How Queer Artists Are Remapping the Present by Reimagining History As We Know It IS the PAST

T H E F U T U RE I S O U RS. AND SO How queer artists are remapping the present by reimagining history as we know it IS THE PAST. THE NEW YORK TIMES STYLE MAGAZINE Holiday December 8, 2019 IT WAS NEARLY closing time at the museum: Long outrage over his company’s production of the video. Fraser swears at parking meters like a shadows had already devoured most of downtown tear gas canisters used on migrants at the U.S.- New Yorker (she was based in the city for 25 years) Los Angeles and the hangar-like space was hushed. Mexico border. and rhapsodizes about gardening like the Los Andrea Fraser stood before a small TV watching Fraser is a fierce critic of the status quo, Angeles transplant she has become (she’s lived there “Official Welcome,” one of her landmark but her approach is different from that of most since 2006 and currently shares a home in the San performances. Onscreen, she appeared in a tasteful artist-activists. For most of her career, she has Fernando Valley with her husband, Andy Steward, black dress at the opening of her 2003 exhibition fused archival research, psychoanalysis, sexuality and their toy poodles, Winnicott and Bowlby). in Hamburg, Germany, making remarks from a and humor in diverse projects that examine the All of Fraser’s works combine a trenchant and lectern. She thanked the curators who had made art world’s subconscious — the web of desires that unsparing intellect with a magnetic physical presence. her retrospective possible; she thanked her mother, shape its economy, power dynamics and social She stands with the alert posture of a dancer and who had flown all the way from California for relationships — and her own place within the system. passes through the world with the kind of fluid, feline the event. The crowd clapped on cue. But then the In 2001, she spoofed the museum world’s fetish awareness that makes it difficult to imagine her woman went rogue, as tripping or dropping her keys. At 54, her face is though a computer virus practically unlined. Intently impassive when had infected her gracious- she is listening to others, her features fly into artist software. “Thank motion when she is discussing matters close you, Andrea,” she boomed WITH FRIENDS to her heart, from psychoanalytic theory to in a deep male voice, samba dancing. Listening to Fraser speak in morphing into the first of the measured timbre of a veteran academic, more than a dozen art-world as she often does, is a bit like listening to personae who take over the an opera singer softly hum a tune — it can speech — a piratical dealer, be suspenseful, knowing just how much a fawning patron, an artist power she is capable of unleashing, how best known for pickling a shark. much voltage is being kept under control. Before it’s over, she has shed For over 30 years, Andrea Fraser In “Official Welcome,” Fraser’s her dress and then her Gucci bra, has waged a conceptual battle physical powers are on full display as thong and stilettos to address the she stomps and strips and mimics audience fully nude. “It takes a lot against elitist museum boards, the gestures of recognizable art-world of courage to do what she does,” grandiose patrons and the murky figures. (For the script, Fraser culled she said, assuming the voice of an excerpts from actual speeches approving critic. “She goes far beyond ethics of the art world. Has the and interviews, seamlessly melding where most artists have the intelligence culture finally caught up to her? them with her own writing.) “You or audacity to operate.” The 30-minute know, it’s fun to sell big artworks piece — funny, brash and often By Zoë Lescaze — and it’s profitable. In the excruciating — ends after the woman, Portrait by Michael Christopher Brown end, a good artist is a rich artist,” back in her dress but somehow more she bellows as she swaggers exposed than ever, breaks down in sobs. across the stage as an Tears pooled behind Fraser’s glasses unmistakable heavyweight as she watched her younger self. But the dealer. Minutes later, she moment passed quickly, and she returned to morphs again: “Most of the critiquing the work on view, at the Geffen work we collect is about Contemporary at the Museum of Contemporary sex or excrement,” she Art, with cleareyed detachment. “I could have chirps in the perky tone given that a little more time,” she said, catching of a prominent West herself rush a beat. LIKE THESE… Coast collector. “We like “Official Welcome” is a case study in the to think of ourselves intellectual rigor, physical bravura and satirical wit for glitzy new buildings by grinding sensuously as connoisseurs of art’s subculture.” Fraser brings to diagnosing the collective delusions, against the curvaceous limestone walls of the Frank The art world is easy to roast — its most absurd material excesses, fraught politics, grandiose Gehry-designed Guggenheim Bilbao, her acid-green characters are often the most oblivious — and it rhetoric, bumptious egos, ingrained biases and dress hiked up around her waist, driven to ecstasy tends to skewer itself without any outside assistance. sundry pretenses of the art world. For the past 30 by the audio guide. Two years later, she filmed a But Fraser’s work is not mere polemics or parody. years, she has reigned unchallenged as the doyenne sexual encounter with a collector to create her most She bares her own insecurities as she examines of institutional critique, a branch of conceptual notorious work, “Untitled,” a piece some praise those of museums, galleries, viewers and patrons. art concerned with the internal machinery of as the ultimate comment on art as empty commerce “Official Welcome” may mock the art world’s museums and other social constructs. Lately, that and others dismiss as an attention-grabbing stunt. rituals of florid praise and faux humility, but the machinery has been the subject of intense public Fraser’s occasional bouts of nudity often eclipse performance also reflects Fraser’s lifelong sense scrutiny. This year alone, activists have stormed the her careful choice of costumes, reflecting a savvy of being an outsider — a position she consciously exhibition halls of elite museums, targeting their that extends to her civilian life — clothes are the only draws upon in her work. “Yeah, it was fun to private funding sources. The Louvre scrubbed the belongings Fraser accumulates other than books. write,” she said, “but to some extent, this piece was Sackler name from one of its wings following They are props people use to perform themselves, driven by my sense of resentment and envy of my demonstrations condemning the family’s ties to and Fraser’s eye for the subtle ways that they professional peers about whom all these great things the opioid crisis just months after the Solomon R. broadcast self-assurance or camouflage fragility were said.” To Fraser, this sort of vulnerability Guggenheim Museum and the Metropolitan helps give her work its bite. In the language of and self-examination is crucial if a work is going to Museum of Art in New York, as well as the National her art, clothes serve as verbs — active and dynamic engage viewers. “Art functions through empathy. Portrait Gallery and Tate in London, embargoed forces. Her outfit at the Geffen that hot day in [When you] see someone else who’s struggling with Sackler donations. This summer, the businessman late September — a floral jumpsuit, suede mustard- something and grappling with something, that Warren Kanders resigned from the Whitney colored mules and violet toenail polish — delivered creates a space for finding that in yourself,” she said. 124 Museum of American Art’s board of trustees amid a jaunty riposte to the little black dress she wore in For her, these performances are not idle exercises Andrea Fraser, photographed in Los Angeles in September. Hair by Danni Katz at Tracey Mattingly using Unite. Makeup by Grace Phillips at Tracey Mattingly using Chanel Beauty. 125 Left: Fraser’s installation of chicken and rice at Fraser saw herself quite differently. “At the Whitney “Um Monumento às a tiny Jamaican spot program, my image of myself was that I was just, Fantasias Descartadas” (“A Monument to in Culver City. “We like, hiding under the seminar table in fear,” she said. Discarded Fantasies,” became hippies very 2003). Below: a still quickly, my mother got BEFORE FRASER CAME along, institutional critique from Fraser’s “Museum Highlights: A Gallery involved in the women’s was the domain of older, mostly male European Talk” (1989), with movement, became a artists who had launched the movement in the late the artist in character lesbian a bit before that. 1960s amid the protests sweeping the Western as a docent at the Philadelphia Museum My brothers, I think, world. In 1969, activists wrestled in a pool of bovine of Art. Opposite: were selling drugs when blood inside the lobby of the Museum of Modern a still from they were 10, 11? We were Art to censure two trustees, Nelson and David “Projection” (2008). all pretty precocious.” Rockefeller, who had wartime manufacturing ties The artist grew up to jet fighters and napalm. The German artist memorizing Adrienne Rich Hans Haacke made these demands for accountability poems, browsing “Our his very practice by presenting a mordant installation Bodies, Ourselves” and in an exhibition at the museum the following crafting banners for gay pride year. His piece, “MoMA Poll,” asked viewers to drop marches in her mother’s ballots into boxes to indicate whether Nelson’s kitchen.

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