Opening: THU 07 06 2018, 7.00pm

Duration: FRI 08 06 – SAT 28 07 2018

Curated by: Felicitas Thun Hohenstein

SIDE PROGRAMME

TUE 26 06 2018, 6:00 pm Curators Tour                 

THU 07 06 2018, 5:30 pm Martha Wilson in conversation with Carola Dertnig

SAT 09 06 2018, Workshop with Martha Wilson:

Martha Wilson is a guest at the Performatorium – Laboratory for a Contemporary Performative Practice

THU 05 07 2018, 5:00 pm, Guided Tour

THU 19 07 2018, 5:00 pm, Guided Tour

FRI 27 07 2018, Finissage and Curators Tour 

In 1976 Martha Wilson founded the seminal art space Franklin Furnace Archive, Inc. in New York, which has served as an internationally unique showcase for artist’s books and a site for performative art production since this time. Its archive counts amongst the most important reference points for performance history. 

Martha Wilson’s political engagement as an artist is expressed in a series of satirical performances, photo series, and films. The satirical format of these (staged) solo performances enabled Wilson to employ a wide array of presentation forms, including vocals, recitation, and her all-girl art punk band DISBAND.

The exhibition The Two Halves of Martha Wilson's Brain frames the productivity of her subversive, consequent approach and the reciprocities between her own artistic work and her collaborations as well as support for other female artists. With Franklin Furnace as a platform, this bred a viable network for feminist, societal, and aesthetic issues over the course of the past four decades. The exhibition juxtaposes select documents from the archive with a representative cross-section of the artist’s oeuvre and can certainly be read as a sublime cartography of the history of feminist performance art.