Episode 447: Andrea Bowers

by | Mar 24, 2014 | Podcast


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This week: This week, our resident feminist commentator Patricia Maloney sits down with one of her heroes, the Los Angeles–based artist Andrea Bowers to talk about her solo exhibition, Andrea Bowers: #sweetjane, on view through April 13, 2014 at the Pitzer College Art Galleries and Pomona College Museum of Art in Southern California. #sweetjane explores the Steubenville, Ohio, rape case and the social media–driven activism that brought the young men responsible to trial in two distinct ways. At Pitzer is a 70-foot long drawing of the text messages sent between the teenagers in the 48 hours following the assault on the young woman who is known in the media and throughout the trial as Jane Doe. At Pomona is a video installation comprised of appropriated media footage and billboard-size photographs of disguised Anonymous protestors at the trial. Taken together, the installations create an incredibly damning document, not only of the events and of the young men, who were depicted sympathetically by the media, but also of the significant tolerance in this country around sexual assault. Bowers’ activities in creating this work reflect the fluidity between art and activism that is a hallmark of her practice, as well as her belief that art can bear witness to the individual gestures and commitments that collectively enact significant social change.

An abridged text version of this conversation will be published by our friends at Art Practical on March 27, 2014.

Andrea Bowers received her MFA at the California Institute of the Arts in 1992. Solo exhibitions include: Secession, Vienna, Austria; REDCAT, Los Angeles, CA; and the Santa Monica Museum of Art, Santa Monica, CA. Her work has been included in exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY; Sammlung Goetz, Seedamm Kulturzentrum, Switzerland; Kunsthalle Basel, Switzerland; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA; New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, NY; Frankfurter Kunstverein, Frankfurt, Germany; Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst; Armand Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA; Kunstmuseum Bonn, Bonn, Germany; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL.

http://www.pomona.edu/museum/exhibitions/2014/ps48-andrea-bowers/index.aspx

http://www.artpractical.com

Christopher Hudgens
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