Carolee Schneemann : Meat Joy

13th Oct - 24th Nov

WHEN : 13th Oct – 24th Nov
WHERE : Institute of Modern Art

American artist Carolee Schneemann is a legendary figure in the women’s art movement. Throughout her career, she sought to liberate herself from oppressive artistic and social conventions and constraints, while using her body to express a potent female sexuality.

In 1962, she began a three-year collaboration with New York’s Judson Dance Theatre, the avant-garde performance collective. One of her most important and iconic works from this time was the 1963 group performance Meat Joy. In it, eight scantily clad figures (men and women) crawl and roll about, playing with sausages, raw fish, raw poultry, wet paint, transparent plastic, ropes, scraps of paper, and one another, while grooving out to a rock’n’roll soundtrack. Their interaction sometimes resembles the slithering courtship of slugs, other times a frat-house initiation rite. Schneemann described her Dionesian orgy-as-art as an ‘erotic rite’ and a ‘celebration of flesh as material’.

A classic example of counterculture thinking, Meat Joy explored the way social dynamics change when cultural taboos and restrictions are lifted. And, as much as Schneemann is central to feminist art, Meat Joy did not fit into that category unequivocally. In the performance, gendered power games persisted as male participants threw women over their shoulders and proudly paraded around. Schneemann showed how removing boundaries can amplify existing power politics, rather than eliminate them.

Info not available

Related Posts

Living Patterns: Contemporary Australian Abstraction

Living Patterns: Contemporary Australian Abstraction

20230923
20240211
Brisbane Portrait Prize 2023

Brisbane Portrait Prize 2023

20230928
20231029
Bianca Tainsh: Intimate Organisms

Bianca Tainsh: Intimate Organisms

20231007
20231028
Sam Cranstoun: You Are Neither Here Nor There

Sam Cranstoun: You Are Neither Here Nor There

20230826
20231028
Peter Boggs

Peter Boggs

20230912
20231007
Yanni Van Zijl: ONE.5C

Yanni Van Zijl: ONE.5C

20230909
20231107
Miles Hall: DISSEVER

Miles Hall: DISSEVER

20230913
20231013
Kahli Perkins: The event of a thread

Kahli Perkins: The event of a thread

20230909
20230930
Amber Wallis: Hidden mothers and ghost flowers

Amber Wallis: Hidden mothers and ghost flowers

20230919
20231007
Bruce Reynolds: How Soon Is Now?

Bruce Reynolds: How Soon Is Now?

20230812
20231029
Daniel Boyd: Rainbow Serpent (Version)

Daniel Boyd: Rainbow Serpent (Version)

20230909
20231216