Girls' Night Out

Orange County Museum of Art, 2004. Softcover. Like New. 9x0x11. Ahtila, Eija-Liisa, and Rossell, Daniela, and Shahbazi, Shirana. Imagine a girls' night out with Eija-Liisa Ahtila, Elina Brotherus, Dorit Cypis, Rineke Dijkstra, Katy Grannan, Sarah Jones, Kelly Nipper, Daniela Rossell, Shirana Shahbazi, and Salla Tykka. Imagine a very particular kind of girl talk, one that crisscrosses generations and nations, that openly and fluidly recognizes gender differences and sexual necessities, that delves deeply into psychology and lyricism. A conversation that's moved beyond challenging or critiquing feminist archetypes--but knows how it got to that point, thank you early feminism. The women artists represented in this catalogue create works that possess a quasi-documentary feel and a directness of approach, that engage such classical representational subjects as landscape, portraiture, and self-portraiture. They acknowledge their predecessors, the feminist photography, film, and performance artists of the 70s and 80s, but have moved on to confidently explore feminist identity, especially in the adolescent girl, and produce imagery that is compellingly, and resoundingly, uncertain and contradictory.