IN YOUR FACE: POLITICS OF THE BODY AND PERSONAL KNOWLEDGE
March 27 - April 22 1992
A/C Project Room, 580 Broadway, N.Y.C.
Exhibition Text: Tracy Ann Essoglou, 3/6/92: NYC.
"In your face: politics of the body and personal knowledge" is a testimony to 'knowing' which is politically and sensually informed; contained by both body and mind --significant for the duality of its existence as both presence and absence. Historically, such knowing has been relegated and regulated as 'intuition'. Women's work in particular, has been contained, discouraged and negated, under the rubric of the personal. Information and representation not in the service of the denial of this arena is often outcast. Personal knowledge is thus forbidden. As an overarching condition, forbiddenness serves as a precondition to self-censorship. It is an omnipresent state wherein certain aspects of knowing and being are evacuated a priori. The concept of self-censorship locates censorship within the immediate realm of individual awareness without addressing social, and thus political, mechanisms of control: humiliation and fear threaten the development of personal knowledge; silencing prohibits its accumulation both as personal and cultural history.
The works selected for this exhibition suggest a continuum of personal knowledge; from actualized and represented art, to the unavailable, as yet unknowable- an art already (self)censored. The integrity of these works is the self-conscious effort to understand the body as an implicit site of knowledge and political expression. "In your face: politics of the body and personal knowledge" is an to attempt underscore the significance of one's own body in the formulation of personal knowledge and critical action.
Artists: Janine Antoni, Louise Bourgeois, Suzanne Coffey, Mary Beth Edelson, Tracy Ann Essoglou, Deborah Kass, Kazuko, Chris Lidrbauch, Ana Mendieta, Kiki Smith. Performance by Dana Bryant. Produced by Andrea Most.
Curators: Tracy Ann Essoglou, Mary Beth Edelson.
Subsequent Exhibition: Cortlandt Jessup Gallery, Provincetown, MA. Summer 1992.