ART-PRESENTATION: Mary Kelly-The Practical Past
Among the most influential feminist artists working today, Mary Kelly first came to prominence in 1976 with the “Post Partum Document” series, notorious for incorporating her baby’s dirty nappies. She creates large series of indexical works – drawings, images, text panels, photographs – which combine investigations into the diverse relations between psychoanalysis, feminism and art. Kelly often deploys prevailing literary or scientific genres, ranging from romantic fiction to psychoanalytical and medical diagnoses that define women as “other”. She subtly yet insistently turns them on their head with her own richly textured narratives and images.
By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Mitchell-Innes & Nash Gallery
Mary Kelly’s solo exhibition “The Practical Past” is a project-based work that considers the meaning of an era concurrent with the artist’s lifetime and deeply influenced by the events of 1968. The installation combines “Circa Trilogy” large-scale works that reference iconic representations of the historical past, with two series that focus on the more intimate and pragmatic politics of the everyday: “News from Home” and “7 Days”. The title of the exhibition is adopted from Hayden White’s book of the same name. The term is used to describe the way we consider the past from a utilitarian viewpoint separate from factual evidence. All of the works in the exhibition are made of compressed lint, a material Kelly has been working with for almost two decades. Individual units of compressed lint are cast in the filter screen of a domestic dryer over several months and hundreds of washing cycles, and then assembled as large panels of low relief. “Circa Trilogy” is compromised of: “Circa 1940” that reworks a commissioned news photo of London during the Blitz that shows three men reading books among the ruins of Holland House Library, obviously posed to capture a transcendent moment in the midst of chaos, while “Circa 1968” reflects on Jean-Pierre Rey’s famous photograph of Paris on the eve of the general strike. The Marianne figure hoists a flag in the manner of “Liberty Leading the People” but appears trapped by the role she tries to portray. “Circa 2011” draws on the prolific and often anonymous Internet images of the Arab Spring. Cell phone shots of Tahrir Square capture the euphoria of the moment in a way that resembles a strange constellation in the night sky. “News from Home” deals entirely with the practical past as a tactic for problem solving in everyday life. Personal letters from the artist’s archive, which have been recreated in compressed lint, encapsulate the lived experience of feminists in the early ‘70’s. “Beirut 1970” grapples with sexual politics, noting the difficulty of putting French philosophers Sartre and De Beauvoir’s critique of monogamy into practice. “London 1974” gives a fleeting glimpse of communal living. Conflicting messages (one from a mother and another from a child) invoke the chaos and excitement of women negotiating their commitment to activism with childcare, illness, accidents, and domesticity. In “Tucson 1972” the focus is on economic survival and alternative ways of living in the context of protests against the Nixon administration’s escalation of the war in Vietnam. The series “7 Days” were named after a weekly publication born out of the New Left and the Women’s Liberation Movement during the ‘70s from Oct. 1971 t0 May 1972. The covers of “7 Days” traverse a broad range of issues from the unionization of prisoners to unemployment, abortion rights, and the anti-apartheid struggle. During this time, Kelly contributed articles and illustrations to several issues. The inclusive overview of this publication is indicative of Kelly’s project overall and represents a forceful precedent for the intersectional feminism of today.
Info: Mitchell-Innes & Nash Gallery, 534 West 26 Street, New York, Duration: 19/10-22/11/17, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, www.miandn.com
