Hammer Projects: Andrea Fraser
Since the 1980s, UCLA Department of Art Professor and Chair Andrea Fraser has achieved renown for performances that interrogate social structures with humor and pathos, aligning herself with feminism and institutional critique. While Fraser’s video and performance works are often associated with investigations of art institutions, her performances since the early 2000s evidence a turn toward analyzing how broader sociopolitical structures condition the personal. Representative of this turn is Men on the Line: Men Committed to Feminism, KPFK, 1972 (2012), a video installation that will be on view at the Hammer. For this work Fraser edited a little-known Pacifica Radio archival recording of four men articulating their affinities with and support for feminism and women’s rights. Fraser performs this group discussion as a one-woman show, a move that complicates the institution of gender through dramatic acting and discursive production. This slippage in and out of personas finds Fraser highlighting how socially defined identities shape the enactment of our politics.
In conjunction with the video installation, the Hammer will premiere a new performance by Fraser in the museum's Billy Wilder Theater exploring the political and cultural polarization of American society.
The Hammer currently owns six of Fraser’s single-channel video works as part of the Hammer Contemporary Collection. Coinciding with the exhibition is the release of Andrea Fraser: Collected Interviews, 1990–2018, a publication coedited by the art historian Rhea Anastas and the artist Alejandro Cesarco and published by A.R.T. Press. The publication presents the artist’s voice in dialogue with interlocutors ranging from professional peers to journalists from the popular media and contextualizes Fraser’s practice in the artistic, institutional, and discursive fields in which she intervenes.
Hammer Projects: Andrea Fraser is organized by Connie Butler, chief curator, with Ikechukwu Onyewuenyi, curatorial assistant.
This event is presented by the Hammer Museum at UCLA.
Exhibition Dates: May 18–Sep. 15
Venue: Hammer Museum
Gallery Hours: Tuesday–Friday: 11 a.m.–8 p.m., Saturday-Sunday: 11 a.m.–5 p.m.
Price: Free
The Hammer is located at the corner of Westwood and Wilshire boulevards in Westwood Village, three blocks east of the 405 freeway’s Wilshire exit.
Parking is available under the museum.
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