1. Art & the Body: "Thus these apertures of ingestion and emission work to constitute the notion of the subject, of the individual body and ultimately the self. What is both inside and outside the body (feces, spittle, urine, menstrual blood, etc.) tends to become taboo because of its ambiguous and anomalous status." (What about babies?!!) Are these substances taboo also because they speak so clearly of our animal nature, that despite years of civilization and culture, nothing can dress up our basic biological functions?
2. Art & Identity: Nikki S. Lee is a Korean woman who remakes herself and then"infiltrates" certain groups of people (i.e. The Tourist Project, The Hip Hop Project, The Ohio Project, etc.). She moves fluidly between social and cultural groups. This provokes the question, how stable is identity? Is it just a social construct? Yet, as good as her disguises are, she can't escape her identification as a Korean woman. By always finding an "in" with a group, is Lee subverting her marginalized identity? Not only is she accepted by these groups, she's also the only one that knows her intentions. It's an empowering position, but does it also constitute a betrayal (especially in The Schoolgirls Project where she is essentially being duplicitous to under-aged girls)? Although interesting as a social experiment, do these one-dimensional representations of identity reinforce stereotypes?
3. Art & Identity: How do we define our identity? Why do we have to? Is Faith Ringgold a black artist or a woman artist or a black woman artist? Does she have to be any of those things? By defining our identity, are we categorizing ourselves to our detriment? Does highlighting identity art, art predominantly created by marginalized individuals, divide us? Or does highlighting our differences bring us together as humans and equals?
4. Art & Identity: Linda Nochlin writes, "Indeed, in our time of instant communication, "problems" are rapidly formulated to rationalize the bad conscience of those with power: the the problem posed by Americans in Vietnam and Cambodia is referred to by Americans as the 'East Asian Problem,' whereas East Asians may view it, more realistically, as the 'American Problem'; the so-called Poverty Problem might more directly be viewed as the 'Wealth Problem' by denizens of urban ghettos or rural wastelands; the same irony twists the White Problem into its opposite, a Black Problem; and the same inverse logic turns up in the formulation of our own present state of affairs as the 'Woman Problem.'" How does this relate to the idea of "otherness"? By using the term "other," are we presupposing an inverse, a "whole"? Is otherness a social construct?
5. Art & Identity: Since Nochlin's article "Why have there been no great women artists" was published in 1971, how have our institutions changed? Is the article still relevant today
(Where the Great Women Artists Are Now)? In my personal experience as a printmaker, studio art classes tend to skew more towards women than men. Is this a sign of a shift towards equilibrium? Or will those statistics falter faced with unyielding social institutions?
