The Personal is Political: Martha Wilson and MKE will feature one room of Wilson’s recent work (2009 onward) and two rooms of local artists’ work. This exhibition is running concurrently with a historic survey of Martha Wilson’s work at The Institute of Visual Arts (inova).

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Martha Wilson (b. 1947), a New York based artist, has spent the past 40 years exploring feminist practices. Beginning in the 1970s, working with photography, video and performance, her work has dealt with how human identity is shaped by cultural forces, power relationships, gender, and now, aging. She is best known as the founder of Franklin Furnace (1976), a non-profit space that gave alternative art practices a home.

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Also exhibiting are: Laci Coppins, Paul Druecke, Skully Gustafson, Ashley Janke, Niki Johnson, Erik Moore, Joseph Mougel, Amy O’Neill, and Rafael Salas.

The local artists were asked to use the catalog, Martha Wilson Sourcebook, as inspiration for their own work. The catalog was prepared by the artist in conjunction with her touring retrospective (at Inova). The book was reviewed in the May 2013 Art News.

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Sourcebook is a non-traditional publication that compiles essays, documents from her work, performance ephemera and assorted influential writings from the 1970s and 1980s. In either peripheral or direct ways, each artist was asked to attach some bit of text or thought from the Sourcebook to their work to create threads of interaction with the legacy of feminism.

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Martha Wilson’s work in the Portrait Society exhibition is photo-based and uses role-playing and self-portraiture to explore themes of visibility and identity, and, in general, how the ‘personal is political.’ Wilson has stated that much of the early feminist theory has been dislodged from current ideologies.  The phrase, “The Personal is Political,” was a feminist slogan in the late 1960s and 1970s. It suggests that individual, small measures count; that the grass roots choices we make have larger ramifications. While this phrase is no longer associated with the feminist movement, its momentum has lead to recycling, commitments to organic food and local food sourcing, and resistance to fossil fuel consumption.

 

A larger historic survey of Martha Wilson’s work, organized by Independent Curators International (ICI), New York, curated by Peter Dykhuis, and staged locally by Sara Krajewski (Inova director), will open on Friday, June 7, from 6 to 8 p.m. at Inova, The Institute of Visual Arts, 2155 N. Prospect Ave., Milwaukee, WI. It runs through August 11, 2013.

Martha Wilson will be present at both receptions. Portrait Society will also be presenting several performances during the opening as well as another manifestation of The Store, where un-conventional and extraordinary merchandise is created and made available for sale in conjunction with the exhibition. Storekeeper is MIAD printmaking major, Philip Gattuso.

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