Marcelle Joseph Projects is pleased to present Material Girls and their Muses, an exhibition featuring the work of four female artists and their chosen muses.
'Curious, I thought. This discussion of the male artist, female muses and inspirational intercourse. In this modern day.
Indeed, there is a whiff of the 'kitchen studio' in the artistic practices of this quartet, though I am reluctant to stress it. These artists, all women - does it matter? - have all employed domestic-led materials and processes.
There's a kind of ecstatic orgy of domestic appropriation going on which is great, but in some instances it seems hollowed out and cannibalistic. As with any reaction to life, the best art is ahead of the game, it simultaneously interrogates and flows back. I really must apply Foucault's notion of practices of the self which is especially relevant to contemporary feminist practices, especially consciousness raising and autobiography. And so I come to realise, enhanced with the situational juxtaposition of these four artists and their muses, that the connection between self-transformation and social transformation that Foucault theorizes as the connection between subjectivity and institutional and social norms is entirely crucial for contemporary feminist theory and politics, and at their most plaintive; THESE WORKS.
If these artists were in the pulpit, their muses in the choir, I would totes be at church every Sunday morning.' - text by Aindrea Emelife
