Intentos de escapada / Escape Attempts

A.- Well, I'd wait until their own experience led them to understanding more about feminism. That same thing used to happen in the early days of the movement. Young women would say, "This has nothing to do with me, I have none of those problems." Then they would go out into the world and find that they did, indeed, have those problems. Also I think younger women can reinvent feminism, it can always be reinvented and it should be, in fact.

Q.- How has the art created by women with a feminist inclination changed as regards the explosion of the sixties and seventies, in terms of the issues and strategies used back then?

A.- At the beginning there were so many things that had never been expressed by women, that everything was very raw. Now it might not look that obvious, but back then it had never been tackled before and it was very exciting to say these things. Now I think it's far more subtle, more complicated. It's a more "threatening" time to be a feminist now. One reason people don't want to be feminists now is because we are experiencing a very repressive time in the United States, and anybody speaking out is likely to get in trouble.

Q.- Do you think feminist artists are still considered something exotic or anecdotal?

A.- No, not really no, but that's not all good. I think feminists have been women artists. There are two things, one thing is feminism and another are female artists. Women artists have made it into the art world and a few of them are feminists. The bad things is that once they get into the art world they're absorbed into the environment. Nowadays nobody thinks of Barbara Kruger or Jenny Holzer as feminist artists. They are both strong women, and Jenny was pretty much of a feminist, although it didn't turn up in her art much. After the seventies, women began to just take their place in the art world.

Q.- Does that mean that the debate on such a controversial issue as feminine art has come to an end? Has it come to an end, has it been solved or does nobody enter that debate anymore? Is it still necessary?

A.- Gender is still a major issue, but it has become much more complicated. It's not just women now. The queer theory, the whole gay and lesbian issue, has provided a very positive transition between genders. I think people are less interested in what could be called "feminine art," because it is more layered and more complicated. That's good. When we were first doing that art, it was because it was completely new. I think women understood a good part of what we did, and went on to do other things, to take it a step further. It's not a matter of biology and ruffles and pink anymore. Nevertheless, whenever I hear someone talk about "post-feminism" I get very angry, because some issues are still there, they haven't been solved.

Q.- In 1970, you took part in the action waged by the Ad Hoc Women Artists Committee (a branch of the Art Workers Coalition ( awc ), against the Whitney Museum. The Committee published a fake advert for the Whitney Museum in the press, stating that fifty percent of the works displayed at the venue's annual exhibition (which led to the famous Whitney Biennial in 1973) would have been created by women. Fake invitations for the exhibition were also made and slides of women were shown on the walls of the museum. Every weekend, you repeated whistling and sit-down protests, leaving eggs and tampons in the corners. Thanks to the Committee's actions, the Whitney Museum increased women's participation in that event four-fold. Can you think of any spectacular actions that could be carried out nowadays?

A.- The protests we did then would appear very old-fashioned now, but there must be new ways... Maybe everything has to be digital! In the early nineties, the Women's Action Coalition organised drum calls and made a big stir when they went any place to demonstrate. A lot of noise and good rhythms! Everybody paid attention to them. Susan Lacy, in the performances she devised specifically for the media, [ In Mourning and in Rage , 1977] created as chapters dedicated to feminist issues, used really tall women, wearing a mask and a stick covered with a black cloth. The image was not just a woman in black; it was a seven-foot woman in black. We used this image in several demonstrations in Colorado, and we had a terrible wail, an Irish keening, that made a terrible noise. We would turn up like that, seven feet tall, in black, with masks, and then we would do this awful wail... We were on the cover of the newspaper twice, two different years.

Q.- Are peripheral cultures currently experiencing the same situation women went through in the sixties and seventies?

A.- Definitely. In the past 20 years, global artists, from countries like Africa and China, have been taking their places in the western art world, even though the dominant cultures sift everything out before letting them in. The same occurred with feminism, since not all the feminist artists got in, just like not all the African artists get in. It's the power that decides who gets in and who doesn't, so it remains a colonial situation.

Q.- In the preface you wrote to the book Contemporary Women Artists (1999), a collection of over 350 female artists, you recall how, in the early stages of the feminist movement, many women thought that in a decade women artists would shed that denomination and would simply be considered "artists"...

A.- I also thought that in ten years we would change the world... and that was thirty years ago! Nevertheless, we did change some things.

Q.- What effects have your effort to make the dominant system aware of alternative art and your political commitment produced?

A.- I think a lot of things have become far more acceptable within the system, so we succeeded. Artists succeeded in opening what the art world would accept; we have expanded the definition of "art" ("we" being everybody who has done anything). At the same time, we have become aware that we live in a capitalist system, that the walls are there and that it is very difficult to get those walls down. Now there is more coming and going out of the walls, but the walls themselves are very strong.

Q.- So you are an optimist then?

A.- I'll quote Antonio Gramsci, who says, "Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will". At the moment it's hard to be an optimist in the United States. We are living alarming times; there is a serious wave of conservatism in the air, and a lot of censorship. September 11 th has been used by the conservative forces to create a kind of society of fear.

Q.- In 1993, you decided to leave New York and set up in Galisteo, a little town with 265 inhabitants in New México, leaving the art world behind.

A.- I lived in New York for most of my life and I was ready to be outdoors more. My activist community in New York had fallen apart and I taught for half a year in the West and liked the area. My grand parents and great-grand parents were from the West, so I sort of felt at home there. I thought I would live there the rest of my life. It was not a decision though, I never make decisions. It's just another chapter in my life.

Q.- You spent the first two years there without electricity, using a kerosene lamp to read... Did you think of it like returning to nature, to the wild, like in Henry D. Thoreau's Walden or Life in the Woods ?