Julia Sherman "Here She Comes"
Recess
This event has ended.
Recess is pleased to present "Here She Comes," a collection of Sherman’s research in the form of photographs, videos, drawings performance, and remnants. These artifacts and new works resurface and continue conversations that began at the 1968 Miss America Beauty Pageant and the Women’s Liberation intervention that occurred during the ceremony. Sherman’s primary sources become raw material for inciting contemporary reflection on a shared history. Here, the events surrounding the 1968 Miss America Pageant are abstracted and collaged, misinterpreted and re-imagined. These composite gestures ask the viewer to consider how this historicized, yet little known, narrative of the Women’s Liberation Movement, and the history of the pageant, continue to be relevant as we look to define contemporary forms of resistance and appropriation.
Sherman initiated conversations with several 1968 Miss America candidates, collecting details about their talent show performances, personal recollections of the event, as well as their contemporary views on beauty pageants and the 1968 intervention. Her findings blurred a seemingly distinct social picket line, complicating notions of The Beauty Queen and The Activist alike. In addition to tracking several 1968 participants, Sherman researched spinoff pageants that formed in response to the iconic Miss America pageant, including Miss Akademia (Czech Pageant), Miss America (a drag pageant that was later sued for using that name), Miss Indian America, and Miss Black America (started in 1968 and still in production today).
Julia Sherman employs unwieldy and untraditional research methods, feminist theory, and her own personal anxieties to create a view of the contemporary and historicized beauty queen through the soft focus of forgotten resistance.
[Image: Studio audience on The Tyra Banks Show burning their “ill-fitting” bras, 2008]
Media
Schedule
from December 08, 2012 to December 21, 2012
Reception For The Artist on 2012-12-13 from 19:00 to 21:00