One artist of the survey I am going to mention is Eve Fowler, who I love for appropriating the masculine purview—even when it doesn't quite work as in the photo series included in this show. Seems to me, the glory hole is well... a hole, an apeture that waits to be filled. The cock trusts through it to the other side, to the waiting mouth. In this re-make, the hand thrusts and the slit on the other side waits on it. The set up seems to reinforce the inny-outy distinction of the female-male parts. But I gotta say, I will always stand up for the glory of girl-bits, boy-bits on display.
Which leads me to my favorite installation of the show: Vaginal Davis' intimate cubical of a girl-boy room. Covered top to bottom with naughty bits, boy-bits mostly, photos, drawings, all the imagery my prurient self could desire. Things to bump into, hung like a laundry list of party-life; things to skim, pick up, rummage through—just like snooping—yeah, me and everyone else wandering through this life laid bare. Talk about innies and outies. The private made public.
Both Fowler and Davis are working the tension between private-public. I can gaze on privates in private, but in public, I become self-conscious, uncomfortable, sensitive to the gaze or passing graze of the others. It feels Too Close. So the questions arise: What is acceptable in public? and What am I afraid of? Why do I feel exposed?
In the panel discussion, Remembering, Rhyming, We Won't Stop I loved hearing the matter-of-fact way Tammy Rae Carland discussed her work arising right out of her life—and as a matter of fact, that is how I might describe Laurel Nakadate explaining how she arranges the situations for her video interactions with the unlikely men she meets in her life. (That's her on her knees in one such situation.) And hey, Nao Bustamante was pretty matter-of-fact even if she was talking about her wacky space-exploration video, Earth People 2507, being shown at Sundance with her poodle FuFu in the starring buffalo role. Is it a generational thing? Or are rhyming women just comfortable-in-their-skin, nice women? Whatever. Don't stop. Please. You are the future, just like Vaginal said, a future feminist state is possible. This is how. Remembering. Rhyming. Not stopping.
