Girl watcher
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Arizona Daily Wildcat
photo courtesy of Dinnerware Gallery
"Morning Room" by Reva Lehrer is currently on display at the Dinnerware Gallery.
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Among the creations at the Dinnerware Gallery is an instructional video that shows how to coat a woman's head in a thick layer of vanilla icing. The subject sits on a stool with a doily around her neck and slowly becomes a monument of white for the viewer to see - or not to see, as is the case, because after a while of sitting with icing on her head she disappears in front of the chalk background.
In this video, a poor woman is suffocated in sugary sweetness by a sterilized process. Unfortunately for her, she is adorned so richly that she fades into anonymity. This has happened to women before. Women do it to themselves. It's happening right now all around us - look at the make-up, see the clothes, the shoes, the purses, the jewelry, the accessories. It's all there. Women becoming art.
This is just one issue that the exhibit at the Dinnerware Gallery addresses. The exhibit, called Treatment: Women's Bodies in Medical Science and Art, concentrates on the artistic place of the female body in an increasingly medical world. Pieces in the show are not only methodical like the iced head - they reach each opposite extreme and get both clinical and surreal.
Artists like Claire Prussian illustrate a conflict between art and science over the female body. Just to show how serious she is, she has put a picture on the wall of a severed leg. This is no ordinary severed leg, however. An old lady holds it tenderly on her lap and puts a lovely coat of red nail polish on the toes while the inside of the leg shows off little cells and muscle fibers with bleeding veins.
Another woman dresses up like a rat in a video and gives mouth to mouth resuscitation to the head of a dummy. The idea is that the dummy head is an ideal woman, and the other one is a weird rat woman. The artist is supposed to be sending out a message about how women who are in competition for image can still help each other, and she tosses in a little message about the importance of laboratory rats in scientific endeavors. Personally, I never thought the two themes would cross until I saw the video with my own eyes.
The exhibit includes work from a number of female artists all covering a number of mediums. There are paintings here, and photographs, writing, videos, mixed media, sculptures, and a little album of nude photos detailing two large naked women up close and personal - there's a little something for everyone. And it's all fun and scary, just like we've always liked it.
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