Home as setting for art:
Womanhouse, 1972
Essay by Natalie Musteata
performance, site-specific installation, and artist-curated exhibition that radically reimagined display within exhibition making. Staged in a seventy-five-years-old residence at 533 Mariposa Street, the month-long exhibition positioned the home as an active setting for art. Eschewing the white cube for a domestic interior, it reclaimed and championed materials, tools, techniques, and subjects traditionally associated with domestic spaces. As Musteata (2017) notes ‘personal content was prioritised over formalist concerns, situating the exhibition outside the framework of an institution and inside of a home.’
I was particularly drawn to how Womanhouse (1972), championed deeply personal content, trail blazingly expanded the inclusion of materials within fine art contexts, and critically considered the curation and placement of works in relation to their content. Menstruation bathroom (1972) by Judy Chicago, for example, occupied a bathroom with tampons and hygienic products; performances like Cock and Cunt (1972) took place nightly in the living room; and Lea’s Room (1972) by Karen LeCoq and Nancy Youdelman transformed a bedroom through makeup and performance. For me, this merging of concept, material, and placement positions the domestic as an active contributor to artistic explorations.
Similarly, in my practice, personal content and domestic reflections take on tangible form, through scents, tactile encounters, materials, and the objects represented in my work. My attempt to recreate encounters and experiences results in the merger of elements with domestic display strategies, as can be seen through my sculptural creation of tables and seats; functional forms reimagined as vessels of memory and aesthetic expression. A further expansion of this concept into special considerations is planned, with me exhibiting my work at the Safehouse Peckham in the future. I want to explore how memory, vulnerability, and fragments of the domestic can enter into dialogue with spaces beyond the white cube, spaces that feel more familial to them. This merging of place, space, work, and curation will form my next project after completing my MA.
Judy Chicago, Menstruation Bathroom, 1972. Shelf stacked with Tampax, Kotex and other hygienic products, red satin tampons, trash bin, Installation view at Womanhouse, 1972.
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