Brainstormers

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Brainstormers
NationalityAmerican
Known forPerformance art, art criticism, video art
Movement Feminist art movement

The Brainstormers are a group of young American women artists whose performances mostly address gender inequity in the US art world. [1] [2] Consisting of fellow Hunter MFA graduates Danielle Mysliwiec, Elaine Kaufmann and Maria Dumlao, their most well-known work is one where they stood in costume, at the entrance of P.S.1 during the Greater New York show in 2005, pointing accusingly at the institution for its gender discrimination in its selection of artists. [3]

Contents

Work

Point, 2005

In 2005, fellow Hunter Master of Fine Arts graduates, Mysliwiec, Kaufmann, Dumlao, Anne Polashenski, Jane Johnston and four volunteers, stood outside P.S.1's entrance in a colorful curly wigs, their faces painted, pointing directly at the institution, for six hours. Point was a performance that called attention to the New York City exhibition's roster of artists being over two-thirds male at a time when the numbers of women in art programs exceeded that of men. [4] [5] The group drew on the earlier feminist art protest work of the Guerrilla Girls, with whom they have collaborated. [5] Polashenski and Johnston (the latter a co-founder of the group with Mysliwiec, Kaufmann and Dumlao) have since left the group. [6]

Other work

In 2005, the Brainstormers performed again, in a piece entitled How Good Are You? outside the entrance to the Armory Show, dressed in lab coats, handing out color-coded research about the levels of representation of women artists in Chelsea art galleries. [7] The following year, Dumlao, Kaufmann, Mysliwiec and Polashenski published a researched piece entitled "The Cutting Edge and the Corporate Agenda" in the international journal Women & Environments, for its women, art and community activism issue. [2]

In 2008, the group did a collaborative work with the Guerrilla Girls at the Bronx Museum of Art. [7] Kaufmann told Art News , "I think what is really important was that we were ... coming after the Guerrilla Girls, and we were still seeing the same kind of gender discrimination happening in our generation and felt compelled to do something." [5]

Also in 2008, the group stationed themselves at the corner of West 24th Street and 10th Avenue in Chelsea, and had passers-by fill in mad libs-style postcards protesting about the lack of female representation in art galleries. [7] In 2009, they exhibited at the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center in New York City. [8]

Philosophy and techniques

The Brainstormers use similar tactics to the Guerrilla Girls, such as agitprop theatre and shocking statistics. [9] For the group, the fault of institutional sexism does not lie with the institutions only. In 2006, they wrote,

"The responsibility for the perpetuation of this systemic form of discrimination falls on a rich network of dealers, curators, institutions, and even artists themselves. Each party denies any responsibility for bringing about change and instead tries to benefit from the status quo, their decisions guided by the bottom line." [2]

Of their work, Maria Dumlao has also said. "Our work and actions are meant to inform, excite and provoke people in a dialogue. We encourage them to act on their own terms." [10]

Members' other work

Dumlao is a member of the Philadelphia non-profit collective and art space Vox Populi. [11]

Mysliwiec is an assistant studio art professor at American University and on the board of the art blog, Art Fag City. [12]

Kaufmann has an ongoing interest in challenging the political structure of the art world and has pursued alternative venues including cable access television, activist public interventions, and the Internet. [13]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sexism</span> Prejudice or discrimination based on a persons sex or gender

Sexism is prejudice or discrimination based on one's sex or gender. Sexism can affect anyone, but it primarily affects women and girls. It has been linked to gender roles and stereotypes, and may include the belief that one sex or gender is intrinsically superior to another. Extreme sexism may foster misogyny, sexual harassment, rape, and other forms of sexual violence. Discrimination in this context is defined as discrimination toward people based on their gender identity or their gender or sex differences. A notable example of this is workplace inequality.

Guerrilla Girls is an anonymous group of feminist, female artists devoted to fighting sexism and racism within the art world. The group formed in New York City in 1985, born out of a picket against the Museum of Modern Art the previous year. The core of the group's work is bringing gender and racial inequality into focus within the greater arts community and society at large. The Guerrilla Girls employ culture jamming in the form of posters, books, billboards, lectures, interviews, public appearances and internet interventions to expose disparities, discrimination, and corruption. They also often use humor in their work to make their serious messages engaging. The Guerrilla Girls are known for their "guerrilla" tactics, hence their name, such as hanging up posters or staging surprise exhibitions. To remain anonymous, members don gorilla masks. To permit individual identities in interviews, they use pseudonyms that refer to deceased female artists such as Frida Kahlo, Käthe Kollwitz, and Alice Neel, as well as writers and activists, such as Gertrude Stein and Harriet Tubman. According to GG1, identities are concealed because issues matter more than individual identities, "Mainly, we wanted the focus to be on the issues, not on our personalities or our own work."

Reverse sexism is a controversial term for discrimination against men and boys or for anti-male prejudice.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Whitney Biennial</span> Art exhibition in New York

The Whitney Biennial is a biennial exhibition of contemporary American art, typically by young and lesser known artists, on display at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City, United States. The event began as an annual exhibition in 1932; the first biennial was in 1973. The Whitney show is generally regarded as one of the leading shows in the art world, often setting or leading trends in contemporary art. It helped bring artists like Georgia O'Keeffe, Jackson Pollock, and Jeff Koons to prominence.

Black feminism, also known as Afro-feminism chiefly outside the United States, is a branch of feminism that centers around women of color.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Feminist art movement in the United States</span> Promoting the study, creation, understanding, and promotion of womens art, began in 1970s

The feminist art movement in the United States began in the early 1970s and sought to promote the study, creation, understanding and promotion of women's art. First-generation feminist artists include Judy Chicago, Miriam Schapiro, Suzanne Lacy, Judith Bernstein, Sheila de Bretteville, Mary Beth Edelson, Carolee Schneeman, Rachel Rosenthal, and many other women. They were part of the Feminist art movement in the United States in the early 1970s to develop feminist writing and art. The movement spread quickly through museum protests in both New York and Los Angeles, via an early network called W.E.B. that disseminated news of feminist art activities from 1971 to 1973 in a nationally circulated newsletter, and at conferences such as the West Coast Women's Artists Conference held at California Institute of the Arts and the Conference of Women in the Visual Arts, at the Corcoran School of Art in Washington, D.C..

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Feminist art</span> Art that reflects womens lives and experiences

Feminist art is a category of art associated with the late 1960s and 1970s feminist movement. Feminist art highlights the societal and political differences women experience in their lives. The hopeful gain from this form of art is to bring a positive and understanding change to the world, in hope to lead to equality or liberation. Media used range from traditional art forms such as painting to more unorthodox methods such as performance art, conceptual art, body art, craftivism, video, film, and fiber art. Feminist art has served as an innovative driving force towards expanding the definition of art through the incorporation of new media and a new perspective.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mira Schor</span>

Mira Schor is an American artist, writer, editor, and educator, known for her contributions to critical discourse on the status of painting in contemporary art and culture as well as to feminist art history and criticism.

Internalized sexism takes the form of sexist behaviors and attitudes enacted by women toward themselves or other women and girls. On a larger scale, internalized sexism falls under the broad topic of internalized oppression, which "consists of oppressive practices that continue to make the rounds even when members of the oppressor group are not present." Internalized sexism can cause a wide range of effects, for instance problems with one’s mental health and body image. Modes of internalization of sexism include early childhood inculturation and consumption of media, while language can also moderate power imbalances between groups and perpetuate internalized sexism.

Networked feminism is a phenomenon that can be described as the online mobilization and coordination of feminists in response to sexist, misogynistic, racist, and other discriminatory acts against minority groups. This phenomenon covers all possible definitions of what feminist movements may entail, as there have been multiple waves of feminist movements and there is no central authority to control what the term "feminism" claims to be. While one may hold a different opinion from another on the definition of "feminism", all those who believe in these movements and ideologies share the same goal of dismantling the current patriarchal social structure, where men hold primary power and higher social privileges above all others. Networked feminism is not spearheaded by one singular women's group. Rather, it is the manifestation of feminists' ability to leverage the internet to make traditionally unrepresented voices and viewpoints heard. Networked feminism occurs when social network sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr are used as a catalyst in the promotion of feminist equality and in response to sexism. Users of these social media websites promote the advancement of feminism using tools such as viral Facebook groups and hashtags. These tools are used to push gender equality and call attention to those promoting anything otherwise. Online feminist work is a new engine of contemporary feminism. With the possibility of connecting and communicating all around the world through the Internet, no other form of activism in history has brought together and empowered so many people to take action on a singular issue.

Feminist Digital Humanities is a more recent development in the field of Digital Humanities, a project incorporating digital and computational methods as part of its research methodology. Feminist Digital Humanities has risen partly because of recent criticism of the propensity of Digital Humanities to further patriarchal or hegemonic discourses in the Academy. Women are rapidly dominating social media in order to educate people about feminist growth and contributions. Research proves the rapid growth of Feminist Digital Humanities started during the post-feminism era around from the 1980s to 1990s. Such feminists’ works provides examples through the text technology, social conditions of literature and rhetorical analysis. Feminist Digital Humanities is aimed to identify and explore women's sense of writing as well as to prove widespread of women's work in most of the digital archive.

Hip hop feminism is a sub-set of black feminism that centers on intersectional subject positions involving race and gender in a way that acknowledges the contradictions in being a black feminist, such as black women's enjoyment in hip hop music and culture, rather than simply focusing on the victimization of black women in hip hop culture due to interlocking systems of oppressions involving race, class, and gender.

tART Collective

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References

  1. Plant, Jeanine (April 4, 2007). "Breaking Out of the Art World's Sexism". AlterNet.
  2. 1 2 3 Dumlao, Kaufmann, Mysliwiec, and Polashenski (Fall–Winter 2006). "The Cutting Edge and the Corporate Agenda". Women & Environments (72/73).{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  3. "Artnet News:ARTISTS PROTEST "GREATER NEW YORK"". ArtNet. March 15, 2005.
    - Schor, Mira (2009). A Decade of Negative Thinking: Essays on Art, Politics, and Daily Life. Duke University Press. pp. 40–41. ISBN   978-0822391418 via Google Books.
    - Zimmer, Amy (March 14, 2005). "Protesters: P.S.1 Art Show Biased Against Women". Metro. pp. 1, 6.
  4. Davis, Ben (March 12, 2007). "White Walls, Glass Ceiling". Artnet.
  5. 1 2 3 Hoban, Phoebe (December 1, 2009). "The Feminist Evolution". ARTnews. Retrieved January 10, 2014.
  6. "Brainstormers" . Retrieved February 24, 2014.
  7. 1 2 3 Fry, Warren (November 10, 2008). "The Brainstormers". The Brooklyn Rail. Retrieved January 10, 2014.
  8. "Brainstormers Kindly Request That You Hand Over Your Balls". Art Fag City. July 30, 2009. Retrieved January 10, 2014.
  9. Schor, Mira (February 11, 2011). "A Feminist Tea Party". HuffPost. Retrieved March 21, 2014.
  10. McDonough, Yona Zeldis (August 2009). "On Being Brainstormers". NYFA Current.
  11. Vox Populi
  12. Art Fag City
    - Danielle Mysliwiec, American University
  13. "Elaine Kaufmann bio". www.elainekaufmann.net. Retrieved April 16, 2023.