Exhibitions cycle: WHAT IF WOMEN RULED THE WORLD? Part 3
EΜΣΤ is pleased to announce the first presentation in Greece of the work of Mary Reid Kelley and Patrick Kelley, known for their distinctive, irreverent, witty and humorous films, which conjoin painting, poetry, caricature and satire. As part of the What If Women Ruled the World? cycle, the duo present their work The Rape of Europa (2021).
A contemporary take on Titian’s Renaissance masterpiece of the same name, where Europa is given agency, voice and attitude – the work is a deliberate contrast to Titian’s objectified, passive depiction. Liberating Europa from a subservient and silent role that she has long been forced to play in art and literature, here she becomes a naughty, often foul-mouthed polemical advocate and spokeswoman for women’s rights.
The film Rape of Europa takes as its point of departure in the Roman myth, whereby Europa – the Phoenician princess and mother of King Minos of Crete – was abducted by Jupiter, the king of the gods, who masqueraded in the form of friendly bull. Having gained her trust, he raped her and the children she bore him became the founders of the European continent.
In the Kelleys’ work a traumatized, malcontented Europa takes centre stage to denounce misogyny, sexual violence and the degradation of women, thus bringing the myth into the 21st century to accord with contemporary women’s rights discourse and latter-day reckonings #MeToo movement but also more timeless injustices and crimes exercised against women such as rape, sexual assault, and domestic violence.
Mary Kelley is the protagonist, taking on a plethora of different female historical and mythical characters, in a set designed by Patrick. The narrative unfolds using a form of wordplay called “Tom Swifties”, short phrases ending in a pun or rhyme. Her ire unfolds in a series of humorous theatrical in the form of comic relief, with a decisively feminist angle reminding us of the decisive role of women in society beyond their timeless pigeonholing as mothers, caregivers and objects of desire.
This work and its prurient language belong to a long tradition of feminist art that deploys subversive humour as a tool of empowerment to expose misogyny and to condemn the centuries-old objectification and mistreatment of women. The artists overturn the archetype of Europa as a hapless, submissive sex object for forced procreation – transforming her into a feisty, outspoken, often
foul-mouthed character, possessing agency. In this way they reclaim her archetypal representation throughout history by art and literature, as for example most famously in Titian’s 1562 sensationalized interpretation of the myth, a point of reference for this work; reminding us, in tandem, that this kind of representation went hand in hand with centuries where women were denied political representation and social participation.
BIOGRAPHY
Mary Reid Kelley and Patrick Kelley combine performance and a distinctive wordplay-rich poetry in polemical, graphically stylised videos. With Reid Kelley performing as a First World War soldier, a grisette in revolutionary Paris, or the Minotaur, they resurrect characters that embody particular facets of ideas in time. Their historically specific tableaux enclose dilemmas of mortality, sex, and estrangement, navigated by the characters in punning dialogue that traps them between tragic and comic meanings.
In videos and drawings filled with punning wordplay, Reid Kelley presents her take on the clash between utopian ideologies and the realities of women’s lives in the struggle for liberation and through political strife, wars, and other historical events. Performing scripted narratives in rhyming verse, the artist –with her husband Patrick Kelley and various family members– explores historical periods through fictitious characters such as nurses, soldiers, prostitutes, and saltimbanques. Adopting a stark black-and-white palette while synthesizing art-historical styles such as Cubism and German Expressionism, Reid Kelley playfully jumbles historical periods such as World War I and France’s Second Empire to trace the ways in which present concerns are rooted in the past.
Reid Kelley received her BFA from St. Olaf College, Minnesota, and an MFA in Painting from Yale University in 2009. In 2013 the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston held the first solo museum exhibition of Reid Kelley’s work.
Recent solo exhibitions include: We are Ghosts, Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore (2018); We Are Ghosts, Tate Liverpool, Liverpool (2017); We’re Wallowing Here In Your Disco Tent, The High Line, New York (2016); Mary Reid Kelley, M – Museum Leuven, Leuven (2016); A Marquee Piece of Sod – The WWI Films of Mary Reid Kelley, Kunsthalle Bremen, Bremen (2016); Hammer Projects: Mary Reid Kelley, The Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2015); Mary Reid Kelley, Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow (2015); Mary Reid Kelley, Site Santa Fe (2015); Swinburne’s Pasiphae, Pilar Corrias, London (2014); Mary Reid Kelley: Working Objects and Videos, Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art, New Paltz; University Art Museum, University at Albany, New York (2014); The Syphilis of Sisyphus: Mary Reid Kelley with Patrick Kelley, AMOA Arthouse, Austin (2013).
Recent group exhibitions include: Art Encounters 2017: Life a User’s Manual, Contemporary Art Biennale, Timisoara and Arad (2017); Commercial Break, Public Art Fund, New York (2017); The Arcades: Contemporary Art and Walter Benjamin, The Jewish Museum, New York (2017); Objects Do Things, Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw (2016); Mixtape 2016, Pilar Corrias, London (2016); The Beast and the Sovereign, MACBA Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, Barcelona; Württembergischer Kunstverein Stuttgart (2015); Pratfall Tramps, Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, Atlanta (2015); Who’s Speaking?, Klemms Gallery, Berlin (2015); Mary Reid Kelley and Maria Lassnig, Rose Art Museum, Massachusetts (2014); Through the Eyes of Texas: Masterworks from the Alumni Collections, Blanton Museum of Art, University of Texas, Austin (2013); Re-generation, MACRO, Rome (2012); Weighted Words, Zabludowicz Collection, London (2012).
Reid Kelley has been awarded the MacArthur Fellowship (2016); the Baloise Art Prize (2016); Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship (2014); Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Grant (2013); The Shifting Foundation Grant (2012); Joseph H. Hazen Rome Prize, American Academy in Rome (2011); the Rema Hort Mann Foundation Grant (2009); and a CAA Visual Arts Fellowship (2008). Reid Kelley’s work is held in public collections including the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Hammer Museum Los Angeles; Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven; and Kadist Foundation.
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