Hannah WiliteRonald Feldman Fine ArtNew York, New YorkSeptember 21 - October 19

As she requested just before her death in1993—"Remember me/Remember me?/Re-member me"—Hannah Wilke's body ofwork was re-membered in "PerformalistSelf-Portraits and Video/Film Perfor-mances, 1976-1985" at the gallery that hasrepresented her since 1972. One of thestrengths of this show was the effect ofensemble, the bringing together of dispar-ate parts of a practice—props, texts, pho-tographs, videos.

Upon entering the gallery, one wasbombarded head-on by Wilke's voice-overrising above the grating music of 1970smelodrama coming from 10 monitors in-stalled in a large rectangle. This arrange-ment of five performances taped in vari-ous locations between 1979 and 1985 wasparticular to this exhibition and affordedinsight into process by offering multipleviewpoints. The camera approaches Wilkefrom various angles; she poses actively,unclothed, constantly moving, insistentlyspeaking. Some ofthe monitors showed theview through the camera stalking her body.Others offered a detached perspective thatincluded both Wilke and the cameramanat work in the frame, and functioned todeconstruct the capturing, anonymousgaze. The screen in the upper left comerflashed the names of the writers whosetexts Wilke had appropriated and givenvoice; the instructions for viewing So HelpMe Hannah were hung, typewritten, un-der a hundred pieces of plexiglass on a wallnearby.

Closest to the entrance were six con-frontational poster-sized photographs ofthe bared Wilke with high heels and rayguns. One-liners like "annihilate illumi-nate" (Oldenburg) or "beyond the permis-sion given" inscribed on the posters ringout like gunshots and call up issues cru-cial to this body of work: those of agency,manipulation, and (dis)empowerment. Onthe floor in front of the posters were twolarge, plexiglass cases holding the 229 rayguns Wilke assembled, the conception re-claimed from her (unacknowledged) col-laboration with Oldenburg. The surpris-ingly touching objects were found, orshaped of mangled tinfoil, a toothlesscomb, a broken Mickey Mouse water pis-tol; they sat as abased bits of urban detri-tus that trigger images of vulnerability andviolence. Wrapping around the walls abovethese cases was a long filmic frieze of pho-tographs, the Snatch Shots with Ray Guns(1978), in which Wilke poses in grungy in-dustrial spaces armed only with high heelsand ray guns. Without text, they were dis-turbingly silent.

Without the mediation of text, Wilke'swork is disarmingly ambiguous, a kind of"social irritant" as she called it. It can bedifficult for someone who has not followedher career to figure out Wilke's intentions.One young female art student viTote an-grily in the comment book how terrible arole model Wilke is. She thought the workexhibitiordstic and self-exploitative. Is this,in fact, a seductive dance ofthe seven veilsor a critical unveiling, a stripping away ofpropriety and pretension? One is givenpause to wonder as Wilke transforms her-self from bachelor to bride stripped-barebehind Duchamp's Large Glass in Throughthe Large Glass (1976). This ambiguity

makes the work problematical; it is alsothe motor that generates its interest. LucyLippard's quote inFrom the Center (amongthose selected in So Help Me Hannah) isjust right: "A woman using her own faceand body has a right to do what she willwith them, but it is a subtle abyss thatseparates men's use of women for sexualtitillation from women's use of women toexpose that insult." The strength and theenigma of Wilke's early work is that it con-sistently and insistently straddles thatprecarious and "subtle abyss."

The overarching narrative theme ofWilke's career is the fragility ofthe humanpsyche and its vessel. But the wise curato-rial choice to include only two respectfulreminders of Wilke's death in this exhibi-tion enables viewers to take a fresh lookat work that has been so strongly inflectedby Wilke's last major project, Intra-Venus,a documentation of the ravages of illnesseating away her vital form. One piece, aphoto diptych of Wilke and her mother,Selma Butter, foreshadows Intra-Venus.Both women are shown from the waist up,nude. Wilke's heavily made-up eyes arewide open, seducing the camera; she wearsray guns as wounds all over her body.Butter's eyes are closed and she turns herhead away from the camera. She wears theliteral scars of a mastectomy but exudesthe emotional strength of a single-breastedAmazon, so often called upon in ancientGreek art to stand for the threat of femaleexcess. This mother-daughter pairing callsup a medieval vanitas image: a youthfulbeauty looks into a mirror to see herself,reflected back in a state of physical decay.

It was the self-image Wilke would in-deed have to face as she followed hermother into the battle with cancer and lost.It was a fate she courageously presentedto the world as a heart-rending responseto criticisms that her body beautiful nulli-fied her feminist intentions. The only piecein the show related to her illness was WhyNot Sneeze? (1992), a witty sculpture thatfunctions as a ready-made aided byDuchamp's original object of the samename, a small cage filled with pieces ofmarble cut to look like sugar cubes, vneld-

ing its surrealist punch when one tries tolift the object. Wilke picked up on the im-plication of illness in the title and replacedDuchamp's tooth-cracking cubes withmedicine bottles and syringes. The piecewas likely chosen to stand in dialogue withthe poster-sized cover of Wilke's autobiog-raphy / Object: Memoirs of a Sugargiver(1977-78) hung behind it. The series oftranspositions here gave an inkling ofWilke's strategy: she may come off likesugar, but beware the sugar cubes thatbreak your teeth. The words "I Object" read"I am an object and I object to this status."They stand as a perfect, succinct summaryof Wilke's early practice.

Wilke believed in the potency of theimage. She spoke of hoping to save herdjdng mother by capturing her spirit inphotographs. Pictures did not save hermother's life, nor her own. The power ofphotography to function as a vehiclethrough time was palpable in the galleryspace, though, as these pioneer perfor-mance pieces were re-experienced. Therewas an innocent moment in the 1960swhen standing naked before the worldseemed the most forthright expression ofhonesty, a political gesture aimed at so-cietal repression. Work in the early1970s by artists like Wilke, Edelson,and Schneemann, among others,served as a jolting reminder that toomuch has been vvritten on and pro-jected onto the female body for it everto evacuate the discourse of nudityand appear naked. Wilke's imagesfound themselves in fine feministcompany this season in New Yorkwith Yayoi Kusama at RobertMiller, Nancy Spero riding thecrest of a great wave with no lessthan three simultaneous galleryshows, and with a CaroleeSchneemann retrospective atThe New Museum. The crucialquestion is, why now and notalways?

Claire Daigle,Brooklyn, New York

Hannah Wilke, So Help Me Hannah, 1979-85,multiple video performance (photo: Zindman IFremont, courtesy of Ronald Feldman Fine Art).

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