Hyperallergic: For Feminist Artists, Recognition Often Comes Too Late
"The Devil Ties My Tongue" by Amy Seiwert performed for the SKETCH Series, 2013. Photo by David DeSilva. Courtesy of Amy Seiwert's Imagery
Hyperallergic: For Feminist Artists, Recognition Often Comes Too Late
By
1 February 2021
Year beginnings beg for our attention. How do we account? Given the threat of COVID-19, these routine re-evaluations take on a darker pall. If I died, how would I be remembered, and by whom? I consider this from the perspective of one who has worked the feminist homage.
For the last 30 or so years, I have interviewed or conversed with members of my own art and art activist communities. Three years ago, I published an interview with Carolee Schneemann concerning her major career retrospectives. We talked about gender, ecology, and militarism, about her coming into attention at that (late) moment of her life: “I’ve had wonderful assistance and amazing teams at the museums. The confidence, the devotion of the institution — it is just amazing. But part of me isn’t there. Part of me is like, ‘What happened? I can do anything and they like it now? This matters?’ I’m very divided.”
At that time, I also spoke with Agnès Varda and Barbara Hammer. These three great artists were all around 80 when we spoke; I was in my mid-50s. Each died shortly thereafter. They were enjoying the recognition of their careers, but each was “divided” in her own way given how late-in-coming this attention was. In previous conversations in the 1990s, Schneemann and Hammer, then about the age I am now, had focused upon a related preoccupation: a definitive lack of support, how they were not seen (enough), and how this had stalled and affected their careers.
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