Judy Chicago‘s Women and Smoke photographic series, shot in the California desert in 1970, could be a documentary project capturing the last freak-out of a hippie generation that took too much. In fact, Chicago’s figures – rendered alien against their stark background by outlandish body paint and sitting among the smoke of flares – had a serious political point to make which becomes clearer as the image titles are revealed. The artist’s favourite shot, Immolation IV, encapsulates the concept behind the whole project: a reaction against the war in Vietnam and Cambodia, and an expression of sorrow and solidarity with the Buddhist monks who gained international attention with their fiery protest suicides. A feminist angle existed too, stemming from Chicago’s horrified interest in sati – an Indian custom where widows throw themselves into the funeral pyres of their dead husbands.
Chicago’s imagery represents one third of Trioceros, an exhibition looking at the mutability of nature, and the body as an organic being capable of great transformation through the chameleonic manipulation of its surface. Photography by Benny Merris places an altered being in a mountainous landscape, while Sascha Braunig’s video work shows a woman morphing into a cyborg. Regina Rex in New York is the venue, and the closing date is 21 December.
Trioceros at Regina Rex, New York
Benny Merris
Judy Chicago
Trioceros at Regina Rex, New York
Sascha Braunig
Trioceros at Regina Rex, New York
Benny Merris
All images courtesy, Regina Rex
