Gendered Agency: Aliza Augustine and Ashley Watson

Gendered AGency: AlizA AuGustine & Ashley WAtson

January 19 - March 7, 2010

Mary H. Dana Women Artists SeriesMabel Smith Douglass Library Galleries, Douglass Library8 Chapel Drive, New Brunswick, NJ 08901Gallery Hours: M-F 9am - 4:30pm; Weekends by Appointment

Gendered Agency: Aliza Augustine and Ashley Watson

January 19 - March 7, 2010

Curated by Judith K. Brodsky and Ferris Olin

Mary H. Dana Women Artists SeriesMabel Smith Douglass Library

8 Chapel Drive, New Brunswick, NJ 08901

Institute for Women and ArtRutgers University Libraries

Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

THE INSTITUTE FOR WOMEN AND ART The vision of the Rutgers Institute for Women and Art (IWA) is to transform values, policies, and institutions, and to insure that the intellectual and aesthetic contributions of diverse communities of women in the visual arts are included in the cultural mainstream and acknowledged in the historical record. The mission of the Rutgers Institute for Women and Art is to invent, implement, and conduct live and virtual education, research, documentation, public programs, and exhibitions focused on women artists and feminist art. The IWA strives to establish equality and visibility for all women artists, who are underrepresented and unrecognized in art history, the art market, and the contemporary art world, and to address their professional development needs. The IWA endeavors to serve all women in the visual arts and diverse global, national, regional, state, and university audiences.

Founded in 2006, the Institute for Women & Art is actively engaged in: •Exhibitionsandpublicprogrammingorganizedbytheaward-winningandnationallyrecognized Mary H. Dana Women Artists Series, founded in 1971 by Joan Snyder, and other sponsored events through the US and abroad.(http://www.libraries.rutgers.edu/rul/exhibits/dana_womens.shtml). •EducationalandcurriculardevelopmentledbyTheFeministArtProject(TFAP)websiteandFARE:FeministArtResourcesinEducationfor,K-12,collegestudentsandtheirteachers.(http://feministartproject.rutgers.edu/).

•ResearchanddocumentationfacilitatedbytheGettyandNewJerseyStateCouncilontheArts-funded Women Artists Archives National Directory: WAAND, <http://waand.rutgers.edu> as well as the archival collections found in the Miriam Schapiro Archives on Women Artists at the Rutgers University Libraries.

IWA Staff:Ferris Olin and Judith K. Brodsky, directors, Institute for Women and Art and curators, Dana Women Artists SeriesNicoleIanuzelli,projectmanager,DanaWomenArtistsSeriesandInstituteforWomenandArtConnieTell,projectmanager,TheFeministArtProject Special Thanks:EileenBehnke,IWAGraduateAssistantMallieGusset,AssociateAlumnaeofDouglassCollegeExternLeigh-AnyaPassamano,IWAGraduateAssistantKelly Worth, Administration, Rutgers University LibrariesTamiyah Yancey, IWA Undergraduaute Assistant

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The Gendered Agency exhibition comprises the work of two artists selected by a panel ofvisualartsprofessionals.ThejuryincludedMarilynSymmes,ZimmerliArtMuseum,Rutgers-NewBrunswick;SherylConkelton,TempleUniversityArtGallery,Philadelphia(as of 2007); and Jorge Daniel Veneciano, Robeson Gallery, Rutgers-Newark ( as of 2007). We thank them for their advice and time. In addition to the exhibition, Aliza Augustine gave a gallery talk on February 4th, 2010.

Sponsors:EventshavebeenorganizedbytheMaryH.DanaWomenArtistSeries,aprogramoftheInstitute for Women and Art in partnership with the Rutgers Universities Libraries. The IWA operatesasacenteroftheOfficeoftheAssociateVicePresidentforAcademic&PublicPartnershipsintheArts&Humanities.Seriesco-sponsorsincludeAssociateAlumnaeofDouglassCollege,BrodskyCenterforInnovativeEditions,InstituteforResearchonWomen,OfficeoftheDeanofDougassResidentalCollegeandDouglassCampus,TheFeministArtProject,WomenandGenderStudiesDepartment,andtheWomenArtistsArchivesNationalDirectory.TheseeventsaremadepossibleinpartbyfundsfromtheNationalEndowmentfortheArtsandtheNewJerseyStateArtsCouncilontheArts/DepartmentofState,aPartnerAgencyoftheNationalEndowmentfortheArts.

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Preface: Dorothy L. Hodgson, Director, Institute for Research on Women, Rutgers

Everyyear,theInstituteforResearchonWomen(IRW)atRutgersUniversitysponsorsaseriesofactivities focused on an annual theme. These events include a weekly interdisciplinary seminar for faculty, advanced graduate students, and IRW Global Scholars in which they discuss each other’s work in progress related to the theme; a Distinguished Lecture Series; two semester-long Learning CommunitiesforRutgersjuniorsandseniors;and,often,aspringSymposium.

For 2009-2010, our theme is “Gendered Agency.” Although the term agency has become increasingly popularincontemporaryscholarship,theconceptremainsunderspecifiedandoftenmisused.Whatdoes agency mean? How is it constituted and expressed? Where is it located? How does agency shape and become shaped by structures of power like colonialism, capitalism, religion, and the media?Often“agency”isconflatedwith“resistance,”andshapedbyassumptionsfromclassicalWesternthoughtaboutrationalsubjectsexercisingfreewill.Recentfeministwork,however,haschallenged the “romance of resistance” and assumptions about rational agents to offer more nuanced analysesofagencysensitivetoquestionsofpower,consciousness,intentionality,subjectivity,culture,history,ethnicity,race,class,sexualityandgender.Butwhatevidence“counts”asreflectiveof gendered agency and how do we read and/or interpret how and why certain forms of agency are gendered?

This year, the IRW Seminar Fellows, Global Scholars, Distinguished Lecturers, Learning Community Scholars and other participants in our programs are exploring how attention to gender complicates and challenges contemporary understandings, uses and expressions of agency. We are considering whether there are explicitly gendered forms of agency, and, if so, how these are constituted, expressed, and experienced at different times, in different places, and through different media. By thinking about the relationship of gender and agency through a comparative, interdisciplinary lens, weconsiderthespecificsocialhistories,politicalstruggles,culturalassumptions,spiritualbeliefs,economic constraints, and biological factors that shape how and why males and females act as they do.

We are delighted this year to collaborate with the Institute for Women and Art to highlight artistic engagements with and representations of “Gendered Agency.” The exhibitions by Aliza Augustine and Ashley Watson investigate both disturbing and mundane aspects of the theme: Watson’s unsettling photossuggestthemutualvulnerabilityofthebodiesofanimalsandwomentoobjectificationandviolencewhileAugustine’sexquisitedollhousesanddollfiguresdepictthedailyproductionsofgender roles and relations in the everyday lives of families set against the backdrop of the Holocaust. Together, the exhibitions demonstrate the power of feminist art to push us to probe and ponder themes like gendered agency beyond the realm of “the word.”

On behalf of the IRW, I would like to thank Ferris Olin and Judy Brodsky for their collaboration, and look forward to working with the IWA in the years to come.

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Artist Statement: Aliza Augustine

I was born “knowing” about the Holocaust. I write knowing in quotation marks because the Holocaust was invariably “there” in every facet of my life––“there” to be picked up, deciphered in lingering, domestic silences pointing to a paradoxical familial secret that was not to be spoken. A knowable-unknown, let us call it, as “it”––the Holocaust––was in the air that my family breathed.

My grandparents and father escaped the Holocaust, thus making me a second and third generation Holocaust survivor. My art is an excavation of the domestic sphere through which I conceptualize as an inheritance of trauma vis-à-vis my paternal side of the family. At home we played at being aconventionalAmericanfamily.Andyetwewerefarfrom“American”mainstreamsubjects.Funandenjoymentwereluxuriesforotherchildren.Butterflieslivedinmybelly.Domesticair–-survivalair, exilic air––was the normalcy that sustained the atmosphere at home. It bore witness to the great losses and amazing tales of will and survival by my father’s side of the family. There was my grandparents and father’s escape from Vichy, France, which took great bravery, wit, and cunning. Their loss of family and property was accompanied by guilt, bravado, and cruelty.

This series, Is It Safe?, utilizes photographs of family members who survived or were killed during the Holocaust as narrative backdrops. I use dollhouse size––1-inch to 1-foot scale–– dolls in my art practice to retell visual stories, echoing the way that I was told tales of war and escape as a child on mygrandfather’sknee.Fascinatedsincechildhoodbydollhouses,IwasparticularlyinfluencedbyEnglishchildren’sbookillustrationslikeRumerGodden’sThe Dolls House. They provided me with a refugefromanoisyanddisruptivehousehold,andbecameanearlyinfluenceforhowInowretellandre-narrativize my life.

The backdrops used here are a visual memory of my extended family. Many of these photographs arenewlyrecovered.Particularlyinterestingtomewasthediscoveryofapreviouslyunknowngreatauntnamed“Dora”andhertwodaughters.PriortoworkingonIs It Safe?, I had never seen an image of a woman from my paternal side of the family. These photographs instill a profound feeling of sadness, while empowering my creative work through the active insertion of and engagement with familial female erasure. The dolls speak to––and mediate––gender issues such as: childhood, fear, race, politics, and abandonment. For instance, I Told You I Would Leave You At The Side Of The Road takes the idea of abandonment as a point of departure, while The Handmaid’s Tale wrestles with such categories as class, race, and feminism.

The accompanying sculpture, Safe House, is a child’s dollhouse where one could play a game of hide and seek, dream of a safe haven, or use it as a hiding place from the wolf at the door. During the war, many people were hidden from the Nazis. Today battered women are sheltered in safe houses. My larger preoccupations, then, underscore such queries like: How are we protected and how do we protect ourselves? And, indeed, how safe are we from the things we remember and choose to retell?

Where once I played with dolls, I now use them in narratives to illuminate my multidimensional female,white,Jewish,Israeli,French,English,Polish,Russian,immigrant,feminist,liberal,artist,chef, and wife’s point of views.

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Aliza Augustine, Is It Safe?, The Handmaid’s Tale, Digital C-print, 2009, 30 x 40 inches

Aliza Augustine, Is It Safe?, I Want To Be Carmen Maria Blanco Cruz, Digital C-print, 2009, 30 x 40 inches

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Aliza Augustine, Is It Safe?, Don’t Look Now 3, Digital C-print, 2009, 30 x 40 inches

Aliza Augustine, Is It Safe?, The Girl in Red Coat, Digital C-print, 2009, 27 x 40 inches7

Aliza Augustine, Is It Safe?, The Hairpeace, Digital C-print, 2009, 27 x 40 inches

Aliza Augustine, Is It Safe?, Home Schooling, Digital C-print, 2009, 27 x 40 inches 8

Aliza Augustine, Is It Safe?, I Want That One and That One..., Digital C-print, 2009, 27 x 40 inches

Aliza Augustine, Is It Safe?, She Cried So Much She Filled Buckets, Digital C-print, 2009, 30 x 40 inches 9

Aliza Augustine, Is It Safe?, She Never Looked Better, Digital C-print, 2009, 27 x 40 inches

Aliza Augustine, Is It Safe?, I Told You If You Didn’t Behave I Would Leave You By The Side Of The Road, Digital C-print, 2009, 27 x 40 inches 10

Aliza Augustine

Education RhodeIslandSchoolOfDesign:BFAPainting1978

Solo Shows2010 Gendered Agency,JuriedExhibition,RutgersUniversity,NewBrunswick,NJ Featured Show Playing Grown Up,Rice-PolakGallery,ProvincetownMA.1984 ThePharmacy,NewYork,NY1982 Nantucket Art Supply Company, Nantucket, MA 1981 The Little Gallery, Nantucket, MA

Group Shows2010 Make Believe, NJCU Gallery, Jersey City, NJ2009 For Art’s Sake, Visual Arts Center of New Jersey, Summit, NJ Wall To Wall, City With Out Walls, Newark, NJ New Tales for Our Age, Visual Arts Center of New Jersey, Summit, NJ; Rice-PolakGallery,ProvincetownMA New American Talent: The 24th Exhibition Austin, TX. 2 year traveling exhibition Pro Arts Board Members Show, Jersey City NJ Narrative Show, Watchung, NJ The Sketchbook Project, Art House Gallery, Atlanta, GA; Museum of Contemporary Art, Washington, DC; Laconia Gallery, Boston, MA; Antenna Gallery, Chicago, IL; Soulard Art Market, St. Louis, MO; 3rd Ward, Brooklyn, NY; Museum of Design Atlanta (MODA), Atlanta, GA; Chicago Art Source Gallery, Chicago, IL2008 Art Raw, ART:RAW Gallery New York, NY People Without Clothes, Jersey City, NJ Trading Places, Jersey City, NJ2007 American Sensibility, Jersey City, NJ In The Lives Of Dolls, Undercurrents Gallery, Miami, FL Love Is For Lovely People, Jersey City, NJ Reality Gallery American Slide-All, New York Studio Gallery, Chelsea, NY Made Home, Current Gallery, Baltimore, MD AckfireStudios,OpenHouseNantucket, MA METRO 25, City Without Walls, Newark, NJ2006 Happily Ever After, Canco Lofts Galleries, Jersey City, NJ The Feminine Mystique, The Jersey City Museum, Jersey City, NJ 99 Cents, The Jersey City Museum & Victory Hall, Jersey City, NJ SVAResidencyProgramGroupShow,Chelsea,NY Identity,BrennanGallery,JerseyCity,NJRocioAranda-Alvarado,PhDJuror Faces And Places Visions Of Hudson County, Brennan Gallery, Jersey City, NJ2005 Open Studios, Monroe Center For The Arts, Hoboken, NJ Hoboken Artists’ Studio Tour, Hoboken, NJ The Urban Complex, Brennan Gallery Inaugural Show, Jersey City, NJ

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2004 Open Studios, Monroe Center For The Arts, Hoboken, NJ 1993 Corner Store Blues Feature Film Art Direction, New York, NY1990 Max Fish, New York, NY1980-83 The Sibley Gallery, Nantucket, MA Nantucket Artists Association1981-82 Nantucket Art Supply Annual Women’s Show

Media Art and Feminism ITV http://artfem.tv/women_artists/

Talks 2006 Identity Show, Jersey City Museum, Jersey City, NJ2010 Gendered Agency, Dana Women Artists Series, Douglass Library, Rutgers, NJ

Gallery RepresentationRice-PolakGalleryProvincetown,Massachusetts

Residencies SchoolOfVisualArts:ResidencyInPhotography,Summer2006

Press“VisualArtsCenterPremieresNewExhibit”“NewTalesforOurAgeisanEmergingArtistsExhibitthatChallengesStereotypesof Contemporary Art”, Michelle Colandrea, September 12, 2009Haber,John.“DESPERATEARTISTS”,NewYorkArtCritic:GalleryReviewsfromJohn Haber. 10.20.07 (review of The Feminine Mystique at the Jersey City Museum) “MorePinkfromThe Feminine Mystique”Publishedby:portablecurator, 2007-09-23 11:14:30.0

BibliographyNAT:24 New American talent, The Twenty-fourth exhibition p.10The Feminine Mystique, Contemporary Artists respond cover, p.7Love is for Lovely People,VictoryArtsProjectsp.5

Selected CollectionsKent And Vicki Logan Collection, Vale, CO Malaga Baldi Literary Agency, NY, NYElizabethMoore,Nantucket,MAG. Thomas Burke, Naples, FLThe Sibley Gallery, Nantucket, MABelgian Metals Corp, New York, NYNantucket Tile Design, Nantucket, MAMohammed Riza, New York, NYThe Wilson Collection, Rochester, NY

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Artist Statement: Ashley Watson

In my work, I attempt to address the inter-related oppression of both women and non-human animals. Both women and non-human animals have been denied or limited legal, social and sexual agency to varying degrees––the agency of women limited by their ‘inferior’ similarity to the ‘non-rational’ and ‘wild’ animal “Other”. Historically, both women and non-human animals have been treated as property to be bought and consumed––the former sexually, the latter literally. Today, both bodies continue to be transformed from someone into something by the economic and social structures of the modern world.

The series, A Bird At My Table, focuses on the most marginalized of all domesticated animals, the female hen and turkey, whose bodily agency has been denied by humans, objectifyingherasanegg-laying/breedingmachine.Literallyconsumedmorethanany other domesticated animal, yet denied protection by any federal laws, these birdssufferbothmentalandphysicalabusefromover-breedingandconfinement.The female turkey’s reproductive agency has been denied through a genetic modification,whichhaslefthersoobeseshecannolongermatenaturally.Instead,sheisforciblyinseminatedartificially,byherowners,forprofit.

Similarly, a women’s bodily agency can be denied through sexual assault, rape, female genital mutilation, etc. While a woman’s body is rarely literally consumed, visual imagesofsexuallyobjectifiedwomenareconsumeddaily.Theactofconsumptionreifiestheinitialoppressionofbothwomenandanimals.

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Ashley Watson, A Bird At My Table, 2009, 10 Digital C-prints, 49 x 30 inches

Ashley Watson, A Bird At My Table, 2009, 10 Digital C-prints, 49 x 30 inches 14

Ashley Watson, A Bird At My Table, 2009, 10 Digital C-prints, 49 x 30 inches

Ashley Watson, A Bird At My Table, 2009, 10 Digital C-prints, 49 x 30 inches

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Ashley Watson, A Bird At My Table, 2009, 10 Digital C-prints, 49 x 30 inches

Ashley Watson, A Bird At My Table, 2009, 10 Digital C-prints, 49 x 30 inches

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Ashley Watson, A Bird At My Table, 2009,10 Digital C-prints, 49 x 30 inches

Ashley Watson, A Bird At My Table, 2009, 10 Digital C-prints, 49 x 30 inches 17

Ashley Watson, A Bird At My Table, 2009, 10 Digital C-prints, 49 x 30 inches

Ashley Watson, A Bird At My Table, 2009, 10 Digital C-prints, 49 x 30 inches 18

Ashley Watson

Professional Experience

2009 Gallery Assistant, Tuska Gallery, Lexington KY2002-2003 KYGuildofArtistsandCraftsmenjuror2002 JuriedmemberofKYCraftMarketingProgram2001 Juried member of the KY Guild of Artists and Craftsmen

Exhibitions

2010 Gendered Agency,JuriedExhibition,RutgersUniversity,NewBrunswick,NJ Presence, Asbury University, Wilmore, KY LAL Nude 2010,JuriedExhibition,LexingtonKY2009 A Bird At My Table,SoloExhibition,GallerieSoliel,Lexington,KY Ashley Watson and Ed Franklin, Kentucky Theatre, Lexington KY2008 Swallow It Whole, Group Show, The Space, New York, NY Jack, The Giants Newground, Audio/Video/Performance,LexArts,TheBlackBox Theatre, Lexington, KY I’ve Had a Taste and Now I Want More,SoloExhibition,GallerieSoliel,Lexington,KY2007 Saudades, Icehouse, Lexington, KY FrymanGallery-GroupExhibition,ParisKY Ni Musculos Ni Secreciones (Neither Muscles nor Secretions) Madrid, Spain2006 Sanctuary, T.W. Wood Gallery, Montpelier, VT Bluegrass Biennial- Morehead State University, KY- Awarded best in show2005 9-2-5SoloExhibition,MainCrossGallery,Lexington,KY2003 Berea Arts Council at ArtSpace, Berea, KY2002 Headley-Whitney Museum, Lexington, KY

Research Presentations

2006 Lecture: Sanctuary, Kindred Spirits Conference, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN Publications W-Weekly- Animal Shapes, Cover Story, Lexington, KY2004 1000 Glass Beads-Lark Books2003-2002 The Crafts Report2002 Lexington Herald-Leader

Awards & Grants

2008 Culture and Animal Foundation grant recipient2008 Culture and Animal Foundation scholarship recipient2006 Bluegrass Biennial-Awarded Best in Show

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Thisexhibition ismadepossible inpartby funds from theEstelleLebowitzMemorialFund.EstelleLebowitz (1930-1996) was born and raised in New York. She attended the High School of Music and Art and Brooklyn College. Her work has been exhibited in Sommers Town Gallery, Sommers, NY; Coster’sGallery,HighlandPark,NJ;TheGalleryatBuschCampusCenter,Piscataway,NJ;andtheMary H. Dana Women Artists Series, New Brunswick, NJ; Art Library at Rutgers, New Brunswick, NJ. Inherartist’sstatementshewrote,“Mywork(s)maybedescribedaswomen’sfeminineobjectswithovertonesofnature.Theyaresemi-abstractimagesthataremostlyfantasies,influencedoriginallybeImpressionism and brought into Modernism by my own style and technique. Light and color are very important in my work...and they each mean something.”

Lebowitz Lectureship:2010-2011: Joan Snyder2009-2010: Cecilia Vicuña2008-2009: Renee Cox2007-2008: Berni Searle2006-2007: May Stevens2005-2006: Molly Snyder-Fink2004-2005: Miriam Schapiro2001-2002: Hung Liu2000-2001: June Wayne, Siri Berg1999-2000: Carolee Schneemann

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EstelleLebowitz,1992,Untitled

Institute for Women and Art191 College Avenue, New Brunswick, NJ 08901

[email protected]

http://iwa.rutgers.edu

MARY H. DANA WOMEN ARTISTS SERIES ADVISORY COUNCIL, 2009-10 Anonda Bell Joan Marter Harriet Davidson Lynn Miller Mary Hawkesworth Isabel Nazario LisaHetfield MartinRosenberg Dorothy L. Hodgson

INSTITUTE FOR WOMEN AND ART RUTGERS ADVISORY COUNCIL , 2009-10 Grimanesa Amoros Leslie Mitchner Betsy Barbanell Isabel Nazario JoanBartl NellPainter Anonda Bell Joanna Regulska ElizabethCohen MartinRosenberg KarenDandurand ErnestineRuben Harriet Davidson Anne Swartz Marianne I. Gaunt Courtney Taylor Mary Hawkesworth Farideh Tehran LisaHetfield JorgeDanieleVeneciano Dorothy L. Hodgson Cheryl A.Wall MarjorieMartay Joan Marter

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