Milk and Night’s (one-of-a-kind) feminist art booth at Select Art Fair in Miami 2014
Author | Winter Mendelson
You may remember our review of Milk and Night’s exhibition at Sensei gallery, and now we are excited to share that they will have a solid and important presence at Select Contemporary Art Fair in Miami this year. Also, Posture’s own performance contributors – The Push Pops – will perform in collaboration with Legacy Fatale, and special guest performer Hari Nef will premier the second part of I am your Girlfriend live in the booth – date to be announced. If you’re lucky enough to make it to Miami, you won’t want to miss this.
As a recap Milk and Night is a collective of guest artists and curators who explore the role of feminism in the art world. Together, they share a vision inspired by traditional feminist practices channeled through contemporary artists and media, offering a unique platform of intellectualism with the new generation of voices.
Milk and Night creates exhibition programs, discussion panels, and performance events. Since it’s first exhibition in September 2014 at Gallery Sensei in New York City, it has since established an on-going residency at the gallery and will be hosting quarterly events from 2014-2016. On-going guest curators are Anne Sherwood Pundyk, Katie Cercone, Kate Eberstadt. Assistant director Kate Eberstadt. Founding director Coco Dolle.
“Feminism” is a powerful buzzword right now, as evidenced across public discourse: from Emma Watson’s UN Speech, to Beyonce’s VMA performance in front of the word itself, to the countless think pieces blowing up your news feed. This global spotlight provides an unparalleled opportunity to explore this term and recreate the world we live in.
Despite the art world’s reputation for progressivism, it is an epicenter of gender inequality. Art Basel brings together some of the most interesting creative minds, and yet is so commonly associated with decadence, celebrity, wealth, and glamour, a huge missed opportunity for change. As a means to both explore the current dialogue on feminism and to overcome the gender gap, Milk and Night’s presence at Select Art Fair – Miami Art Basel would represent this important dialogue as the only booth dedicated solely to feminist art. They are here to challenge these major players to think more deeply about the gender discrepancies in both the art world and our world today, and to give proper visibility to feminists artists amongst the most prestigious art fairs.
Milk and Night will have its own booth, a special residency project under Gallery SENSEI and the only booth solely dedicated to feminist art.
For this fair, founding director Coco Dolle is the main curator.
Milk and Night will exhibit a rotating presentation of each artists listed below – program up coming. We will also conduct guerrilla style performances throughout the fair by Legacy Fatale and Go! Push Pops and have special guest performer Hari Nef re-enact her piece I am your Girlfriend live on our booth – date to be announced.
Artists presented on our booth: Guerrilla Girls, Kembra Pfahler, Nancy Azara, Nicole Nadeau, Narcissister, Anne Sherwood Pundyk, India Salvor Menuez, Ange (ThreeAsfour), Bianca Casady, Jemima Kirke, Lola Montes Schnabel, Kara Rooney, Virginija Babusyte- Venckuniene, Amanda Keeley, Coco Dolle, Carol-Anne McFarlane, Mika Azegami-Parlá, Samoa and Victoria de Lesseps.
About the performance artists:
Legacy Fatale is a performance group choreographed and founded by artist Coco Dolle. Revisiting the ancient nomadic Amazon warrior women, exploring the tension between the demands, the desires and oppressions of the modern woman in society, Legacy Fatale explore the archetypes of femme fatale and warrior women. In the realm of Isadora Duncan’s natural fantasy moves and the Eurhythmics aesthetics developed in the early 1900’s, Legacy Fatale focuses on the return to sacred dance. Myths about warrior women, known as Amazons from the Paleolithic age throughout the Greek combats are the grounds of this work. A documentary by archeologist Jeannine Davis-Kimball shows after years of research and digging tombs in Kazakhstan, the discovery of a matching DNA from a bone of warrior women dating 500BC with the living body of a 7 years old Mongolian farm girl. Legacy Fatale, is derived from the historical legacy of women’s sacrifices subjected to violence from organized societies, the iconography and concepts of femmes fatale prevailing in our contemporary media industry. Legacy Fatale performed at the annual Deitch Projects Art Parade, Miami Art Basel, Fountain Art Fair, The Glasslands Gallery, Fashion week Lincoln Center. It has been featured in the Daily Candy, Posture Magazine, New York Observer, The Wild Magazine.
The Push Pops are a queer, transnational, radical feminist collective under the direction of Elisa Garcia de la Huerta (b. 1983 Santiago, Chile) and Katie Cercone (b. 1984 Santa Rosa, CA). The Push Pops have shown their interactive multi-media sculptures and performances in free public art festivals and Fine Art galleries throughout the greater metropolitan area including at The Brooklyn Museum, Whitney Museum, Bronx Museum, Maryland Institute College of Art, C24 Gallery, Momenta Art, Apexart and White Box. Their work has been featured in Paper Magazine, The Observer, Brooklyn Rail, ArtFagCity, Posture Magazine, QUARTZ, The Brooklyn Paper, Revolt Magazine, BOMBLog, ARTNet TV and N.Paradoxa. In 2013 Go! Push Pops received a 2013 Brooklyn Arts Council Community Arts Fund Grant for their Warrior Goddess Workshop and in 2014 were awarded the Culture Push Fellowship for Utopian Practice.
Hari Nef is an actress, writer, and model in New York City. Recent theater credits include The Seagull at Columbia University (Arkádina) and Althea at Poetry Club in Glasgow, UK (Chez Deep). Recent film credits include Family Tree (dir. Sebastian Sommer), She Told Me She Was Dead (dir. Sebastian Sommer), and Hellaware (dir. Michael M. Bilandic). In addition, Hari’s work has appeared at exhibitions in Berlin, Oaxaca, and Veracruz, with performances in London, Paris, and Miami. Hari writes for Dazed & Confused, Vice, and Adultmagazine, where she contributes a regular sex column. Hari walked for Hood by Air and Eckhaus Latta at New York Fashion Week Spring/Summer 2015, and recently appeared on the cover of Frische Magazine. Hari is an undergraduate senior at Columbia University majoring in Drama & Theater Arts, with a concentration in acting.
