January 19–February 25, 2018
Ann Arbor District Library (343 S 5th Ave., Ann Arbor)
201 S. Division St.
Ann Arbor, Michigan
USA
The Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design at the University of Michigan presents Suzy Lake, on view at the Stamps Gallery Friday, January 19 to Sunday, February 25, 2018.
Suzy Lake is a pioneer of the feminist art movement. Lake made her mark as one of the first artists in Canada to combine performance, video, and photography in order to examine the politics of gender, the body, and identity. Her critique of the male gaze and constructions of femininity have had a lasting impact on the discourse and narratives of performance photography. Working as early as 1968-1969, Lake influenced many of her contemporaries including renowned artists such as Cindy Sherman, Martha Wilson, and Mary Beth Edelson to name a few. Lake’s hyphenated identity as an American-Canadian woman artist working in performance photography meant that for decades her contributions remained in the periphery of the art world. It is only in the last decade that her work is being fully recognized and acknowledged through exhibitions such as 2005 Venice Biennale, WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution (LA MOCA and tour, 2007-2008), Global Feminisms (2007), and her major retrospective, Introducing Suzy Lake (Art Gallery of Ontario, 2014).
The exhibition Suzy Lake brings together two major bodies of work from the last decade in which she encounters various sites of personal and ancestral significance: Performing an Archive and Extended Breathing.
On the significance of this exhibition, Stamps Gallery Director Srimoyee Mitra stated: “Suzy Lake is a pioneer of the feminist art movement. Her critique of the male gaze and constructions of femininity have had a lasting impact on the discourse and narratives of performance photography. We are thrilled to bring her work to the Stamps Gallery and to Michigan, where she grew up, for the first time. For decades, Lake has produced large bodies of work and this exhibition is one way to pay tribute to her contribution to the field.”
A full listing of winter 2018 Stamps Gallery exhibitions can be found at stamps.umich.edu/gallery.
