Martha Wilson

PROVENANCE: Courtesy of the Artist

Wilson’ work prods at social norms and mine the stereotypes and conventions that plague our everyday lives in an effort to propose new ways of looking at and thinking about gender politics, identity, and social values. Subtle humor has always permeated Wilson’s work, but we here see her taking a more overtly funny and lighter approach, inviting viewers to join her in laughing at the absurd reality of contemporary society.

Martha Wilson (b. 1947) Since the early 1970s, Wilson has created conceptually based performances, videos, and photo/text compositions that grapple with constructions and manifestations of feminism, identity, and the way we construct and present ourselves. Frequently taking herself as subject, Wilson creates transgressive, avant-garde works that address political and social issues, teasing out complexity and nuance by infusing her work with playful gestures and humorous juxtapositions. Presenting a new body of work, which draws a clear line to her work from the 70’s through today, her work and attitude has evolved from what Wilson describes as “the concerns of a young woman to having fun with being an old lady,” and sees her turning an eye to the way in which the public gaze projects social values onto women as they grow older. “I’m looking at age and the status of women,” Wilson says, “but we are still in the same absurd state that we were in in the 70s… This is my current response to the predicament that we find ourselves in when born female.” As Founding Director of Franklin Furnace Archive, Inc., Wilson was described by The New York Times critic Holland Cotter in 2008 as one of “the half-dozen most important people for art in downtown Manhattan in the 1970s.” In 2008, she had her first solo exhibition in New York at Mitchell Algus Gallery, Martha Wilson: Photo/Text Works, 1971-74. In 2009, Martha Wilson: Staging the Self traveled under the Independent Curators International; and in 2011, ICI published the Martha Wilson Sourcebook: 40 Years of Reconsidering Performance, Feminism, Alternative Spaces. Martha Wilson joined P.P.O.W Gallery in 2011 and mounted a solo exhibition, I have become my own worst fear, that September. Her second solo exhibition at P•P•O•W, Mona/Marcel/Marge, opened in October of 2015. The solo exhibition Martha Wilson: Staging the Journals opened at mfc – michele didier in September of 2018, and The Two Halves of Martha Wilson’s Brain at Kunstraum Niederosterreich opened in June of 2018.