Suzanne Lacy

Ce face?
-In her four decades of artistic practice, Suzanne Lacy has dealt with rape, violence,
aging, poverty, racism and issues of gender and youth culture. In installations, videos
and unconventional performances that blur the line separating art and political
activism, she collaborates with other artists and members of the local communities in
which she works.
-As a part of large-scale pieces that might take place over weeks and even months, she
conducts media outreach and often schedules public policy debates.
Background:
-orn in !"#$, Lacy grew up in a working-class family in the agricultural San %oa&uin
'alley, northeast of Los Angeles. In !"(!, she left a psychology graduate program to
study with Allan )aprow and %udy *hicago at the *alifornia Institute of the Arts
+*alArts,.
Justificri:
- -.*/01213I4 pare c5 a 6nceput cu abordarea unor tematici feministe dar asta nu
sunt mul7i cei care 8tiu c5 a debutat cu performance-uri 6n care arunca buc57i de carne
6n aer4 9State of :ind9 show at the ;range *ounty :useum. 2here<s a lamb
constructed out of plastinated sheep parts which she is still very happy with. 2hat<s
what my early performances were, you know4 pieces of meat flying through the air,
ripped in half, with guts coming out. Stuff like that. 2hough that early work was very
much about embodiment, having a female body was all that relevant. Sometimes it
was. I did some vagina dentata pieces that were very funny, that involved putting
teeth in my vagina and photographing it. ut most of my work was about living in a
body, be it gendered or not.
- era fascinat5 de medicin5, 6n special de autopsie, 8i-a luat A 6n studii zoologice la
1* Santa arbara.
- Social concerns about race and class always present her your life. 9=rom when I was
a kid, long before feminism. I was conscious of racial issues from the time I was
eight, in the San %oa&uin 'alley, where I grew up. Class is much more subtle [than
race] in this country, so it<s harder to get at. 2he San %oa&uin 'alley is the Appalachia
of the >est. And my grandmother came from ?arlan *ounty, )entucky. I eventually
worked in Appalachia for five years, with the artists Susan Steinman and @utaka
)obayashi ABeneath Land and Water, /lkhorn *ity, )entucky, BCCCDC$E. 9 *alifornia
had a policy that every kid could get a low-cost education at one of the state colleges.
2he working class flooded in, the browns and blacks and women flooded in, and
suddenly we were all in art school, eFposed to people like Allan A)aprowE. ;ut of this
came performance. :any of us had been involved in various political movements.
=eminists figured out really &uickly that performance was the way to go. In *alifornia
a lot of the feminist performance came from teachers like %udy *hicago and /leanor
Antin. %udy in particular used performance strategically, politically, pedagogically.
2he theory was that women are trained in eFpressing themselves verbally, they<re
good at acting, they really love costuming. 2hey have everything it takes to move
right into a performance strategy. I know that<s a little simplistic, but it was very
helpful in consciousness-raising. .ot everybody was a feminist, but a lot of us were,
and those that weren<t became so, retroactively. Like ?annah >ilke, for eFample.
- As the political imperative became more critical, some artists took to engaging with
broader publics. @es. I<m from a working-class background. I<m interested in issues of
poverty, class and education, and I have an ability to communicate with people
outside the art world. It<s one thing to talk about rapeG it<s another thing to know that
people are being raped all over and you<d like to change the situation, rightH ut I<m
not an activist, I<m an artist. :aybe I hold myself to a more rigorous standard than
most about the impact of my work.9I<m an artist9 means that I<m intent on addressing
the language of that field, that I<m interested in form. I make decisions that are not the
decisions an activist would make.
-In !"((, Lacy staged her groundbreaking work Three Weeks in May, which focused
on rape in Los Angeles. A collaboration with scores of artists, including arbara
Smith and Leslie Labowitz, the work incorporated political speeches, radio
interviews, news releases, art performances and self-defense demonstrations. :y
&uestion was always, 9>hat is the socialIpolitical conteFt that eFists around the issue
of rape, and can I make a contributionH9 ut now I had a new problem4 9>hat is of
interest to me, conceptually, in the rethinking of this workH9 I wanted to reclaim this
work from that era, to look at it again, but I had to create the arena to investigate both
of those &uestions. Such conteFtual work is dependent upon the spirit of the time in
which it was created. @et in !"(( some people didn<t even consider Three Weeks in
May to be art. 0erformance artists might think it was art, but a lot of people thought I
was doing an anti-rape campaign. 2hat piece got shaped out of avant-garde art ideas
that happened to align with political ideas.
-Lacy tracked the occurrence of rape during those B! days on a large map displayed
on the L.A. *ity :all. In its linking of community groups, media and government,
2hree >eeks in :ay was a pioneering eFample-avant la lettre-of art-making via
social networking.
-Among other large-scale activist pieces Lacy has produced during her career is 2he
Skin of :emory +!""",, in which she worked with *olombian anthropologist 0ilar
3iaJo and local organizations to produce public art that eFplored alternatives to
violence in :edellKn, *olombia, a city then ravaged by near-civil war, drug cartels
and youth gangs. She and 3iaJo re-created the piece in BC!! for the :edellKn !!
iennale as 2he Skin of :emory 3evisited, eFamining the role of memory in the
creation of a civil society. 2he challenge was to convince #LC old women that they
should show up on :other<s May, dressed in black. ?ow was I to do that, unless I
could convince them that it was relevantH It<s a matter of aligning the vision and the
values. 2hat<s probably what creates change. :e, and everybody who does this work,
and organizations doing their thing, people protesting, and writers taking on the
issues-all of that moves the boulder forward.
*rystal Nuilt +!"O(,, a series of events that addressed the issue of aging, culminated
in a live, televised performance in which #LC elderly women sat four to a table in the
atrium of the *rystal *ourt, a 0hilip %ohnson-designed building in :inneapolis. 2he
2ate :odern, which recently ac&uired elements of the piece, will display them
beginning %uly !P in the museum<s new 2anks eFhibition spaces.
-Lacy was a cofounder of the >omen<s uilding, the center of study and activism for
women artists that grew out of the =eminist Studio >orkshop, established in !"(L by
%udy *hicago, Arlene 3aven and Sheila Levrant de retteville. Mean of the School of
=ine Arts at the *alifornia *ollege of Arts from !"O( to <"(, Lacy now chairs the
0ublic 0ractices :=A program at ;tis *ollege of Art and Mesign in L.A. In BC!C,
Muke 1niversity 0ress published her book Leaving Art4 >ritings on 0erformance,
0olitics, and 0ublics, !"(#-BCC(.
*e a f5cut recent4
http4IIwww.suzannelacy.comIrecent-worksI