Reply All: ART364B, A Feminist Art Collective of the 21st Century

Over the next seven months www.nanomajority.com will feature the women of ART364B in seven separate monthly installments and it is with much enthusiasm that I kick-start this collaboration with an introduction to our feminist art collective.  I am an independent curator and art historian and five years ago began meeting with the artists Kate Clark, Marietta Davis, Tiffany Ludwig, Melissa Potter, Miriam Schaer and Maria Yoon on a monthly basis.  At that time we were all based in New York City and Melissa Potter approached a handful of women she had known professionally and personally to form a crit group.  The six of us responded positively to her invitation and ever since the spring of 2005 have been faithful participants to the monthly meeting designed to allow each member equal time to discuss their work and receive constructive feedback from the other members.  In the early days we convened after hours in the meeting room of a downtown non-profit where one of the members worked and where this professional environment helped us maintain focused discussions. 

The natural overlap between personal and professional that is evident in our work and affects our career decisions contributed to the bond and trust that exists amongst us today even though we did not all know each other prior to the creation of this crit group.  Eventually, we lost our meeting space because that member had moved on professionally and from that point our meetings became a moving target taking place in our homes, studios, cafes, school and anywhere else that can accommodate our group.  Many transitions have occurred over the past five years with Melissa Potter relocating to Chicago, Miriam Schaer shuttling between Chicago and New York as well as Marietta Davis splitting her time between Washington D.C. and New York.  These geographic restraints in addition to long-term artist residencies have been overcome through the use of online video conferencing programs such as Skype allowing us to proceed with our monthly meetings.  Since the beginning, our group discussions often continued via email where we remain in contact between meetings sharing opportunities, offering advice, and sometimes working out disagreements.  A stimulating conversation between seven women was started five years ago and continues to develop in person and online.  About a year or so in, it became evident that something more than a critique group was brewing among us seven and the consensus was to redefine ourselves as a feminist art collective with the initiative to engage with the public.

Feminism, its history and its imprint on contemporary art, is a topic that has always been current and comprehensive to our group.  We were keenly aware of similar consciousness-raising, critique, reading and writing groups that cropped up in the 1970s among women in the arts that in some cases continue today.   These groups have been credited for shaping the careers of many women from that generation as well as fostering supportive and non-competitive spaces and serving as launching pads or thinking cells for women to break down professional and personal barriers.   Art collectives of all types continue to exist among contemporary artists but it was our decision to clearly acknowledge the legacy of the 1970s feminist art movement when we choose to call ourselves ART364B.  This name is homage to the course Linda Nochlin first taught at Vassar College in the spring of 1970 and which was devoted to the examination of 19th and 20th century representations of women.  As a feminist art collective, we began to seek out opportunities to exhibit as a group and share with the public our work as individuals but also relay the depth and strength of our ongoing discussions.  Our first experience to show as a collective was for the New York University Kimmel Art Galleries in late 2007 where each artist showed pieces representative of their work and I took the role of curator providing the text for this show underscoring the sincerity of our group dynamic.

We recently began to develop an exhibition based around motherhood that was triggered by half of the women in this group recently becoming mothers.  We began to analyze the decisions we all have made regarding motherhood, which are just as poignant for the women in this group who do not have children, but as this exhibition develops, a concentration on the outdated and oversimplified have/have not binary will not serve as the basis for this exhibition.  The working title for this exhibition is (PRO)CREATE: An Exhibition Considering Motherhood and it will encompasses individual reactions to the personal and social consequences of becoming a mother, not physically able to be mother and happily accepting this reality, clearly choosing to not have children or simply putting that decision on hold.  An emphasis on lack or the decision to lack children is not central to the development of this theme and as the title implies, we are thinking about creation in relation to our professional lives.  Historically, male artists, unable to physically make babies, imbued themselves with the power to procreate when they gave birth to their masterpieces.  Women artists of the 1970s demanded to be acknowledged as valid artists with the power to also create masterpieces and not just as sex objects or baby machines.  I would like to expand the (PRO)CREATE exhibition to eventually include other artists and seek those who address the theme of motherhood in consideration of the rapidly changing interpretations attached to this term.  For instance, its counterpart, fatherhood, cannot be forgotten and the expanded notions of parenthood in general with gay couples increasingly having children, the growth and celebrity attention to the adoption route, and the many advances in medicine that assist in starting families.  Marketing, merchandise, pop culture, reality television and politics are factors among others that play a prominent role in the socio-cultural perceptions and practice of motherhood.

With each installment on www.nanomajority.com we hope to present ourselves as a group and individually, develop our ideas for the (PRO)CREATE exhibition and share with the public snapshots from our ongoing conversation that we plan to continue each month in response to the featured member.  Conducting our discussions within a public forum and inviting outside comments will be a first but one that is welcomed because it will undoubtedly inject new ideas and perspectives.  We are a diverse group with regard to age, race, ethnicity and professional background and look forward to receiving outsider feedback to our collective and individual projects.  The six artists of ART364B work in a variety of media and with a range of themes but I will leave it to these artists to introduce their work in the coming months.  On a final note, a recurring debate amongst the group has been whether we should open our group to new members and guests or remain as the original seven.  This discussion brings up issues of exclusivity and diversity as they affect our public image and internal development.  My resistance to the inclusion of new members is based on my belief that it will shake up the dynamic and turn it into something other than what we been building over the past five years.  I do invite guest appearances and collaborations such as this one with nanomajority.com but question whether it is necessary to expand the group on a permanent basis.  I hesitate to share this opinion because it implies a sense of exclusivity that I am certainly aware of but reject it because I firmly believe that the foundation and development of this feminist art collective stems from the meetings of the original seven members.  This opportunity for ART364B to appear on nanomajority.com presents a perfect forum to pursue this discussion as a group and for the first time, with others.