[MUSIC PLAYING]
Hi, everyone.
Welcome, thank you for joining us at today's program
with Cindy Rehm presented as part of the Wignall Museum's
Home Edition, a series of curated artists,
talks, workshops, and discussions featuring
artists and cultural workers.
My name is Rebecca Trawick.
I'm the director and curator of the Wignall Museum.
The Wignall Museum is a teaching museum,
an interdisciplinary art space that introduces Chaffey College
students, faculty, staff, and community members
to innovative, contemporary art objects and ideas by fostering
critical thinking, visual literacy, discourse,
and empathy.
The museum seeks to enhance the intellectual and cultural life
of our community.
We want to take a moment to recognize that we are situated
on the Rancho Cucamonga campus of Chaffey College, which
resides on the traditional and unseated lands of the Tongva
people.
We offer our respect to the elders
both past, present, and future.
Hello, my name is Roman Stollenwerk.
I'm the assistant curator at the Wignall
Museum of Contemporary Art.
All recorded programs in Home Edition
will be transcribed and captioned.
Please visit our website at www.chaffey.edu/wignall
to access recordings.
We will post announcements to our email subscribers
and social media when the videos are available on our site.
And Hi, everyone.
My name is Andy Hadle.
I'm the preparator at the museum and the studio tech
for the studio arts department.
Briefly, I'll share a quick breakdown of today's program.
In a moment, Rebecca will share the bio
for today's guest, Cindy Rhem.
Then Cindy will present for about a 1/2 an hour or so.
The remaining time will be available for question
and answer.
Thanks, Roman and Andy.
Today, we're pleased to introduce you to Cindy Rhem.
Rhem is a Los Angeles-based artist and educator.
She serves as co-facilitator of the Cixous reading group
and is co-founder of feminist-centered projects,
Craftswomen House, and Feminist Love Letters.
Rhem is also the curator of the brilliant exhibition,
These Creatures, that was on-view fall
2019 at the Wignall Museum.
Rhem's interdisciplinary practice
moves between drawing, performance, and video
to address the cultural suppression of women's
narratives and the legacy of hysteria.
Rhem's work has been shown at venues throughout the United
States and at museums and galleries
in Italy, Bulgaria, and France.
It's our great honor to present Cindy Rhem.
Thank you so much to the Wignall for inviting
me to do this talk.
And thank you, everybody who's joined us today.
I'm going to go ahead and share my screen.
So I wanted to start with this quote by Virginia Wolf.
"For most of history, anonymous was a woman."
One, because Wolf's work has been so important to me
and also, because I feel like the hidden history of women
is pretty much what all of my work is in response to.
And I'm going to read a short statement
as an introduction to my work before I really
start showing some images.
My process always begins with reading.
And I feel like there is often some biblio-mansi-- happy
accidents, discoveries in bibliographies,
or falling down rabbit holes during an image search.
As I follow past through and between text,
two passages that inform and inspire my imagery.
I look to print it ephemera, literary criticism,
and the history of women's art and writing.
These forms depict private and collective experiences
and allow me to follow multiple threads
through aesthetic, feminist, and psychological readings.
As I'm researching, hidden women creep
off the pages much like the lady is coming off
the walls in Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper.
These women haunt my work-- hysterics, Saints, witches,
mediums, and contemporary feminists.
These women are all part of the same continuum
of subversive women--
women who react against the confines of the patriarchy.
These are women who yell and scream and leave bodily fluids
or emit ectoplasm.
They destabilize patriarchy's desire for women
to be controlled and contained.
And I wanted to start with some 19th-century images
of hysteria.
And hysteria is a thread that really
runs through all of my work.
And I wanted to say, with The Yellow Wallpaper, many of you
have probably read this story in the past.
But I often think about it in the fact
that it was written in 1892 so very long ago.
But Gilman was really writing about the experience of a woman
writer being given bedrest as a way to cure her hysteria
and slowly starts to go mad.
And this idea that this confinement of women can itself
cause madness and then also thinking about that the women
who are coming out of the wallpaper--
much like the women that I feel are coming out of the pages
when I'm researching--
are like this hidden history of women--
all these women whose voices have been submerged
throughout history who haven't been brought to the forefront
during history.
And in Hysteria, I think about this as a rupture.
Also, in Hysteria, even though it's like
it's been around since the beginning of time.
And the Greek root of the word is "wondering womb."
And so it's always been very associated
with the female body.
And in the 19th-century, there was
a resurgence of women being diagnosed as hysteric.
And it was really anything that could
be that was outside of proper culture.
If a woman had headaches or menstrual problems,
if she was studying too much, if she was too talkative, if she
wore pants--
there were all the pretty much anything
that was not accepted as feminine by society
could cause a woman to be deemed as hysteric.
And in the turn of the century, many women
were institutionalized as being hysterics.
And so there is this way that hysteria
is very much about this control of female bodies.
But I also think about it in that
when a woman is behaving in this hysterical way
when she's having a hysterical fit,
she's actually breaking with culture.
So it could be this thing that could
be this point of rebellion, which is
the way that I think about it.
And I think also, noting that even though hysteria--
we think about these historic conditions of women.
Hysterical is still something that's
used-- a name that women are called today.
And it thought about during the Kavanaugh trial--
or Brett Kavanaugh hearings.
Kamala Harris was called hysterical
by some of her colleagues.
And even though Kavanaugh was crying and angry and very
emotive, Harris was the one who was called the hysteric.
And Harris has actually said that she
believes that women who own their power
are called hysterical.
And I'm actually really delighted that we're
about to have a so-called hysteric in the White House,
so see what happens when we have a hysteric in the White House.
So the first body of work I wanted
to show you is a project that I made in 2015
called Psychical Research.
And this was at an artist-run space
in Los Angeles called Elephant.
And this particular show was in dialogue
with the history of Victorian mediumship
and also, spirit photography.
And the images that you see now are some examples
of spirit photography.
And there was a whole industry around mediumship and people
who would photograph and document.
And it was called Psychical Research--
some people trying to prove or disprove
if these seances were real.
And I came across this book.
And I asked Rebecca to put this in the chat.
It's a book called Phenomenon of Materialization.
And this book is from 1913.
So it's this historic document.
And in the book, it goes through all of these seances that
were performed by this medium named Eva C.
And it goes minute-by-minute what
was happening in the seances room-- all
of the preparations-- actually has diagrams of the layouts.
And then there are all these amazing photographs
that are said to be documents of these seances.
And so I became really interested
in thinking about these mediums being
very similar to the hysterics.
Whenever a woman was in a trance,
she could put forth these narratives,
make-up these stories, or tell her own story--
these things that might not be acceptable
in common culture and then also, started
talking about many-a-times, there would be something
emitted from the mouth.
So there's this ectoplasm is what that's
called that's coming out of the mouth
and started really thinking about that
as a narrative that's coming out of the mouth.
And also, in my performance work,
I think about the mouth as this important orifice that
is between the inside and the outside of the body
and obviously a place where language is produced.
So this is an image of-- this was the closing of the show.
And what was really great about this particular opportunity
is that I was able to include all the different parts
of my creative practice.
There were collages.
There was a video.
And then I also did a performance for the closing.
And so this is an image of the closing.
So you get an idea of all of those elements together.
And this is a close-up of that small diorama.
There are these collage paper dolls.
And then all these white substances
that were used in the video that I
was thinking about materials that could
stand-in for this ectoplasm.
And then those black marks are the backs of old photographs.
I collect a lot of old photographs from my collage
work and became really fascinated
with these almost like stains that were on the back.
And they almost started to feel like ink-blot stains.
And this is an image of one of the pieces
in the show called I Am Taken.
And this is collage and ink.
And the title from this comes from when
I was working on the show, I read as much
as I could about mediumship.
And there was a book that I came across
that was from the perspective of one of the mediums herself.
It was like her memoir.
And she described when she was going into a trance.
She called it I Am Taken.
So that's where that comes from.
And so in this show-- really thinking
about the production of female narratives,
thinking about mediumship, thinking
about this liminal space between the mystical
and the real world-- the inside and the outside of the body.
These are some collage pieces that were 11 by 17 originally.
And I had them blown up to poster size.
So they're 24 by 36.
And these are all thinking about that liminal space.
And a lot of the landscape imagery
are from collected old black-and-white photographs.
And then these are some links to the video.
And I'm not going to show the video today.
But all of this work is on my website
if you're interested in spending more time with it.
But the video is called Double Thread.
And it was two women who were engaged in this.
I thought about it as preparations for a seance.
And they're engaging with all these different materials
that could stand-in for the ectoplasm.
And then this is an image of the performance
that I made for the closing.
And so you'll see in all of these pieces,
even if they're in different forms,
there's a lot of similar materiality, colors,
textures that I'm using.
And so for this performance, there was a transparent ribbon
that I had that I would put in and out of my mouth referencing
the ectoplasm.
The first part of the performance,
I covered my face in hairnets-- these layers of hairnets-- that
was this idea of going inside.
And then the next part of the performance,
I cut little openings into my skirt or loons.
And then I spit heavy cream into them.
And then the last part was stitching them up.
And there are more images of this on my website too.
But this idea, almost this ritual
of wounding and healing--
and a lot of my work, there are references
to textiles and sewing and these more female
forms or forms that are associated with women.
And then I wanted to share this.
Because I always think this is cool.
When I was preparing for this talk,
I was looking for that Original Phenomenon
of Materialization book.
And when I googled it, some of the images of my performance
and of my show came up in the context
of that archive, which I always think is really interesting.
Then my work becomes part in this conversation--
this digital archive of this historic moment.
So this next piece that I wanted to talk about
is a larger project for me.
And this has not ever been shown in its entirety.
I've shown pieces of this project.
And this is a project that's called The Formless is
What Keeps Bleeding.
And I started this in 2016 and finished in 2017.
And this project is in conversation
with Marcel Duchamp.
So that's what this image is that you're seeing.
And this is a piece that's at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
And so it's a unique piece in that you really
can only experience it if you go and see it.
You can see images, obviously.
But it's a piece that's called Étant donnés,
but the English translation is Given.
And Duchamp made this piece in the late '40s.
Duchamp said he was giving up art.
He said life is more interesting.
You may see images of him playing chess.
He said, I'm not going to make art anymore.
And he's the guy who's most famous for making the urinal.
So he was always challenging the boundaries of art.
But while he said he was giving up art,
he was actually making this piece in private.
And so very few people knew about this piece.
And he worked on this for 20 years from 1946 to 1966.
And it was not actually installed in the museum
until after his death.
And so I don't remember why I came back to this piece.
I first saw it when I was a teenager.
I grew up in Pennsylvania.
And so when you see this piece is in a regular museum setting
where there are paintings and sculptures,
and then you go into this darkened room,
and you see this door.
And when you look through the holes in the door,
you see this diorama of this naked female body
in the landscape.
She has a lamp that's illuminated.
And there's a small waterfall on the back
that's actually animated that looks like it's moving.
And I still remember this feeling
of being repulsed and Shocked but then
also being really drawn to--
I feel like there's always some wonder about things
that are like dioramas.
So I remember that original feeling.
And then I started to as an adult seeing this image again,
started thinking about who is that body?
What was this piece about?
And the thing is, Duchamp not really
said very little about it.
He made it in private.
After his death, he said it couldn't be
photographed for like 15 years.
So it was very shrouded in mystery from the beginning.
And there are people who have written about it,
but it's all really outside conjecture.
But I really started thinking about does
that body represent somebody.
Is it a symbol?
Is it metaphoric?
And as I was reading, started to find
that there were three women who are contained in this body.
The first one is Maria Reynolds who
was a bookbinder who was Duchamp's companion
from the 1920s to the '40s.
And on the right side, there is an image of one of the books
that she bound.
If you ever see any famous surrealist or [INAUDIBLE]
bookbinding, she probably made them.
And it said that the technique that Duchamp used--
this kind of parchment that he used on the body
was actually something that he learned from Mary Reynolds.
The next body that's contained in the sculpture
is Maria Martins.
And she was a Brazilian sculptor and very well known in Brazil
but not as well known here.
And she was Duchamp's lover from 1946 to 1951.
And he actually cast her body to make the main body in Given.
And then the final woman is Alexeena or Teeny Duchamp
who was married to Duchamp in the mid-1950s.
And at some point, they were moving the body,
and the arm broke off.
And he cast her arm--
Teeny's arm to be the arm on the body.
So the body is really a composite of Maria Martin's
and Teeny Duchamp.
And I also think it's interesting.
This is one of Duchamp's notebooks.
He had these very extensive notebooks
about how the piece was to be installed.
Because it was not installed until after his death.
And I think it's interesting to note this question of why
was this body someone that he knew or was it completely
metaphoric or symbolic?
And whenever he started the piece,
the body had a brunette wig, and Martins was a brunette.
And then when the piece was finalized and installed,
it had a blonde wig.
And Teeny was blonde, so I feel like there's something there
in that even the hair color on the body in Given.
So I had found out that these women were contained.
But then I was still thinking about,
so what is this-- a dead body?
What is this dead body in the woods and thinking
about this kind of trope?
Some people say that they think that Duchamp
was influenced by the Black Dahlia
murders that happened in 1947.
And that's what the images are on the right.
That's entirely conjecture, but there is obviously
some aesthetic correspondence in the bodies.
But I started thinking about how prevalent this trope
of the dead girl in the woods.
If you think about Twin Peaks or any episode of CSI
or really any procedural, there's
almost always a dead girl.
I then started thinking about the fact
that even though it's this entertainment trope,
it's also a reality.
Every day, there's a woman that goes
missing or a story of a husband that killed his wife.
And obviously, violence against women
is pervasive in our culture and actually worldwide.
The image on the right is from Juarez where thousands of women
have gone missing.
And in many cases, they haven't even been looked for.
So there is this violence against women
and this lack of consideration given for their safety.
And so in thinking about this idea of the dead female body
or the dead girl in the woods-- trying to figure out,
is there some way that body could be rehabilitated?
And so I started thinking about if there
were so many dead women, and they're
so many different places, that meant that female energy was
more places or even thinking about the female body
were fragmented.
That would mean the female energy were in more places.
And I think this ties into this idea of haunting.
And I feel like I'm constantly tapping
into this female energy-- these women's voices
that have been suppressed or violently removed
from culture in some way.
So this is the first series that I made called Broken--
She is Everywhere.
And this is 15 collages.
And in this one--
a lot of times, when I make collage
work I have a directive that makes it more cohesive.
And for this one, all of the color pieces,
I created this encyclopedia of color images.
And so all the color images are--
I can only use color images from that encyclopedia.
And then they're superimposed on this landscape.
And there are lots of images of this fragmentation references
to the opening in Given female bodies.
And I'm going to show you some of that series.
I'm not going to show you all of it.
And then this is the second piece
that I made in this project called Given.
And there are 55 collages.
And this image-- I apologize-- is a little bit blurry.
Because it's from my studio wall.
And this is actually the first piece
where I really started to think about the series
as a feminist form.
When I was an art student, I studied painting.
And I still remember this feeling
of, I can't be an artist, because I
don't make these giant, abstract paintings.
And as I've gotten older, I realize
that that's really a very patriarchal male paradigm
that art needs to be this epic, giant gesture.
And so I started thinking about this idea of the series
where these are all pieces that are 8 and 1/2 by 11.
They're quite small.
They're very fragmentary.
And I think also thinking about across the series
it's like a gesture that's made up of many smaller gestures.
And I think about that in a feminist context
of a feminist dialogue where there
isn't this hierarchy of one piece being more important
than the other, like all of the pieces
are in conversation together and that they all
need to be together.
There's this communal aspect of the pieces too.
These pieces-- there's a landscape element.
And then the fragments are from fashion images.
And then this is the first time I ever
used Restoration Hardware.
But I think a catalog had come around this time.
And I'm like this is paper material
and then started realizing that some of the imagery
really related to Duchamp's readymades.
So this is a combination of these tactile fabrics,
parts of bodies, hair.
So this next piece that I wanted to show you
is part of this series.
A lot of times, whenever I'm collecting
imagery for a project, I will do image searches.
And sometimes, it will be trying to find similar textures
or similar colors.
So on the left is a piece of Duchamp's called Female
Fig Leaf.
And so while Duchamp was making Given in private,
he did make a few sculptures that he gave to friends
almost as these breadcrumbs or almost like this secret
like he's giving them these pieces that are actually
impressions from the body in Given.
But no one knows that.
And so this particular sculpture, Female Fig Leaf,
is actually an impression between the legs of the body.
And so in this one, I was thinking
about a female lack and that psychological
of women's penis-envy and those kinds of things.
And I thought it was really interesting.
So I did a straight-up image search.
And on the right are some of the images
that came up in the search for Female Fig Leaf.
And then so this piece is very straightforward in that there's
a waterfall.
And then there is one of the images that
came up from that image search.
And I thought it was really fascinating
that so many things that were vessels came up
or things that had openings or wounds.
And there's even this one piece that
almost looks like a bit of the Venus of Willendorf
or something.
So I mean obviously, there were many other ones.
This was a process of editing, like me choosing the ones
that I thought were most interesting.
And this piece was really thinking about Maria Martins'
body in the piece.
And this is the last series that I made as part of this project.
And this is a series called She Came in Through the Gash.
And this series was dictated by the size of the door in Given.
And so I was still thinking about female energy.
And initially, I was thinking about it like,
can it be restorative?
And then I started thinking about,
what if these women are pissed off?
I think it was around the time of thinking about Me Too
and thinking about female rage.
And so I started thinking about the body
in Given as being a portal where these female spirits could
enter back into the world and wreak havoc or punish
men who had violated women or harassed women in some way.
So thinking about the idea of this female energy,
like maybe this female energy could also have a fury to it.
It's not always necessarily this passive thing
or this positive thing.
And so there is an image in these of the body.
And then there are color collage images that are from--
mostly from fashion sources.
And then there are also some textiles.
So there are a lot of tears and wounds
and openings in this piece.
And then, while I was working on this particular series,
I came across a poem by Maria Martins,
who is the body in Given.
And she was a sculptor but also was a poet.
And so I'm just going to read this poem, because I
think it's incredible.
It really kind of captures this idea of female fury.
It's called Do Not Forget I Come From The Tropics.
"Even long after my death, long after your death,
I want to torture you.
I want the thought of me to coil around your body like a serpent
of fire without burning you.
I want to see you lost, asphyxiated,
wonder in the murky haze woven by my desires."
For you, I want long sleepless nights
filled with the roaring tom-tom of storms,
far away invisible unknown.
Then, I want the nostalgia of my presence to paralyze you.
So I just thought as like this incredible like revenge
love poem.
And I asked Rebecca too, there's a really amazing essay
by Leslie Jamison that was in the New York Times.
And not too long ago, there was a Daily episode
where the essay was read.
And it's all about female rage.
It's called On Female Rage and talks not only about
female fury but the ways that sometimes female anger kind
of manifests as sadness.
And in this essay too, she talked so much
about the history of female narratives and female stories.
So I definitely encourage you to read the essay
or listen to the podcast.
Because I think it's like a really kind of concise history
of female narratives.
And then this last image I have is I
just this last year made a zine.
A lot of times, when I work on projects,
like if I have a show, I'll make a zine that
has elements from the show, sometimes images from the show,
and then related imagery.
And so I just made the zine last year.
This is the cover of the front and the back.
And actually, the cover image, I went and saw [INAUDIBLE] again.
I went to see Given again in 2017.
And it was still as kind of insane and shocking
as the first time that I saw it.
So I encourage you, if you ever find yourself
in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to go check it out.
So this next series is actually from just about a year ago.
I was invited to be in a group show,
a three person show at a space called Parlor,
which is an artist run space.
And at the time, it was in a domestic space.
And started thinking about just this idea or this notion
of parlor games, parlor tricks, which
are this kind of Victorian kind of phenomenon.
And in thinking about it, started
looking up historic images of parlor tricks
and came across these.
They are kind of illustrations of how
to set up these magic tricks.
And I was really stunned by how they
were these incredible images of female confinement,
like the female body kind of cut off, fragmented,
hidden in some way.
And then, obviously started thinking
about magic tricks and entertainment and how there's
almost always like a female assistant who
is like a box and cut in half or having knives thrown at her.
So there's almost like this embedded misogyny
in the entertainment form of magic.
And actually, there are multiple names for this trick,
but one of them is disembodied princess,
which I just thought was kind of an incredible title
and also just such an incredible image of violence
aimed at a female body.
So this is a small series that I made
called Disembodied Princess.
And then I started also thinking about could there--
what would the feminist version of Parlor magic be?
And that led me to thinking about witches
and ritual and magic.
And so this is kind of an invented trick called Witch
in the Chamber.
And so there are lots of kind of more dark, ritualistic kinds
of images in this piece, a lot of textiles and fabrics.
Oftentimes in my work too, there are
lots of kinds of stains and things
that have some kind of history.
And that's actually the thing that I really
like about collage as a medium is that every fragment has
a history.
And there are sometimes I use fragments from images
of my performances or videos.
But most of the imagery that I use is found.
And I like that, because it's like the imagery
itself has a history.
And some of these images might be from Victorian times.
Some of them might be from a magazine from last month.
So I like kind of historically bringing these different modes
together.
A lot of times, too, I'll work all in black and white,
which I feel like that getting rid of color kind of
makes it more timeless, that it's not really clear what
period the image has come from.
Also, I think sometimes feels more interior or more
reflective as opposed to something that has color in it.
So this next series is also from this past year.
And this is called Sympathetic Magic.
And so I was still thinking about ritual, magic,
witchcraft.
And I came across some information
about these objects called curse tablets that
were Greco-Roman form.
And they were very thin pieces of metal
where a spell would be scratched into the metal.
And a lot of times it would be rolled up and then punctured
and then buried.
And a lot of times these spells were binding spells
or protective spells.
And so once again, I was still thinking about Me Too
and female anger, female rage.
And then just also thinking about how many women I know.
Pretty much every woman I know has been somehow affected
by some kind of sexual harassment from the most
kind of benign catcalling to forms that are really violent.
So for this particular piece, these are all very small.
They're 8 by 10.
And they're very-- there are lots of layered fragments
and scratching.
And the dots that you see are actually punctured paper.
And then there's also a text that's embedded in this.
And it's backwards.
But the text just says "leave us alone."
And so this is like this kind of my spell for men
to stop harassing women, or for men to leave women alone.
And then this is the last series that I wanted to talk about.
And this is just from a few months ago.
And this is a series that's called
Shadow Text, which is taken from a title of a Alejandra Pizarnik
poem.
And she was an Argentinean poet who was in Paris in the 60s
and did interact with some surrealists
and used a lot of surrealist images in her work.
And this project is really thinking
about women surrealists.
And women surrealist have been really important to me
and really influential.
And I think their work is very different than work that
was made by male surrealists.
And I think if you ever see images
of like the history of surrealism,
it'll be like a photograph with like a dozen dudes in it
like wearing suits.
And maybe there's one woman in the background.
But women do not really feature much
in the history of surrealism.
But there were many, many women who were making work,
and many of them very prolific.
Some of them were partners to some of the more famous
male surrealists.
I personally am always really more interested
in the imagery that was made by women surrealists.
I think a lot of times the male imagery,
even though it was very obsessed by the female body,
is almost the female body as a metaphor or woman as muse,
hysteric as muse.
But there wasn't really--
I think it's kind of like that traditional-- it's
like a man's vision of what a woman's experience is.
And so with the women surrealists,
I feel like their work is much more complex and interior
and much more about the subconscious.
So there are many, many female surrealists who
have been inspirational to me.
And the women who are included in this particular project
are Unica Zurn, Leonora Carrington, Maya Deren,
[INAUDIBLE],, Gertrude Abercrombie, and Claude Cahun.
And when I was working on this piece, I decided--
because books have been so important to me--
to actually include some images of books.
So there are some images that have book forms in them.
So on the left, there's actually an image
of a book that has Leonora--
like a monograph on Leonara Carrington
that I've collaged over and next to.
So some of her imagery still appears.
And then there are also many images
of the landscape, animals, like this kind of symbolism
that I find in a lot of-- or that I respond to
in female surrealism.
And then on the left, there's actually--
it was like a exhibition invitation for Unica Zurn.
And that's the thing to note, too.
Many times, these artists had careers during their lifetime
that they showed.
And people knew about their work,
but they have not necessarily been preserved.
So a lot of times, we have to kind of rediscover them.
And there are definitely some women
too where it's like I'll start researching them.
And there's like one paragraph, and that's it.
And you find the same one paragraph over and over again.
So there are definitely some dead ends
and some women who were not really preserved at all.
And on the right hand side is the image
of the back of this antique frame.
And I came across one of these images of a frame
and thought it was really beautiful texture-wise.
But I also thought it was this kind of amazing metaphor
for that with these women artists,
you're not seeing their work.
You're just seeing the back of this.
There's like this blankness.
Like you can't see the other side.
And then I started searching those kinds of images
and found the whole collection of those
with just the backs of antique frames.
And then I also started--
in this one, there's a little bit
of that milk stain from the performance
that I showed at the very beginning.
So kind of also putting fragments of my own
work into this, kind of putting myself
into this history of women.
And so this is--
I just wanted to end with this quote
by Lidia Yuknavitch who several years ago wrote
a book about Ida Brower, who was called Dora by Freud.
She was one of his famous patients.
And he wrote a case history about her.
And she was a teenage girl.
And of course, everything that Freud wrote, his analysis,
was through his perspective, his narrative.
And so when Yuknavitch wrote this book,
she reconceived her narrative as if Dora was telling it
and made it in contemporary times.
So she's converting this into a female narrative.
And it's very much about just the experience
of being a teenage girl and that this misunderstanding,
and especially misunderstanding by male culture,
and what a teenage girl might be experiencing.
And this is actually the very last paragraph in the book.
And she just says, next time you work with a female,
ask her which city her body is.
Or ocean.
Give her poetry books written by women.
Like Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton
and H.D. and Adrienne Rich and Mary Oliver
and Emily Dickinson.
Let her draw or paint or sing a self before.
You.
Say.
A. Word.
So really just kind of making this
call for culture to have more female voices in it.
And I think really Yuknavitch in her work calls
for just voices that are not white male voices.
Because so much of our culture has been dominated by those
voices.
And so I think we need more female narratives
from history and from now.
Thank you so much, Cindy.
What a beautiful presentation.
We appreciate it.
If you would like to ask Cindy a question,
you're welcome to unmute yourself.
And equally, if you'd prefer to put it in the chat,
Andy or I could certainly ask that, verbalize your question.
OK, so I think I'll start.
So I thought it was interesting that most of your collage
series--
well, they're all in series, right?
They're all developed as series.
They are now.
I mean, and I don't know--
it feels unnatural for me to make something--
I mean, and some series are smaller than others.
There might be some-- but probably
the smallest it ever is now is like a triptych.
And sometimes those pieces don't really feel complete to me.
I feel like everything now is in the form of series.
Well, I think it's interesting--
I mean, you spoke about this a little bit--
the fact that most of the clashes are small in stature.
Of course, you're creating series.
And so in one case, 50--
55 images, and so collectively, it
actually does become this large piece.
And so you know just hearing you talk about your work,
I don't know if you could speak a little more about that.
To me, it feels like a metaphor for these narratives.
Yeah, I mean, and I think, too, it's
like what I like about the individual pieces is
that it is--
and some of them do become sizable
because of how many parts are in the piece.
But still, there's something important about the fragment,
that each piece is a fragment, that there is a gap in between.
So it's like the narrative is not continuous.
There are these moments of quiet or break in the narrative.
Just also thinking about the reliance of the piece
to the whole, which I think is a really different gesture
than having like one continuous surface.
And the other thing to think about too, a few years ago,
I had a friend who's known my work for a long time,
said that she thought all of my works were books.
And I think there is a way you could think about that too,
that there is the paperness about them.
And it's like they're almost like pages that
have been taken out of a book.
So I like thinking about that too.
Like if you were to take something
that was sequential or something that
was a single object like a book and broke it apart.
So I feel like there's a textual kind of aspect to the piece
that I think is really different than if you
have one giant page versus if you have 55 small pages.
This one from Sarah Ellen Fowler.
Could you speak to the directionality
of hauntings that happened in your work
from the research and reading process
to the active collage making of cutting and pasting
to the gestures in your performances?
Yeah, I mean, I feel like there's definitely--
whenever I say even like research,
I kind of use that term loosely.
Because it's more like I'm just constantly taking things in.
And sometimes, this research is reading.
And I think a lot of times I do like things.
Like right now, I'm reading someone's graduate thesis
about Francesca Woodmen.
But what's actually happening is that I'm
connecting to all these texts about Gertrude Stein
and about the history of photography.
And so I feel like there's often this starting point.
And then I find things in a text that lead me to other texts.
I start googling images to look up something, and then find
something that's next to it.
I mean, I was always a big fan of actually going to libraries
and finding the book next to the book of what
you were looking for.
And so I still feel like some of that happens.
And so maybe that's a kind of hauntingness,
kind of coincidence of the thing you
find when you're looking for something else, which I think
is really important to my process.
I think a lot of times I need to set forth and then
be open to kind of what happens during the process.
So I think-- and I think, too, like once I
start working on a project, I still
keep taking new things in.
So it's not like there's a research phase and then
a making phase.
I feel like they're all completely intertwined
as they're happening.
Interesting.
If I could follow up on that, I was going to ask you actually,
I think you've answered it for the most part.
But I'm interested in the tools that you
use in your research phase.
I mean, I think you referred to many of them
from books to magazines to the internet--
Yes, I mean, the thing is true-- a lot
of times, one of the places that I look
for images is like on YouTube.
I mean, not on YouTube, on eBay, which
seems like a strange place.
But you can find piles of antique ribbons and lace.
And they're amateur photographs.
So there is this quality that they have that are different.
And if I make-- a lot of times I will make them black and white
or change the contrast or something.
But I like these kind of more kind of mundane images.
And then obviously, if I'm using imagery from fashion magazines,
that's got like a much slicker kind of quality.
And sometimes, too, like as I'm working,
I am not kind of person who keeps
all of my materials organized.
I actually have stacks of things.
And usually when I start working on a project,
I use a lot of-- like I print things out.
So that's why a lot of them--
I like matte surfaces a lot more than like shiny magazine.
Sometimes I use that, but I kind of prefer the matteness.
And also, it becomes more cohesive if everything's
kind of printed out.
And so I'll print a bunch of stuff out.
But then maybe I don't use it, and it
goes in a stack somewhere.
And as I'm working, I constantly have the new things.
And then I'm pulling from these older stacks.
And kind of like, what's in this box as I
start flipping through it.
And so in some ways, too, there is this looking through books,
looking through pages in my studio
when I'm looking through these archives of possible images
that could get into the work.
You actively participate in feminist film and reading
groups and have a number of collaborative long term
projects as a part of your practice.
Can you speak a bit more about why is it important
for you to create these collective experiences
or discussion groups?
Yeah, I mean, partially because I want them in my life.
It's sort of like is there a group of women
who are talking about--
or they're a group of people.
I mean, I think a lot of times we think about feminists--
and it definitely happens sometimes
like in feminist reading group or feminist film group
or whatever it may be that mostly women come.
There's no reason why men couldn't be there.
And there's no reason why men cannot consider themselves
to be feminist.
But many times it is just groups of women.
But I feel like because--
I feel like, especially like with the reading group,
there are so many women authors that I never knew about,
that I don't know about.
And as a group, we kind of bring forth various things to read.
And so I'm constantly getting introduced to new things.
And I think just even having a forum for people
to talk about women's narratives.
And I think obviously, we live in a time
where things are more equitable.
But really, if you even just look at like Hollywood movies,
it's like women's experiences are still
mostly mediated through male directors, male writers.
So there's still a lot to be--
a lot to be done in the future of women's
voices or even people of color.
People who are not white men, no offense to you.
But just like voices that--
or like just even having a person of color
mediate their own experience or display their own experience
and not having it mediated through these other people.
Having there be a multitude of voices.
Great.
No offense taken at all.
OK, good.
I really hope that even events like this
will help further that.
I think, too, it's like--
I think sometimes it's the kind of thing
where unless you think about it, you don't even realize.
I mean, obviously, like now, even thinking
about art history, when I was an art student,
the only women artist I learned about was Georgia O'Keeffe.
And I don't even think we talked about Frida until--
I don't think I knew about her until I was in grad school.
And like now, obviously, more women-- and I certainly,
in my classes, talk a lot more about women artists.
But it's still-- like if you look at the official art
historical tome, how many women are in there?
And still like if you look, like the work
that Guerilla Girls has done looking
at equity in art museums and galleries and stuff like,
that it's not 50-50 between like showing men's work and women's
work.
And I think it's that way probably
in almost any cultural realm, whether it's writing
or film or art that still the dominant voices are
male voices.
Can I asked a question?
Hey, Cindy.
Hey.
How are you?
So I've been thinking about your decisions
of cutting and assembling with college versus photomontage.
And I think that the cutting and assembling is--
and in relation to 19th century sort
of the doctrine of hysterics, you
are sort of coopting the physician's tools
with scissors, cutting.
But you're pasting it together from a feminist position
as opposed to a Freudian psychoanalyst, outside male,
patriarchal figure.
But then when you shift--
and one thing about the collages is they're small.
So they're intimate.
Even though it's a large, sort of gestalt grid,
it's still intimate moments with your stories.
And you have to get up close to it to see the seams
and how things came together.
But then when you shift to the photomontage,
it not only expands it to make it bigger,
but it removes that sense of the coopting, the operating tables
sort of feature of cutting.
So how do you feel about that?
And whether or not you would want to--
or like how can that, or does that disrupt this--
I mean, I think it's different.
I mean, and I think you're right.
I think for me too there's something
about that physical cut that's really important.
It's like a violence.
It's also itself a rupture, like breaking apart the thing that's
whole and fracturing it.
And I think, too, for me, it's definitely
in relationship to what I was talking
about earlier, like sewing and stitching,
which for me personally was my first introduction
to any kind of art process.
As my mom and my grandmother would sew and knit
do those kinds of things.
I grew up in rural Pennsylvania.
So I had never been to a museum probably
until I went to the Philadelphia Museum of Art at some point
when I was in art school.
So I think that very tactile process.
And I think, too, for me, like when I'm working,
I need that tactile like rifling through papers,
pulling things out.
And there's some of it that is almost
more like a cerebral experience where
I'm looking for something.
Some of it's very spontaneous.
Or I try to tap into that.
Like things aren't normally planned.
There's kind of like an essence.
That is something I'm trying to capture.
But the actual process of putting things together
is more open and spontaneous.
And I think whenever I started printing them larger,
what I like about that is they almost become
more cinematic in some ways, like they
take on a different presence.
And there is sometimes something interesting
that happens like when a small fracture gets blown up,
like you see it in a different way.
I don't like the surface as much perhaps.
And it does change the piece.
And in the last two years, I've also
been experimenting with printing on fabric
and sometimes sheer fabric so that they could possibly
be layered in some way.
And I think probably, too, it's like probably my inclination
would be like a show where you could have both kinds together.
So it's not like everything will be this printed photo surface,
or everything will be--
I kind of like what happens when they're
in dialogue with one another, these different kinds
of surfaces.
And then you could even go and cut into the fabric.
Yeah.
Yeah, I could.
Definitely.
I almost hate to ask this question.
It's so mundane.
Because your work, the content is so rich.
But this is more just a longevity question.
When working with materials that might not be archival,
how do you deal with that?
Like what kind of glues are you using?
And I mean, that's one of the advantages
of them photographing it is that you can at least--
or printing imagery out.
Sorry, I just wondered how you deal with those--
I mean, it's definitely-- like it's an issue.
But it's not-- it's not at--
like I use paper.
And I use like glue sticks.
And they're acid free glue sticks.
But I need that kind of quickness.
And it's just computer paper.
I mean, you can get nicer computer paper and crappier
computer paper.
So I do think like--
I usually scan them.
And that's the one thing that's nice about them being small,
or smallish.
I can usually scan them either in whole or as pieces.
So I do kind of think almost like as the preservation being
the image more than the paper pieces.
Or as the possibility, I don't know that--
and I'm not even sure what--
I don't know.
Like in the future, like if something got destroyed,
could the digital stand in for it?
I mean, I think, too, because of the way
things are right now, so much of my work,
I put it on my website.
I put it on Instagram.
So I feel like probably more people see my work
in that digital way, which is flattened,
than see it in person.
And I think, like all of us, we make so much
work that no one ever sees.
It's like you make a series, you post a picture.
But maybe you never show it in the world.
So I think sometimes it's almost like that trace image,
the image of the piece that people see more
than the actual work.
Yeah.
Thank you.
Anybody else?
Raise any hands?
OK.
Oh, Daniel.
Oh, hello.
I wrote it in the comments, but I just
wanted to compliment your realistic approach
to feminist ideologies and their history.
Because I do feel like a lot of the perspectives
aren't as fleshed out as they could be.
And that is because they're coming usually from men.
So I'd just like to thank you for your work and hope
that you keep advocating for.
Thank you.
I appreciate that.
Yeah, of course.
Thanks, Daniel.
Cindy, who are you reading, watching, listening
to that you would recommend?
Who should we be--
I mean, well, there's so much.
I feel like--
I mean one of my favorite writers is Anne Carson.
I definitely put her out as-- and maybe many of you
read her anyway.
Actually, one of my favorite things--
two of the favorite things I read last year,
one of them we read for a reading group
was Lisa Robertson's The Baudelaire
Fractal, which is a really wonderful narrative of a woman.
She's-- I think, she's like in her 60s, something like that.
But it's a kind of remembering of her experience of being
a young woman in Paris.
And it's almost like the [INAUDIBLE]
in the body of a woman.
And it's a really beautiful text.
So I love that book.
And then another book that I read that isn't--
I think it's a couple of years old, a book by Jenny Hval
called Paradise Rot, which is also
a kind of a story of a woman kind of traveling.
But it's a young woman who's in college.
And it's one of the more visceral, beautiful things
that I've read.
And I actually made some collages in response
to that book, because it was so visual, I felt.
So those are some books.
I would say something that I wanted
to mention if you don't all know about this
is there is a documentary that's actually made by a man called
Women Make Film.
But it's like this 14 hour--
I could put a link to this, Women Make Film.
Because I feel like the website they have is so great.
It's like 200 female directors that you've never heard of.
Well, some of them you've probably heard of.
But you may not have heard all of them.
And it's from like silent films up until contemporary times.
So it's like this incredible archive.
And then the other thing I wanted to mention,
which is not something that I'm reading,
but just wanted to mention in case people were interested.
There is a LA artist, Sydney Croskery
who's started this anthology called Under the Spell.
And what it is a collection of women artists
or women-identified artists writing about art.
And it's an open call.
So anybody can contribute to it.
And so I mean-- and so it's sort of like she
kind of has this effort of collecting women now.
And they could be curators, artists, and any anyone
who's related in the arts.
There's a lot more work on my website,
so if you're interested in checking that out.
And if you have questions or anything,
you can always just get in touch with me.
And I can answer any questions you might have.
Well, huge thanks to you, Cindy.
Thank you.
For your generosity and time today, yes, bravo.
We do have a quick favor.
Roman will also post a link to a quick survey.
We'd ask that you take a couple of minutes to do that.
It just helps us to evaluate our online programming
and plan for the future.
So we'd really appreciate that.
Thank you to all of you for carving out time in your day
to join us to hear from Cindy.
And again, huge thanks to you, Cindy.
Bravo.
You too.
And thanks, everyone, for being here.
I really appreciate it.
Thank you, everyone.
Take care.
Be safe.
Ciao.
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