Sarah Palin: How Post-Feminism turned into Pre-Feminism

Sarah Palin's Red Shoes

Sarah Palin’s much publicized fashion choices and, now, fashion budget make for an interesting argument about how the post-feminist look can be appropriated in ways which are antithetical to what the look was originally meant to portray. If we understand post-feminist fashion as a reappropriation of symbols of femininity—high-heels, form-fitting skirts and colors which have traditionally being coded as feminine—by a “sexually liberated woman,” we can see how the vice presidential hopeful has been sporting some tenants of that look against the grain, as she is campaigning on a platform critical of sexual liberation altogether.

Post-feminism is best exemplified (as media theorist Angela McRobbie has pointed out) by media representation of women, such as Sex and the City and the Bridget Jones’ Diaries. Ultimately, the fact that the Republican nominee is embracing at least some central elements of the look not only goes to show the popularity of such representations, it also stands as evidence that the longstanding criticism of post-feminism as reactionary might, in this case, be accurate.

Francesca

Frau Fiber, Knock Off Enterprises

UE Western Regional Council Building

"Frau Fiber, activist and textile worker, will mimic the expenditure of apparel production, reconstructing a white shirt and business suit originally produced offshore. A suit and shirt, the archetypal white-collar uniform, is an American icon, standing for quality, dependability and style, enhancing the wearer’s professional image.

The remade garments will be available for purchase in the storefront, priced on a geographical sliding scale (hours worked to make the reconstructed garment multiplied by the wage scale in the original garment’s country of manufacture—China, Guatemala, Taiwan—equals KO’s cost of the uniform)."

For detailed information on dates and locations, please visit Gallery 400

"Tescos’ White Collar Shirt, purchased for 4.50 euro; KO White Collar Shirt, assembled from recycled fancy dress."

Yeti on Leigh Bowery

Leigh Bowery outside his flat, 1993

Yeti—the Portland based journal—just published an interview I conducted with Nicola Bowery.

I had visited Nicola Bowery—wife of the late Leigh Bowery—in her Brighton, England home last summer, to interview her for my PhD thesis, a chunk of which revolves around Bowery’s extravagant costumes and performances from the ’80s and ’90s. My interest in Leigh Bowery had been spurred by Hilton Als’ New Yorker profile, which discussed Bowery’s varied “career” from fledging fashion designer to notorious club figure to performance artist—three strands of his practice which remain inextricably intertwined.

Nicola was extremely kind in taking the time to show me a number of her husband’s elaborate costumes which, having been painstakingly made to measure to Bowery’s large girt, appeared eerily empty—particularly as a complex systems of understructures kept them in shape, further highlighting Bowery’s absent body. Nicola also took the time to discuss her role as the slime-covered baby in the humorous, unsettling “birth scenes” which Bowery staged as part of his performances with his band Minty, from the early ’90s until his untimely death in 1995.

Francesca

Leigh Bowery, Ruined Clothes Exhibition, 1988

Blonde Tresses at the Park Avenue Armory

MK Guth, Ties of Protection and Safekeeping 2007-08.

The Park Avenue Armory portion of the Whitney Biennial just closed this past Sunday. In great part dedicated to the more ephemeral and time-based medium of performance art, it included the work of the Portland artist MK Guth. Previously New York–based and the founder of the Red Shoe Delivery Service (the art collaborative that Fashion Projects interviewed in the first issue), MK Guth contributed an interactive sculpture to the biennial show.

The piece started by asking viewers what they felt was worth protecting. The answers were then written on strips of red flannel and woven into an ever-growing braid made of artificial hair, which the audience braided together with the artist. The day I visited the Armory, the performance had come to a close and the braids draped the dark-lit wood paneled rooms of the Armory, where the performance had taken place. Yet some of the artificial hair was left in an adjacent room together with pieces of red felts—the remnants contributing to the melancholic and morbid feeling conveyed by the braided blonde tresses.

Francesca

Tamy Ben-Tor at Zach Feuer

The Israeli, New York-based, performance artist Tamy Ben-Tor is having her second solo show at the Zach Feuer Gallery in Chelsea. Concomitantly with the exhibition opening, the artist will perform a solo work-in-progress at the Kitchen on the evenings of March 28 and 29.

Titled "Judensau"—a historically-laden anti-semitic image dating back to the Middle Ages—the piece will continue Ben Tor’s exploration of different persona, which in her absurdist performance are meant to represent "embodiments of non-existing entities."

In Ben Tor's own words: "The characters I portray are not real. However they are specific. I don’t speak about politics; I use them to invoke feeling just as I speak in different languages in order to reach a nonsensical outcome. This is because it is only through the specific and descriptive that a tension with the abstract can be formed.”

For more information, visit Zach Feur Gallery and the Kitchen.