In the early 1970s, Senga Nengudi met Maren Hassinger, who would become the artist best known for pe
In the early 1970s, Senga Nengudi met Maren Hassinger, who would become the artist best known for performing with the stretched nylon stocking sculptures from Nengudi’s RSVP series. “A true friendship developed as we discovered that we had in common sculpture, a dance background, and a need to play out conceptual ideas through sculpture and performance art,” she has said. “Hardly supported by our white contemporaries, including the women’s movement, we set out on our own with other friends and colleagues to explore and play out our mind sketches.” I love the term “mind sketch” for thinking about these experimental, collaborative sculpture-performance hybrids. Nengudi’s sculptures are loaded with connotations of the physical and ideological forces that tug at and fight for control over the female body. Rather than literalizing the bodily implications of Nengudi’s sculptures or becoming their absent body, however, Hassinger extends and complicates its metaphorical material language. She reveals and exaggerates the elastic forces put in tension by Nengudi at the same time that she resists them, asserting her agency. I recently learned that Nengudi specifically chose stockings that were toned for black women, which adds a layer of meaning (as far as racial constructions and aspirations) to what Hassinger is grappling with. The genre-bending performances themselves are totally, uncannily mesmerizing—I recommend looking them up on Youtube.Maren Hassinger performing in Senga Nengudi’s RSVP (1975–77/2012) at Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, November 17, 2012 -- source link
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