“FINDING A BODY”: PERFORMANCE AS PRACTICE AND THEORY IN THE WORK OF BARBARA T. SMITH
Keywords:
Performance Art, Feminist Art, Barbara T. Smith, Artists’ ArchivesAbstract
This paper analyzes the performative practice of Barbara T. Smith as well as the artist’s theoretical preoccupation with performance as it relates to her experience as a woman and female artist during the 1960s and 70s. Drawing from the material of Smith’s personal archive housed at the Getty Research Institute, the paper will present key elements of her performative practice and discuss her relationship to the Second Generation of Feminism. It will detail Smith’s interrogation of performance for negotiating her own femininity, sexuality, as well as physical and emotional relationships. Smith’s archive also reveals the artist’s early analytical occupation with performance art. In questioning this novel discipline with regards to its politics, products, but also its boundaries, Smith proves an extraordinary awareness for the complexity and idiosyncrasies of performance art and an unusual responsibility as an artist in questioning, theorizing, and communicating it.
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