“I picked up the camera because there were no images of us that spoke to me at the time when I needed them the most. I had to produce a positive visual narrative of my community and create a new dialogue with images“

The subjugation of women in the arts is an age-old tradition trickled down from centuries of strategic displacement, and a frightful lack of representation. The ‘woman artist’ endures forced invisibility in the absence of institutional and educational support, made readily available however to their male counterpart. One historical example poignantly depicts how this forced invisibility manifests. Linda Nochlin’s essay ‘Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists’?’ establishes the discouraging unity between the arts and its supposed value by stating the axial rotation on which the art world spins upon; “white, preferably middle class, and above all, male”2. The rhetoric produced implicitly and explicitly stakes claim that the epicentre is defined by male-ness, and consequently shapes a discourse of art history that flirts with the erasure and censorship of female artists’ practices. This erasure historically ranges from a total disembodiment of the woman artist (unless the woman artist was raised by a father-artist, or married to a husband-artist – which was arguably the singular pathway for the woman to semi-flourish in the arts) that is enabled by the set of limits made apparent by the primary spectator, and whose work sets the parameter for which to measure good art. However, the rhetoric has evolved. By the 1970’s, feminists took to the streets, their workplaces, and even their homes to radically protest for a greater personal freedom, particularly those aspects relating to bodily autonomy, as the rate of sexual assault within and out of the workplace skyrocketed. The Women’s Liberation Movement3 was imperative for women everywhere, however, for feminist artists, this movement radically challenged the role women were taught to play through artistic manifestations, particularly in the field of photoconceptualism. Conceptual photography flooded out of the movement and into society, providing an avenue for female artists’ who repeatedly grappled for respect, recognition, and representation. Turning inward on their practices, feminists’ critiqued the system that was not designed to validate, support, and endorse their work. By self-reflexively recognising this complicated tension of breaking into the art world), feminist artist Mierle Laderman Ukeles began to disrobe the status quo, claiming through their works’ didactic model that the supposed centric system who favours white males’ work is intellectually distorted. Ukuleles,

1 Zanele Muholi
2 Linda Nochlin, Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?, 50th anniversary ed. (New York: Thames and Hudson, 2021) page 30
3 The Women’s Liberation Movement emerged in the late 1960’s and continued into the 1980’s. This was, and continues to be, an imperative movement that fostered the concerns regarding women from varying degrees: body politics, greater personal freedom, intellectual and professional aspirations

as well as other feminist artists’ explicitly interrogate the politics of representation as disproportionate to their male counterparts; their femininity instead defined “how they experienced the world”4 as a type of obstacle. Artists who recognise and criticise the misogynistic pedagogy of the art world subsequently expose the social and political inequalities of being a woman in the world through the limits imposed on their physical and intellectual being. Photo and video conceptualists, or visual activist(s), like Zanele Muholi, Martha Rosler and Sarah Lucas emphatically dispute the supposedly irrefutable status quo of art through portraying the inequitable and indeed, violent environments facilitated by patriarchal litany. The efforts of these twentieth century photo and video conceptualists are interlinked in their response to their social climate, and unified under the patronage of themselves and other female artists’ who speak out in similar degrees against the violence – women-hating crimes, or the intellectual impositions bestowed upon them from the male archetype – they are subjected to. The work of Ukuleles, Muholi, Rosler and Lucas postulate a liberation from their own position (a position of ‘maintenance’, as Ukeles would describe it, that is lamented into them from birth) in what are considered ‘feminine sentiments’, by at times reorienting the role of women, and by other times through an obtrusive investigation on the horror filled reality of womanhood. But what distinguishes them is their collective ethos of conceptual art, an ethos that engages with elements of drawing, performance, empathetically adapted documentary photography, and digital manifestations to simultaneously to construct a more worldly understanding of the way things are, and the way they could be.

The powerful tool of conceptual art has the “capacity to bring about liberating change”5 in social and political environments, as photo and video conceptualism is driven by the ideologies behind the work, rather than its aesthetic value. This is perhaps why the medium has historically manifested into a platform for institutional critique. With the emergence of second wave feminism in the 70’s, artists became increasingly aware of “the limitations of class-oriented politics”6 and those social institutions who embark on the intellectual dislodgement of women in places of power, evidently filtering the weaker sex out from a larger discourse, and doubly so if the artist had also had the unfortunate luck to be born black or queer, or both, as Nochlin would say. It is more often than not a tongue-in-cheek approach to making work that poignantly depicts the status of womanhood and her hierarchy

4 Jayne Wark, Conceptual Art and Feminism: Martha Rosler, Adrian Piper, Eleanor Antin, and Martha Wilson. (Women’s Art Journal: JSTOR, 2001) page 48
5 Jayne Wark, Conceptual Art and Feminism: Martha Rosler, Adrian Piper, Eleanor Antin, and Martha Wilson. (Women’s Art Journal: JSTOR, 2001) page 44

6 Jayne Wark, Conceptual Art and Feminism: Martha Rosler, Adrian Piper, Eleanor Antin, and Martha Wilson. (Women’s Art Journal: JSTOR, 2001) page 44

in the social order. These are the women who ‘naturally’ assume an abundance of servitude roles, as the chief career of being a mother and a wife is the only appropriate commitment. Nochlin reiterates renowned animal painter Rosa Bonheur, when she describes the enterprise of marriage as “a sacrament indispensable to the organisation of society”7 and implicitly or explicitly, a self-abasing consequence that renunciates their professional fulfilment. However, artist Mierle Laderman Ukeles wields the otherwise deterrency of all the Official Duties she must sustain as the crux of her practice. The fabric of Ukules’ work is one that views all domestic work as valuable from its inception, unto its end. In I Make Maintenance Art One Hour Every Day 1976, Ukules sought to heal the cruel schism between maligned workers and their value, by adapting the Duchampian objective with a uniquely feminist perspective. This Duchampian objective8 considers how profound meaning can be found even in the most banal and uninteresting objects or tasks. This particular project saw the artist collaborating with workers who tended to security details, elevator repairs, washing and cleaning windows, floors and walls, and invited them to consider their duties as a form of art for one hour everyday. This intersubjectivity questions the public to consider the sheer magnitude of domestic work required to keep a city running, who are those doing the work, and how much of that work systematically goes unnoticed, and under acknowledged.

9

7 Linda Nochlin, Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?, 50th anniversary ed. (New York: Thames and Hudson, 2021) page 73
8 Duchampian objective postulates a new thought for objects through creative retrospection and artistic significance

9 Mierle Laderman Ukeles I Make Maintenance Art One Hour Every Day 1976.

We can see a similar adaption of the Duchampian objective in Martha Rosler’s Semiotics of the Kitchen 1975, a farcical cooking demonstration depicting “an antipodean Julia Child”10 critique, wherein the artist wields signs of domesticity with anger and rage as antithetical to the lexicon of the variety of utensils before her. In this video work, Rosler repositions banal subject matter – like spoons and bowls – to reiterate how the environment of language is a pervasive agent that indicates “collective products of social interaction, essential instruments through which human beings constitute and articulate their world”11. Like Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, Rosler posits that human beings consider themselves and their identity precisely through this system of signs. The filmic representation begins with a forty-five second stare down, where the artist is partially obscured with a postered sign labelled with the title of the work. As artist and performer, Rosler identifies herself amid the system of signs that lay strewn across the table before her. Marking herself with the uniform of a housewife – the apron – , signals to the audience that women’s work is about to take place. The artist continues throughout the six minute video by labelling the domestic paraphernalia in alphabetical order, yet departs from the standard demonstration that tools in a kitchen would customarily adhere to. Similar to the parodic manner of the antecedent conceptual work Teaching a Plant The Alphabet 1972 by John Baldasseri, the play on language in this representation insinuates and endorses a new type of language entirely reserved for women; their chief role will be to learn and understand its uses, for they will be expected to fulfil the role of the housewife.

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The irony here is filtered through the already cognisant understanding as to uses of kitchen paraphernalia amongst the general public. The precedent that language and semiotics are inequitable forces are shown in part to allude domestic labour’s historically perverted ideology of belonging to a lower class of peoples is particularly evident in Semiotics of the Kitchen. Assuming her audience understands this concept sustains the very idea that both professional and personal institutions – including those who are partisan to them – are aware of the subordinated global enterprise of domestic activities . As she moves through the alphabet, Rosler linguistically articulates each utensil, and follows this with an atypical visual demonstration of its use. She appears to us as a reserved and detached instrument, maintaining a cool composure throughout the duration of the video, save for when she demonstrates the use of each tool. In violent outbursts, she stabs the air with knives and forks, swings ladles about, and arms herself with bowls and pots. The combination of her

10 Vanessa Thrill, Martha Rosler’s Semiotics of the Kitchen (WordPress: 2013) Page 4 11 Vanessa Thrill, Martha Rosler’s Semiotics of the Kitchen (WordPress: 2013) Page 1 12 Video still of Martha Rosler’s Semiotics of the Kitchen 1975. Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuZympOIGC0

domestic obedience and the savage visual demonstration evidently creates a rupture in the idealised version of a housewife. Echoing Bonheur – who implicitly remarks the main occupation of marriage and motherhood as tools of further suppression – , Rosler posits how women have been “integrated into a socioeconomic system that requires women not only to know these objects but also own them.”13

In Ukeles’ interrogation in public systems labelled “Maintenance Art”, deep intersubjectivity manifests through the artist placing herself in the shoes of other ‘maintenance workers’, or those who contribute to the cleanliness and order of society in “service activities”14. The public performance Washing/Tracks/Maintenance: Outside, July 23 1973, was designed to “politically coerce the public to face its deep disgust toward those people who deal with the trash and detritus of the everyday”15, usually people of colour. The documented photographs of the performance depict the artist in broad daylight on her hands and knees, scrubbing the steps of the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut for the durational period of eight hours, a typical working day. Facilitating a space of visibility for the previously invisible, public domestic work allows Ukeles’ to draw affinities between these ‘maligned workers’

13 Vanessa Thrill, Martha Rosler’s Semiotics of the Kitchen (WordPress: 2013) Page 2
14 Andrea Liss, Feminist Art and the Maternal (Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 2009) Page 49
15 Andrea Liss, Feminist Art and the Maternal (Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 2009) Page 47

work, and her own female enterprise as the supposed chosen vehicle to carry out domestic tasks. Through brazen introspection into herself, Ukules’ points to the surrounding culture that confers a lousy status on those who perform maintenance tasks, a status symbolically indicated by their pay, or lack thereof.

16

Both positions of public and domestic labour are interrelated by definition of maintenance as an eternal return essential to keep the city, and a house running. Those cleaners, who operate in hours where the rest of the city is sleeping consequently fly under the radar, which in turn reveals the same alienation that women endure. Recognition for this valuable, unpaid labour goes against the vein of oppression from the dominant spectator, as “those who have privileges inevitably hold on to them”17.

As her practice grew, so did her vision, yet even at the pinnacle of her career “people only saw (her) as a mother”18 in a culture that would blissfully remain unaware of social and political pressure enveloped into motherhood. Yet Ukeles’ earlier work further disorients the logic of obedience instilled into women from young. The photographic conceptions that feature in this exhibition poignantly resist the pigeon-holing position of being either an artist, or a mother. Photographed by her husband, Jack Ukeles, the artist is depicted in various

16 Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Washing/Tracks/Maintenance: Outside, July 23 1973.
17 Linda Nochlin, Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?, 50th anniversary ed. (New York: Thames and Hudson, 2021) page 32.
18 Andrea Liss, Feminist Art and the Maternal (Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 2009) Page 52

situations where she performs maintenance tasks in the household, like intensely cleaning a shower screen whilst obviously in the later months of her pregnancy. The attention to detail that she pays to the task at hand subverts the standard procedure of photographing pregnant women, who conventionally would, with gentle and loving hands, rub their budding bellies with joy, as if it is the only joy capable of bringing forth fulfilment. Rather, she keeps her sights on her hands, scrubbing away, and paying no heed to life growing inside her. The black and white documentary-like photographs depict her maternal activities as they cross a variety of conventionally feminine chores, like scrubbing a diaper, cleaning a chicken’s foot, and mopping the floor, yet, she also brings forth a radicalisation of the subject matter through considering the banal duties of maintenance as a form of art, therefore usurping her claim as an artist whilst being a mother. These photographic and performance works transgress presupposed ideals for womanhood by reinterpreting oppression, and navigating the otherwise inartistic work through creative retrospection.

19 20

However, these considerations still seem far-fetched in a world that validates and justifies the systematic oppression of women and queer folk of colour. For non-binary South African activist and artist Zanele Muholi, vicious cycles of perpetration against this body of peoples are the foundational basis for much of their work. Specifically their series Only Half the Picture 2003–6, a title which recalls the efforts of the Guerilla Girls in their poster from 1989, declaring “you’re seeing less than half the picture without the vision of women artists and

19 Mierle Laderman Ukeles Maintenance Acts: Dusting a Baffle, 1970. Photographed by Jack Ukeles. 20 Mierle Laderman Ukeles Rinsing a BM Diaper, 1970. Photographed by Jack Ukeles.

artists of colour”21. However, Muholi’s efforts are more deeply constructed in its interrogation that goes beyond the mere representation of women in the arts and into areas that engage their immediate social and political landscapes. These landscapes continually falsify the experience of the oppressed, even in the face of factual knowledge and statistical representation that pertains to the discrimination faced, whilst facilitating a space of visibility for women and queer folk in post-apartheid South Africa. The people depicted in this series are referred to as “participants” rather than “subjects”, wholly supplying a refreshing methodology that deviates from documentary photographs impersonality. Muholi instead uses their platform to interpret and acknowledge the participants’ own histories, guided by professional accountability to open up realms of intimacy and vulnerability. With this in mind, Muholi’s Only Half the Picture series is formalised with the political agenda to subvert the South African social and political inequalities, discrimination, and violence. The photographs present an array of black lesbian and transmen as anonymous survivors of rape and hate crimes. A particular candid snapshot of this series unveils the aftermath of a hate crime. The cropped image presents an anonymous woman from her lower torso to her lower calf. She crosses her hands and lays them gently covering her jockey briefs. The black and white perspective image centres on the wide scar from a deep wound on the participants upper thigh, incidentally alluding to the trauma that led to the scarring. Each of the photographs either partially or totally crop out the participants head from the viewing field. Postulating an empathetic, intimate environment, the artist vindicates them from a system of oppression whilst providing a platform of validation for black lesbian women and trans-men who continually see themselves through the eyes of an unaligned audience that values of queer interpretations. Muholi’s work represents a shift in the dialogue, and additionally, a shift in community consciousness of post-colonial South Africa that continually implicates and endorses the public and private discrimination of black bodies, based on their sexual orientation.

21 Stephanie Hanor on the Guerilla Girls exhibition titled You’re Seeing Less Than Half the Picture, 2018.“You’re Seeing Less Than Half the Picture explores the role artists have played in helping us understand institutional authority and how choices are made regarding what we see in art museums. Using the progressive feminist art work of the Guerrilla Girls as a touchstone, the exhibition features both contemporary and historical works from MCAM’s collection that surface complex dialogues around representations of gender, race, and sexuality. Taking its title from the 1989 Guerrilla Girls poster You’re Seeing Less Than Half the Picture Without the Vision of Women Artists and Artists of Color, the exhibition questions the lack of diverse narratives in cultural institutions by foregrounding the work of traditionally underrepresented artists.”

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To subvert degrading objectification of the female body are common themes throughout both Muholi practice, and that of feminist artist Sarah Lucas’ work. However, Lucas’ perception of femininity manifests accordingly from the disadvantaged stance that is attributed to her ‘masculine’ appearance. Utilising this apparent disadvantage to propel her work forth, Lucas speaks of the strength in her masculine appearance as a device to confront the politics of the female body, and interrogates what kind of appropriate expression this vessel can harness. These photographic conceptions parody an appropriate female oriented demeanour through self portraiture that sees the artist posed as both tough and abject; harnessing both macho and feminine attributes. One particular image, Self Portrait with Fried Eggs 1996 abstains from the conventional modality in which a female presents herself; the artist presents herself with ripped and faded blue jeans, a boxy t-shirt, legs and arms splayed wide apart, taking up a considerable amount of space in an economy where female visibility is made in vain. In many of their works, the artist appears to us as domineering in

22 Zanele Muholi Only Half the Picture: Aftermath, 2004

stance and provocation through symbols of clothing and cigarette paraphernalia; androgynous t-shirts, leather cladded structures, and heavy footwear. The identity, or the version of herself that she presents, challenges stereotypes that engender a particular strain of gender and sexuality onto becoming people. She stares this ideology down with an unwavering gaze which aids her assertive and uncompromising position. Among the unconventional demeanour Lucas postulates there are other elements of defiance that the

artist utilises to respond to the stringent enclosure of contemporary society. These elements, like food and cigarettes, are mnemonic devices that recall systems of rebelliousness. This is clear in Self Portrait with Fried Eggs, where the artist uses the food item to stand in sexualised body parts – her breasts – to subvert the degrading objectification of the body in vernacular language. 23

23 Sarah Lucas Self Portrait with Fried Eggs, 1996.

Bibliography

Broude, Norma and D. Garrard, Mary. The Expanding Discourse: Feminism and Art History. Woman’s Art Journal: Woman’s Art Inc.,1995.

Cady, Emily E. A Museum for Women: The National Museum of Women in the Arts. State University of New York: Buffalo ProQuest Dissertations, 2018.

Champion, Chloe, Galdamez, Andrea Ortiz, Guinnee, Walker, P. Lopez, Julianna, Moerman, Dorothea, Ravitz-Dworkin, Amelia, Schmitt, Cassidy and Shariatzadeh, Golnaz. You’re Seeing Less Than Half the Picture. The exhibition was presented at Mills College Art Museum, December 5, 2018 through June 2, 2019.

Gary, Meta. The Perpetuation of Class and Labor Divisions in Mierle Laderman Ukeles’ Transfer: Maintenance of the Art Object. Georgia State University Art: Ernest G. Welch School of Art and Design, 2015.

Liss, Andrea. Feminist Art and the Maternal. Minnesota: University of Minnesota, 2009. Nochlin, Linda. Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists? First published on

ARTNews. 50th anniversary ed. New York: Thames and Hudson, 2021
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the United States. Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University, 2017
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Wark, Jayne. Conceptual Art and Feminism: Martha Rosler, Adrian Piper, Eleanor Antin, and Martha Rosler. Women’s Art Journal: Woman’s Art Inc., 2001.