curative projects better living through art
February 6, 2008
WE INTERRUPT YOUR PROGRAM
Mills College Art Museum, Oakland By Anuradha Vikram
Guest curator Marcia Tanner brings her expertise in the areas of feminist and technology-savvy art to the Mills College Art Museum in an excellent group show featuring 14 artists. Mills is a women’s undergraduate college with a mixed-gender graduate program, and part of its museum’s mission is to support women artists and curators with its programs. Tanner is a top-notch curator of new media art, and the two common pitfalls of that genre – techie work with weak artistic content, and gimmicky work that pulls its punches – are absent here.
The politics of the exhibition are pronounced without being shrill or strident. These artists apply a feminist sensibility to a 21st century context, assuming that women have professional and personal autonomy and choice, while asserting that feminist consciousness remains a necessity even in the face of some progress.
For example, Gail Wight’s installation, The Meaning of Miniscule, turns a feminist lens on the sciences, where women are admitted provided that they subdue their femininity and adhere to a rationalist agenda proscribed by that field’s mostly male gatekeepers. Lest I paint too severe a picture, this installation is also great fun, consisting of an oversized microscope with a video “slide” that the viewer can control using the knobs on the scope’s stem. One knob sorts through historical renderings of microbial organisms, while the opposite one generates sound bytes of knowledgeable-sounding science show hosts spouting empty yet authoritative pronouncements. A sequence of photo prints of shattered test tubes add an element of chance, further supporting Wight’s riff on the pomposity of scientific certainty.