Exhibition

Betsy Damon

Passages: Rites and Rituals

Curator, Monika Fabijanska

Betsy Damon (American, b. 1940) is among the most relevant pioneer ecofeminist artists; her social practice attracting a growing interest globally. The exhibition will show how the distinctive vocabulary of Damon’s performance practice – performing outdoors in city streets, inviting audience and other artists’ collaboration, employing archetypes and elements of ritual, and her engagement with transnational feminism - informed the development of her later ecofeminist social practice.

Passages: Rites and Rituals is the first exhibition of Betsy Damon’s radical outdoor performance practice (1976-86). It will feature the documentation of eight public performances, as well as Body Masks—erotic photographs from a 1976 private performative session, which have never been presented publicly.

Betsy Damon. Passages: Rites and Rituals features Body Masks (1976), 7,000 Year Old Woman (1977-78), Rape Memory (1978-79), Blind Beggarwoman (1979-80), What Do You Think About Knives? (1980-81), Meditations on Knives (1981), A Shrine for Everywoman (1980-88), Meditation with Stones for the Survival of the Planet (1982-late 1980s), and Listen, Respect, Revere (1986). The exhibition will comprise photographs, videos, documents, and contemporaneous descriptions of these performances by artists who participated in them, such as Su Friedrich, Amy Sillman, Marcia Grubb, Harmony Hammond, and Betsy Damon herself.