Hannah Wilke was a mixed media artist active from the 1960s through the early 1990s. She worked with photography, video, sculpture, drawing, and painting. In this series, Starification Object Series, Wilke photographs herself in various, popular pinup poses. She purposely chooses these poses to call attention to the culture of the "male gaze."(4) She disrupts the image of the beautiful, seductive female existing for the sole purpose of male identification and fantasy by placing tiny pieces of chewing gum all over her body, which are molded in the shape of tiny vaginas. These tiny sculptures are humorous but telling; they speak to the way women are "chewed up," consumed, and exploited. Wilke was criticized for narcissism and embracing the male gaze rather than criticizing it. Chris Kraus writes at length on Wilke's work in her novel "I Love Dick" (1997)
"Why does everybody think that women are debasing themselves when we expose the conditions of our own debasement? Why do women always have to come off clean?... Hannah was never afraid to be undignified, to trash herself, to call a cunt a cunt...
Like every other work of art, Hannah became a piece of roadkill for the artpress jackass. Torn literally apart. Her naked body straddling interpretations of the hippe-men who saw her as an avatar of sexual liberation and hostile feminists like Lucy Lippard who saw any female self-display as patriarchal putty.
From the very start, art critics saw Hannah's willingness to use her body in her work as an act of 'narcissims'... As if the only possible reason for a woman to publically reveal herself could be self-therapeutic. As if the point was not to reveal the circumstances of one's own objectification. As if Hannah Wilke was not brilliantly feeding back her audience's prejudice and fear, inviting them to join her for a naked lunch.
Of course Hannah Wilke did become a monster. Female monsters take things as personally as they really are. They study facts. Even if rejection makes them feel like the girl who's not invited to the party, they have to understand the reason why...Monstrosity: the self as machine. The Blob, mindlessly swallowing and engorging, rolling down the supermarket aisle absorbing pancake mix and jello and everyone in town. Unwise and unstoppable." (5)
Wilke deliberately makes herself into the abject. She calls out the way women are debased in our culture by debasing herself in her work. In a video piece called Intercourse With... (1977), she uses answering-machine messages left by her boyfriends and family. By Baring her soul, the ugly parts of her life and the horror of the female body, Wilke creates a powerful narrative about female sexuality and private life.
"I want to throw back to the audience everything the world throws at me." (Penny Arcade, 1982)
"Gum has a shape before you chew it. But when it comes out, it comes out as real garbage. In this society we use people up the way we use up chewing gum." (1977)
"Why does everybody think that women are debasing themselves when we expose the conditions of our own debasement? Why do women always have to come off clean?... Hannah was never afraid to be undignified, to trash herself, to call a cunt a cunt...
Like every other work of art, Hannah became a piece of roadkill for the artpress jackass. Torn literally apart. Her naked body straddling interpretations of the hippe-men who saw her as an avatar of sexual liberation and hostile feminists like Lucy Lippard who saw any female self-display as patriarchal putty.
From the very start, art critics saw Hannah's willingness to use her body in her work as an act of 'narcissims'... As if the only possible reason for a woman to publically reveal herself could be self-therapeutic. As if the point was not to reveal the circumstances of one's own objectification. As if Hannah Wilke was not brilliantly feeding back her audience's prejudice and fear, inviting them to join her for a naked lunch.
Of course Hannah Wilke did become a monster. Female monsters take things as personally as they really are. They study facts. Even if rejection makes them feel like the girl who's not invited to the party, they have to understand the reason why...Monstrosity: the self as machine. The Blob, mindlessly swallowing and engorging, rolling down the supermarket aisle absorbing pancake mix and jello and everyone in town. Unwise and unstoppable." (5)
Wilke deliberately makes herself into the abject. She calls out the way women are debased in our culture by debasing herself in her work. In a video piece called Intercourse With... (1977), she uses answering-machine messages left by her boyfriends and family. By Baring her soul, the ugly parts of her life and the horror of the female body, Wilke creates a powerful narrative about female sexuality and private life.
"I want to throw back to the audience everything the world throws at me." (Penny Arcade, 1982)
"Gum has a shape before you chew it. But when it comes out, it comes out as real garbage. In this society we use people up the way we use up chewing gum." (1977)