Suzanne Lacy
Suzanne Lacy (born 1945) is an American artist, educator, writer, and professor at the USC Roski School of Art and Design.
[1][2] She designed multiple educational programs beginning with her role as performance faculty at the Feminist Studio Workshop at the Woman's Building in Los Angeles.
Having been involved with feminism since the late 1960s, Lacy attended California State University, Fresno in 1969, taking up graduate studies in psychology.
Photographs showing the hotels' original structure stating "There May Be Life in the Old Girl Yet" forced the artist to question the ways in which our society views older women.
Throughout her career one can see Lacy's awareness and desire to rebuttal the invisibility of aging women in performances such as Whisper, the Waves, the Wind (1984) and Crystal Quilt (1987).
Throughout the performance old women dressed in all black began to slowly enter the lobby and take seats on the opposite side of Lacy.
Lacy's goal throughout the performance was to bring awareness to the invisibility women must struggle with as they age and no longer fit into society's standards of beauty.
[7] The goal, Lacy explained, "was not only to raise public awareness, but to empower women to fight back and to transcend the sense of secrecy and shame associated with rape.
[9] Participants from the Woman's Building, the Rape Hotline Alliance, and City Council joined with the feminist community and families of the victims in creating a public ritual of rage as well as grief.
[1] Lacy and Labowitz founded ARIADNE: A Social Art Network, a collaborative group to create community-based artwork and educational opportunities.
In 1981, she collaborated with Susan Hiller to curate the exhibition We'll Think of a Title When We Meet: Women Performance Artists from London and Los Angeles at Franklin Furnace, a well-known alternative arts venue founded in 1976 by Martha Wilson.
Three Weeks in January, was an anti-rape performance based on her landmark 1977 project; this time the map was installed prominently on the Los Angeles Police Department's main campus.
"I'm interested in the mythology surrounding older women," Lacy responded when being interviewed about her work,"in how they are denuded of their power in our culture.
"[13] On the morning of the performance a procession of 154 ethnically-diverse older women (between the ages of 65 to 99) all dressed in white, moving slowly down a staircase to the vast beach below.
The audience watched and listened from the cliffs high above the beach where they could hear a collage of the women’s voices piped through speakers, managed by sound composer Susan Stone.
This time, however, the performance was staged indoors, in what is known as the "Crystal Court" (a space normally occupied by kiosks and a café) in the IDS Center, a downtown Minneapolis skyscraper designed by Philip Johnson and John Burgee.
[20] In an interview for SFMOMA, for instance, Lacy noted, "When considering re-performing a work, I think about whether the issue still has meaning, and the new insights that inform this place and time.
[22] The Roof is On Fire (1993–1994) was a two-year project in which Lacy and collaborators developed media literacy classes for Oakland youth, and conducted a one-night performance piece.
The project was a platform for over 40 events gathering all types of people from different fields such as politicians, artists and educators to address rape cases happening anywhere in Los Angeles.
A huge map of Los Angeles was placed at the entrance of a police department for daily marking of rape reports.
Sponsored by the Brooklyn Museum’s Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, 360 participants discussed gender issues while passersby listened in.
[30] An American nonprofit publishing organization, it works to increase communication between women and connect the public with forms of women-based media.
[43] Her work is owned by the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles (Prostitution Notes) and The Tate Modern (The Crystal Quilt).
