Lesbian artists celebrated in three new California exhibitions: ‘Long overdue’
Monica Majoli, Millie Wilson and Susan Silton gain visibility in LA after decades of queer women’s artistic erasure
TL;DR
- Three concurrent exhibitions in Los Angeles are providing significant institutional presence for lesbian artists Monica Majoli, Millie Wilson, and Susan Silton.
- These artists have worked for decades, often in isolation, challenging art historical canons and institutional definitions of lesbian identity.
- The exhibitions, including Monica Majoli: Countervision, Millie Wilson's The Museum of Lesbian Dreams, and Susan Silton's Diving into the Wreck, offer a response to decades of institutional oversight.
- Lesbian artists have historically faced challenges in art history due to their gender and the perceived specificity or political charge of their subject matter.
- The artists collectively resist mere visibility, instead aiming to expand and complicate institutional understandings of lesbian life and identity.
- Millie Wilson's The Museum of Lesbian Dreams, an imagined institution within her artwork, critiques the legitimizing power of 'museum' status.
- Susan Silton's work, particularly mutatis mutandis, explores the perception of lesbianism as mutant, a necessary anomaly for survival.
- The current recognition of these artists raises questions about the meaning and function of institutional space for those whose work has long questioned such structures.
- Majoli's engagement with the Ovulars, a group of feminist photographers from the late 70s/early 80s, connects historical practices of documenting lesbian life with contemporary artistic engagement.
- These artists continue to work in the space between self-definition and representation, producing histories of lesbian identity that remain unruly and resist easy categorization.