subject: Martha Wilson The Legs Are The Last To Go By Alexandra Anderson-spivy [print this page] For women especially, as much as we may fight the truth, the passage of time has toxic side effects -- imposing agings feared,
inevitable entropy in a society that hides from death and worships anorexic female beauty along with the flawless attributes of
youth.
Martha Wilson confronts our fears head on in her show currently on view at PPOW, a tough, clever, uncompromising take on changing
personal identity vis--vis the travails of times toll. The results are as merciless as the photographs the late John Coplans took
of his ancient, wrinkled body, except that Marthas wry wit elicits our empathy and adds poignancy to her explorations of the
significance of personal appearance.
Shes her own subject and her own canvas, starting with Deformation, a black-and-white video she made in 1974 when still living in
Halifax, Nova Scotia. In this nine-minute-long taped performance, she carefully applied layers of makeup to her face, relentlessly
antiquing herself to approximate the way that she imagined she might look in 20 or 30 years.
More time than that now has flown by, and the shows title, I have become my own worst fear, is borne out in the nine recent
photo-text works made since 2008. Heres proof that the drama of aging is far more ruthless than anyone, including Martha, probably
could imagine when still young.
Her diptych Red Cruella (2010) plays with the artificialities of hair color. In her eight small profile photographs that make up
Growing Old (2008-2009), Martha again records (in a series of profile mug shots) the evolution of her hair color from her signature
fiery red to snowy white.
In Invisible (2011), she appears as an old crone obscured and forgotten in the middle of a motley crowd in a convenience store.
Before and After (1974/2009) compares her youthful breasts with the drooping boobs of 35 years later. And of course she illustrates
what we all know in The Legs Are the Last to Go (2009).
Such honest, resolutely good-natured investigations of changing appearance and shifting identity may not be masterpiece art. But they
hit a nerve close to some universal concerns, valiantly acting out aspects of waning attractiveness (and thus power) that our
self-delusional culture compulsively avoids. Think how shocking it would be to see any of these images in Vogue or Harpers Bazaar!
Best known as Franklin Furnaces founder and director, Martha Wilson, a veteran of the avant-garde, has always had courage.
(Disclosure: As an early Franklin Furnace board member, I witnessed her principled stands during the culture wars.) She resolutely
kept Franklin Furnace edgy ever since its early days (it began in 1976) as a collection of artists books, a gallery and a
performance space.
In the 1990s, Wilson reinvented the alternative space on the internet, as she realized its potential as an art medium. She promptly
sold the Franklin Street space and turned the Furnace into a largely virtual enterprise whose purpose would be to present, preserve,
interpret, proselytize and advocate on behalf of avant-garde art.
Marthas Wilsons creative investigations into physical identity and gender roles using performance, text and images also began in
the 1970s and have always been entwined with many concerns central to feminisms then emerging issues. (She just always made them
more fun). Her thinking shares some common ground with Cindy Shermans early black-and-white movie stills and subsequent elaborate
assumptions of numerous identities, and with Hannah Wilkes flaunting of her beauty and sexuality (much despised by more militant and
jealous feminists), as well as with the honesty of her final searing, cancer ravaged self-portraits.
