Courting controversy

Artist Martha Wilson tries on a persona in this piece entitled "Male Impersonator (Butch)" from 1974.

Taped to the front door of the Dal Art Gallery is a hasty, makeshift sign, a message to the effect that Martha Wilson: Staging the Self is for mature audiences only. A five seconds’ walk through the exhibit will leave you gawking in front of Jenny Holzer’s Truisms (1978), which proclaims:

“EATING TOO MUCH IS CRIMINAL”

The work, once showcased in the Franklin Furnace Gallery, is here divided between a short selection of phrases printed on a wrinkled T-shirt and a longer list of questionable proverbs under glass.

“ILLNESS IS A STATE OF MIND”
“MEN ARE NOT MONOGAMOUS BY NATURE”
“MORALS ARE FOR LITTLE PEOPLE”

The sign on the door was a smart move; this exhibit definitely isn’t afraid of courting controversy.

Staging the Self, curated by Peter Dykhuis, features the work of Martha Wilson, who began making her highly political art while studying English at Dal in the early 1970s. English was a good fit: there is a definitely literate feel to Wilson’s work, much of which communicates in plain text what is only implied by the accompanying images. “At one time or another, I have tried them all on for size,” Wilson’s accompanying text says of the feminine archetypes, (goddess/housewife/earth-mother/lesbian) she models and photographs in A Portfolio of Models, 1974. “And none has fit, all that’s left to do is be an artist,” she continues puckishly.

Wilson was an artist, with a vengeance, and Staging the Self is a fascinating chronology of 40 years of razor-edged performance art, photography and other explorations of the self.

Virtually all the art catalogued in this exhibit is comparatively recent, and so are the methods of displaying it – some material is accessed via computer, and a great deal is displayed on video. The spotlighted clips are of DISBAND, the “all-female vaudevillian-punk group” Wilson founded in 1978. Later clips and photographs feature Wilson as Nancy Reagan, Tipper Gore, and Barbara Bush. This section of the exhibit is pithily titled The First (and Second) Ladies, and the satirical narrative voice Wilson assigns to the ladies is iconoclastic and deadpan. “I only wanted labelling on records to HELP the record industry market risky material,” clatters a monologue assigned to Tipper Gore in Tipper Gore’s Advice for the 90s, 1994. Later Gore’s character states, “The social benefit of freedom is that because we have art as an outlet, we won’t become a burden to society by ending up in a mental institution.”

The social benefit of freedom, and art as an outlet, seems to be of the utmost importance to Wilson – although not for the same reasons she ascribes to her caricature of Ms. Gore. Wilson is a founding director of the Franklin Furnace Gallery, which supports avant-garde art that “may be vulnerable due to institutional neglect, their ephemeral nature, or politically unpopular content.”

Some of the gallery’s pieces are showcased (a sort of exhibit-within-an-exhibit) and what is meant by ‘politically unpopular’ is quickly apparent: alongside Holzer’s Truisms, Shirin Neshat’s Unveiling: Face to Face (displayed in 1993) explores the politics of women’s veiling in Islamic countries, and Karen Finley’s A Woman’s Life Isn’t Worth Much (displayed in 1990) is biting social satire in the form of wall daubings. Wilson’s fondness for mischief and wit is mirrored in the work she has showcased: Dona Ann McAdam’s Feminists and Porn Stars (1984) photographs a roomful of naked women, standing in rows and smiling as though for a class photo. Each carries a cardboard sign specifying “feminist” or “porn star," just in case you had trouble distinguishing which was which.

The Tribeca-based Franklin Furnace closed its doors in 1997, and now it is maintained only through an archive in Brooklyn and at franklin.furnace.org—making the Dal Art Gallery’s exhibition all the more special and rare. Martha Wilson: Staging the Self is required viewing for those who like their art edgy.

Martha Wilson: Staging the Self continues to May 10 at Dalhousie Art Gallery. Gallery hours are Tuesdays to Sundays, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.