Artist Presentation:
Suzanne Lacy
“Suzanne Lacy is a visual artist whose prolific career includes performances, video and photographic installation, critical writing and public practices in communities. She is best known as one of the Los Angeles performance artists who became active in the Seventies and shaped and emergent art of social engagement.”
One of her performance pieces is the “Crystal Quilt.” This was a 2 or 3 year series of productions and she said represented the “visibility/invisibility and leadership capacity of older women.” This event happened in 1987 in a shopping mall. The mall had a glass roof and that is where part of the name came into play.
The performers would change the colors of the table clothes, change hand movements, and conversations on the present and future. She didn’t want women to been seen as holders of memories, but as activate members of our community and activists. The changing of the hands and colors of the tables with the floor made it a quilt and as if they were stitching it.
Lacy also displayed with piece within museums and had to find ways of incorporation the feeling, message, and to show what was happening. She would have the a quilt displayed, a video with the production, and dubbed over voices of some conversations of the women.
Another piece of her from 1977 is called “Three Weeks In May.” Lacy collaborated with Leslie Labowitz, Jill Soderholm, Melissa Hoffman and Barbara Cohen. There were a few different performances for this concept. The basic idea was formed around rape and violence around women. One idea within the three weeks, Lacy would go to the police department and obtain a rape report, the would stamp where the rape was located on a map. She would also write about this on the streets.
Another idea was to write out stories of women who have experienced sexual violence. Lacy wrote these on maps then displayed them. She also had a lamb caucus with wings and women in red grease-paint, perched above while naked, and stared below as people would read these stories.
Lacy wanted to be sure views felt uncomfortable and the pain of real experiences these women have had. Only four people could enter the space at a time. This was very interesting to me and probably intentional, but there are four walls for each visitor to trade off with, and then there are four perched women.
In 2012 she also did “Three Weeks In January: End Rape in Los Angeles. This shows Los Angeles forty years into the no rape movement.
Suzanne Lacy states “I don’t always work with political themes, but when I do I feel like it’s very important I apply a set of ethics for people whom the issues I am dealing with have great and sever consequence.” She enjoys to add performance art and intertwine activism. She says its not only about the social outcome but she enjoys the structure that they both provide.
I enjoyed the messages of her work but I am not sure I would be making the work she does, so I appreciate her pieces from a distance. I also notice she uses a lot of yellow, red and black colors in her work. Overall I am glad she is bringing light to social issues as topics of discussion through art.
-Hannah Welter
