Art of the Hive

How to introduce the context of the early feminist art movement to a group of iphone/text message generation teenage female students?  I keep thinking in the days before the class, “remind them no websites, no internet, no wikipedia, no scanners or camera phones…” The enormous invisibility of these visionary women and the actions they took to see themselves represented in ways that matter, in ways that took back their sense of agency!  Then, almost by accident, I discover on the new documentary shelf at Video Americain, the fantastic !Women Art Revolution by Lynn Hershman. It is the perfect visual tool for the start of this conversation.

Almost all of the artists we will be studying are present in this film.  Judy Chicago, Nancy Spero, Faith Ringgold, Mary Beth Edelson, Miriam Schapiro, Ana Mendieta, Yoko Ono…. They come to life - their personalities, their bodies, voices, their arguments and achievements, their lives.  Of course, as the film smartly acknowledges in the final sections, who is missing also stands out, as it always does when progressive discourse turns its attention towards those not present in the room, the work, the representation, the privilege…