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Mary Kelly speaks volumes with the sparest of means.
Her highly conceptual installations use minimal forms to examine
complex psychoanalytic, linguistic, and feminist ideas. They also
often feel a little cold, but in recent years Kelly's work has incorporated
a new range of affect with remarkable aplomb.
"Love Songs" is an unabashed commemoration
of a specific moment in feminist history -- a protest outside the
1971 Miss World pageant in London. It's an emotionally and politically
loaded project that -- like all fond reminiscences -- risks descending
into self-indulgent nostalgia. Yet, Kelly's trademark reserve keeps
the work from feeling sappy and reveals a serious, heartfelt commitment
to reinvigorating feminist ideals in the present.
The centerpiece of the exhibit is Sisterhood is
POW, a room lined with black acrylic rectangles perforated
with a first-person account of a confrontation between protestors
and the passengers in a limousine. Illuminated from behind, Kelly's
spare, irreverent text captures the scene with uncanny immediacy.
Equally understated, the black surfaces suggest the shiny opacity
of the limo, while the light-filled letters break through, like
the protestors' voices. In capturing the feeling of a revolutionary
moment rather than its details, Kelly reminds us that feminism's
greatest legacy is not a string of places and dates, but the way
in which it transformed consciousness.
Similarly, a series of light-box transparencies titled
Flashing Nipple Remix document a present-day reenactment
of a dance performed at the protest. In the first photograph, five
women stand silhouetted with lights affixed to their breasts and
crotches, their presence reduced to crude signals of sexual difference.
In the following two images -- taken with extended exposures --
the women move and their bodies dissolve in a flurry of light. The
piece is a beautiful encapsulation of female emancipation: turning
objectification into an explosion of unfettered potential.
These days, it's all too easy to dismiss past activist
movements as naïve or to romanticize them into irrelevance.
With "Love Songs," Kelly has found a way to look back
and forward at the same time, bringing the upstart spirit of feminism
to life in the here and now.
This review originally appeared
in the January 2007 issue of art
ltd. Reprinted with permission.
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