TRACES: Hannah Wilke

Today is the occasion to bear in mind Hannah Wilke (7/3/1940-28/1/1993), she used the various mediums of photography, Performance, sculpture, and video to examine and challenge prevailing notions of femininity, feminism, and sexuality. She was one of the first artists to use vaginal imagery in her work with the purpose of directly engaging with feminist issues. This column is a tribute to artists, living or dead, who have left their mark in Contemporary Art. Through documents or interviews, starting with: moments and memories, we reveal out from the past-unknown sides of big personalities, who left their indelible traces in time and history…

By Dimitris Lempesis

Hannah Wilke was born in New York City, her maternal grandparents, emigrated to the United States from Hungary and her paternal grandparents from Poland. She earned two degrees from Temple University in Philadelphia: a bachelor of fine arts from Tyler School of Art in 1960 and a B.S. degree in 1961. After her marriage to designer Barry Wilke ended, she returned to New York City in 1965. Here Wilke would be represented by Ronald Feldman Fine Arts and later teach at the School of Visual Arts for nearly two decades. Wilke’s elder sister, feminist therapist Marsie Scharlatt, observes that one of her sister’s first artistic joys was the folding of triangular pastries with their mother. This process is echoed in Wilke’s signature fortune cookie-like works, such as “Teasle Cushion” (1967), which combines the artist’s interest in human gesture and sexuality with wordplay. These folded forms are ever-present in Wilke’s oeuvre, made of terra cotta, latex, lint, chewing gum, etc. and are consistently vaginal in shape. “My concern”, asserted Wilke, “is with the word translated into form, with creating a positive image to wipe out the prejudices, aggression, and fear associated with the negative connotations of pussy, cunt, box”. Similarly, Wilke reclaimed disposable materials, such as lint, thereby transforming the “negative” into “art”. Although Wilke continued to produce both sculpture and drawings, by the early ‘70s she had begun to focus on photography, video, and Performance Art. In “S.O.S.—Starification Object” Series (1974–75), Wilke presents a collection of “Performalist self-portraits”, in which she both parodies and dismantles stereotypical representations of “femininity”. She disrupts the pleasure of the gaze by covering her semi-nude body with vaginal-shaped chewing gum, which appear as scars on her flesh. For Wilke, this scarification links beauty with vulnerability and death via such references as numbered tattoos on Holocaust victims and African cicatrization. Nudity assumes a different role in Wilke’s “Venus Pareve” (1982–1984), a group of small self-portrait figures that were originally cast in chocolate. As she related the consumption of food with that of women, Wilke explored ideas concerning beauty and Jewish identity. The Hebrew dietary term pareve (neither meat nor dairy) is used to convey the concept of the universal. Thus, Wilke offered her classically nude body as a “universal” Jewish goddess of love, while examining myths of the ideal woman. In 1987, Wilke was diagnosed with lymphoma. She had been painting abstract watercolors of her face that were later exhibited as “B.C.” meaning Before Consciousness (of her cancer). In 1991, Wilke began to document the effects of her illness/treatment. With the help of her husband, writer and editor Donald Goddard, she produced her last work “Intra-Venus”, a posthumously published photographic record of her physical transformation and deterioration resulting from chemotherapy and bone marrow transplant. “Intra-Venus” mirrors her photo diptych “Portrait of the Artist with Her Mother, Selma Butter” (1978–81), which portrayed her mother’s struggles with cancer and “Having literally incorporated her mother, illness and all”. “Intra-Venus” was exhibited and published posthumously partially in response to Wilke’s feelings that clinical procedures hide patients as if dying was a “Personal shame”. These works also include and the “Intra Venus Tapes”, a 16-channel videotape installation. Hannah Wilke died on 28//1/93 at Twelve Oaks Hospital in Houston.