitative consumption comes from the lack of choice and from an abuse of power, no matter whom the victim is. In Feminized Protein (2013), I take these notions and combine them with the popular fetishization of women’s breasts.
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Process I lean towards hybridizations of painting and sculpture in order to explore the realms of two-dimensional and three-dimensional art simultaneously. These medium hybrids act in synchronization with the exploration of gray areas within socially constructed binaries. I want to subvert the idea of painting, and release it from traditional structures of oil on canvas. I tend to conceptualize through the process of drawing and writing, and subsequently find techniques in which to visualize my concepts. Creating politically-charged zines as a practice in itself allows me to navigate these concepts within my visual work.
In working with a variety of platforms and media, I ask myself what the appropriate visual language is for the concept at hand. I use blood, hair, and other bodily materials alongside traditional art materials, questioning gendered ideas of nature and culture. I’m curious about such abstract ideas existing in the territory of both/and rather than either/or; in this case, the act of merging results in naturecultures.7 Donna Jeanne Haraway, The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness (Chicago: Prickly Paradigm, 2003). 7
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Universal Constructs is a diptych on paper in which one side is painted in blood and the other in watercolor. The material shift creates a conversation around the binary of what is natural vs. what is artificial. Human blood has no filter but the body; water-based paint may be made of earthy or synthetic pigments, but is typically filtered and sold through a manufactured process. The menstrual blood used on the left recalls biological femininity, setting it aside from the supposed masculine opposite.
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The images are representative of both human and animal, complicating the urge to contrast the two. I collage leftover scraps from completed works together to create new spontaneous works. A collaged aesthetic allows for the healing of a violent fragmentation. When images and objects come together, new meanings may flourish. My desire is for the work to bring about conversation. Although my opinions may be more left-leaning, I see room for respectable discourse amongst people with different backgrounds.
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Discourse / What are the Conditions that Led Us to This? My inclination towards figurative works has evolved into a collection of related characters. Some take on a cut-out aesthetic, representing traditional sign paintings used for advertisements and calling on the provocative silhouetted figures of Kara Walker. Others begin to visually break out of the limits of painting, into the third dimension that sculptures inhabit. In my installation, What are the conditions that led us to this? (2015), I use a wide range of media, from oil painting, to spray paint, to digital printouts to more crafty materials like chicken wire and corn husks. Over the years, I have been a part of multiple feminist discussion groups, and they have each been made up of very different people. I have created a utopian space of discourse with What are the conditions that led us to this? In referencing The Last Supper, I subvert the religious beginnings of patriarchal values through a joining of feminist characters. The roots of patriarchy originated in fundamentalist religious perspectives. Within most of the world’s religions, “gender inequality is legitimized and reinforced by the common presentation of God as male, by traditions of male leadership, by the exclusion of women from major religious rituals, and by religious texts that leave out the female experience and validate men’s authority over women.”8
Shawn Meghan Burn, “Women and Religion,” in Women Across Cultures: A Global Perspective, 3rd ed., (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2005), 178. 8
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My characters exist within a support system as they come together for what could be interpreted as a compassionate feast or a discussion. They are like-minded individuals. They exist in the present, they are distinctive, and they are flawed. Veganism is more of an ideology than a religion, but has a strong commitment to the ethics of equality. The characters in my installation have different backgrounds but each have ties to one another. The Arcimboldo-esque figure made up of fruits and vegetables is representative of my own personal consumptions. The figure with the broken wrist and leg appears to be made up of tiles, and is a portrait of the late Ana Mendieta. The life-size corn husk doll reflects on my childhood, Native American cultures, and the exploitation of corn. Each figure acts as a piece of me, or someone with whom I identify. In placing them together, their individual stories develop into an intimate community discussion. This communal setting brings up Judy Chicago’s Dinner Party (1979), in which a large, triangular table is set with ceramic plates depicting vulva-like portraits of famous women in herstory. Naturally, Judy Chicago curated women into her ideal community, creating a bit of a one-way street. As Lorraine O’Grady has revealed, Sojourner Truth was “the lone black guest at the table…(and has) the only plate inscribed with a face,” rather than genitalia.9 In reflecting on part of my own identity, the characters at play in my installation have ties to Latin@ cultures and speak of the reality of their struggles rather than their glorification. Lorraine O’Grady, “Olympia’s Maid: Reclaiming Black Female Subjectivity,” in The Feminism and Visual Culture Reader, 3rd ed., (London: Routledge, 2010). 9
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They subsist in a “new mestiza consciousness,” where “nothing is thrust out, the good, the bad and the ugly, nothing rejected, nothing abandoned.”10 These struggles include (but are not limited to) abortion rights, domestic violence, decolonization, complexities of gender, objectification, cultural appropriation, and stereotypes. The works takes similarity and difference into consideration, flourishing on the complexity of identity. 10
Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands - La Frontera, (San Francisco: Aunt Lute, 1999).
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In Conclusion Considering our image-based culture, I believe it is the job of the artist to provide awareness through imagery. In our culture of consumer convenience, I recall that “history has shown time and again how humans complain about the pinch in their own shoes, while failing to see that their tight-fitting shoes are trampling on someone else.”11 One naturally makes work from a distinct perspective based on one’s background and identity, but it is also possible to make politically influenced work with an empathetic demeanor. In empathizing with those with whom we do not identify, we can further understand the social issues that deny equality. An artist who is inclined to be involved in social justice issues must not be anarchic when it comes to the art world. Their voices especially need to be represented so that art galleries and museums can open their eyes to the task of including a truly diverse range of artists. That being said, “art-world artists” are also needed in activist and community efforts to present creative strategies for change. We, the artists, must be able to self-label, and to empower ourselves to exist in whatever art worlds we choose, while allowing for fluidity between them.
Lisa Kemmerer, Sister Species: Women, Animals, and Social Justice, (Urbana: U of Illinois, 2011), 9. 11
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Bibliography: Adams, Carol J. The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theory. New York: Continuum, 1990. Print. Anzaldúa, Gloria. Borderlands - La Frontera. San Francisco: Aunt Lute, 1999. Print. “A Profile of Texas Latinas.” Nuestro Texas: A Reproductive Justice Agenda for Latinas (2015): 7. Web. 15 May 2015. <http://www.nuestrotexas.org>. Burn, Shawn Meghan. “Women and Religion.” Women Across Cultures: A Global Perspective. 3rd ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2005. 178. Print. Colucci, Emily. “Before Occupy Wall Street, Artforum Remembers There Was Asco.” (2011): Web.< http://hyperallergic.com/37283/ occupy-wall-street-artforum-asco/> “Demographics.” Texas in Focus: South Texas. Window on State Government, n.d. Web. <http://www.window.state.tx.us/special rpt/tif/southtexas/demographics.html>. Haraway, Donna Jeanne. The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness. Chicago: Prickly Paradigm, 2003. Print. Kemmerer, Lisa. Sister Species: Women, Animals, and Social Justice. Urbana: U of Illinois, 2011. 9. Print. O’Grady, Lorraine. “Olympia’s Maid: Reclaiming Black Female Subjectivity.” The Feminism and Visual Culture Reader. 3rd ed. London: Routledge, 2010. Spiegel, Marjorie. The Dreaded Comparison: Human and Animal Slavery. New York: Mirror, 1996. Print. Walker, Alice. “Foreward.” Foreword to Spiegel, Marjorie, The Dreaded Comparison: Human and Animal Slavery. New York: Mirror, 1996. 14. Print. “Who Is Stop Patriarchy?” End Pornography and Patriarchy: The Enslavement and Degradation of Women. Stop Patriarchy, n.d. Web. <http://www.stoppatriarchy.org/who-is-stop-patriarchy. html>.
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