TFAP@CAA Day of Panels at Annual Conference 2010

10:45am-12:00pm
Feminist artists and feminist curators: A conversation about collaboration
Chair: Catharina Manchanda, Senior Curator, Wexner Center for the Arts
Panelists: Dara Birnbaum, independent artists; Naomi Fisher, independent artist; Elissa Auther, independent curator and Associate Professor, University of Colorado at Colorado Springs; and Bettina Steinbrügge, Curator and Artistic Directory, Halle fur Künst Lüneburg.

In the wake of recent feminist “blockbuster” exhibitions and their attendant critical discourse, this roundtable conversation featuring feminist curators and artists will address the challenges, pleasures, and workaday details of contemporary feminist creative and curatorial practices—both independently of and in collaboration with one another. Panelists include artists Dara Birnbaum and Naomi Fisher, and curators Elissa Auther and Bettina Steinbrugge.

12:30-1:45pm
Wandering Uteri, de/reConstructed Vulvas, and architectures of hospitality
Chair: Faith Wilding, School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Panelists: Terri Kapsalis, Associate Professor, School of the Art Institute of Chicago; and Irina Aristarkhova, Assistant Professor, Penn State School of Visual Arts

In this provocative presentation cyberfeminist artists/health activists/scholars, Terri Kapsalis, Faith Wilding, and Irina Aristarkhova combine research, on-the-ground activism, and artistic production to illuminate contemporary and historical representations of medical interventions into female/male/transgender reproductive functions and health care.

Feminist Painting
Chair: Julia Bryan-Wilson, Associate Professor, University of California-Irvine; and Johanna Burton, Associate Director, Whitney Independent Study Program
Panelists: Harmony Hammond, independent artist; Carrie Moyer, independent artist; Amy Sillman, independent artist; and Paula Wilson, independent artist.

In 1975, Alice Neel asserted: “I always painted like a woman, but I don’t paint like a woman is supposed to paint.” What does it mean to paint “like a woman”—and how might that differ from painting as a feminist? Featuring Harmony Hammond, Carrie Moyer, Amy Sillman, and Paula Wilson, this session brings together four artists of different generations to discuss the political ramifications of applying pigment to surface. Each of these women grapples in her work with how painting has historically and might continue to signify a feminist practice. In what has been called a “post-medium” (and even “post-feminism”) era, how can we look critically at the specific tools, methods, and means of painting, particularly abstraction, from within a feminist rubric?

3:45-5:00pm
Push and/or Pull: Trans and Gender-Variant Artists Discuss the Role of Feminism in Their Work
Chair: Lacey Jane Roberts, independent artist and author
Moderator: Kat Griefen
Panelists: Eva Hayward, lecturer, College of Fine Arts, University of New Mexico; Shana Agid, independent artist; and Tobaron Waxman, independent artist

In recent years debates have raged over the place that transgender, gender-variant, and genderqueer people occupy in contemporary feminism.  Feminist and queer activism and theory paved the path for transgender and gender-identities, yet feminist spaces have often been unwelcoming and critical of those who claim gender-variant identities, positioning them as inauthentic or as infringing on spaces reserved for those considered to be “women-born-women.”  This panel will feature three artists who identify as trans, gender-variant, or genderqueer, who will discuss how they negotiate feminism and the role/s that feminist histories and thought play/s in their work; ways that feminism is exclusive or inclusive of trans, genderqueer, or gender-variant people; and how the presence and cultural production of those who identify as gender-variant and trans contributes to the evolution of contemporary feminist theory and praxis.