Andrea Fraser Considers the Role of Artists and Institutions in the Rise of Right-Wing Populism

March 5, 2018

Art department professor and chair Andrea Fraser’s work has been identified with performance, video, project-based art, context art, and institutional critique. Surveys of her work have been presented at major institutions worldwide and her essays and performance texts have consistently appeared in important publications. Fraser was a founding member of the feminist performance group, The V-Girls (1986-1996); the project-based artist initiative Parasite (1997-1998); and the cooperative art gallery Orchard (2005-2008). She was also co-organizer, with Helmut Draxler, of Services, a “working-group exhibition” that toured to eight venues in Europe and the United States between 1994 and 2001.

"Throughout her 30-year career, performance artist Andrea Fraser has engaged in wide-ranging institutional critique, challenging the very structures that make her work possible. Notable pieces include “Museum Highlights: A Gallery Talk” (1989) in which Fraser played the role of a tour guide at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, offering a satirical and exaggerated version of a docent’s talk; and “Little Frank and his Carp” (2001), a surreptitious video depicting Fraser erotically rubbing her body against a column in the Frank Gehry-designed Guggenheim Bilbao, in response to an audio guide’s suggestion to touch the building’s “sensual” curves.

This Sunday, the ICA LA will be hosting a lecture given by Fraser titled “Toward a Reflexive Resistance,” which follows from her recently published essay in the quarterly art journal X-TRA. Eschewing the divisive polarization that has characterized much contemporary political discourse, Fraser aims to examine the role that left-leaning artists and institutions may have played in contributing to the “success of right-wing populism.”

When: Sunday, March 11, 3–5pm
Where: Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (ICALA) (1717 E. 7th Street, Downtown, Los Angeles,)

— Matt Stromberg, Mar. 5, 2018

This post is an excerpt, read the full article at the Hyperallergic website.

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