Who's Abject Now Bitch?

Oh wow, you’re letting me show in your gallery? The gallery I pretty much conceptualized while I was in bed with you? That’s amazing! And you want me to do something slick, that doesn’t interrupt your white cube too much. Awesome! What a wonderful opportunity…

Courting, sex and love relationships all revolve around power relations. In heterosexual love relationships this equates to power relations between men and women – relations echoed not only in the personal but also the political, cultural and legal spheres in an essentially heteronormative and phallogocentric society. Does this mean that every time we (as Woman) fall in love (swooning, pining and all) with a man that we are re-enforcing those power relations that allow for patriarchal hegemonies? In admitting the violence inherent in relationships and in sex with men, and yet still engaging in its practice, am I (as subject and artist) allowing rape to happen elsewhere? If “for a woman, love is defined as her willingness to submit to her own annihilation” (Dworkin 1981: 80), then is love felt by a woman always inherently masochistic? And then in love, but without sexual satisfaction, are we destined to be fearful, chaotic and hysterical as our uteruses strangle us in revolt?

Linda Stupart’s Who’s Abject Now Bitch? or, crime scene consistent with a particular double homicide acknowledges and interrupts the artworld boys’ club that is in many ways embodied by YOUNGBLACKMAN, in an exhibition that addresses the difficulties in claiming agency as a young woman artist.

Notes:
Dworkin, A. 1981. Our Blood. London: Perigee.

So, one of the reasons (amongst them launching the Public Arts Project and working as Iziko Museums' Media Officer) I haven't written in ages is the fact that I have a show, Who's Abject Now Bitch? or crime scene consistent with a particular double homicide opening on Tuesday. The exhibition invitation, which, as you'll see, is an important part of the work, is very difficult for me - Hugh Upsher, on reading the invite responded with: "I bet Ed Young got a hard on when he read it" and maybe he's right.

Working within an arena such as YoungBlackman is always hard, particularly when you're trying not to play into specific artworld boy games - but that, of course is largely the point. As for the actual content of the exhibition, well I'll let you come have a look, and post some more after the show opens. In the mean time, see you Tuesday 18:00...