Whose Autobiography? or, The Culture Wars Didn't Go Away: A Conversation with Martha Wilson

The career-spanning exhibition The Two Halves of Martha Wilson's Brain, which took place in 2018 at the Kunstraum Niederoesterreich in Vienna, presented MARTHA WILSON's contribution to contemporary art as the twin hemispheres of a unified mind. The metaphor is an apt one, given that WILSON has contributed to the history of experimental art in two distinct ways: as a world-renowned performance artist with a career extending into its fifth decade, and as the founder and director of Franklin Furnace, an organization that has hosted, exhibited, curated, and fiscally supported experimental artists since the mid-1970s. Yet there have always been far more than

Martha Wilson. Photo by Christopher Milne. Image courtesy of Martha Wilson and P·P·O·W, New York.

two hemispheres of MARTHA WILSON's brain: not simply binary or dialectic but an endless redoubling and proliferation, a mise-en-abyme.

As a performance artist, Wilson is perhaps best known for her satirical portrait-performances of well-known political figures such as Nancy Reagan, Barbara Bush (Fig. 1), Tipper Gore, and, most recently, Donald (Fig. 2) and Melania Trump. Indeed, avid readers of ASAP/Journal will recall Wilson's contribution, "Martha Does Donald," which appeared in the 2018 special issue "Rules of Engagement: Art, Process, Protest."¹ Her impersonation of well-known Culture Warriors dates from the early years of the Reagan administration, when Wilson's all-female punk band DISBAND began dressing up as members of Reagan's cabinet. As Wilson explains elsewhere, "I was Alexander M. Plague, Jr., his Attorney General, who after Reagan was shot claimed 'I'm in charge' although he was not."² Taking on such take-charge types is less a put-on than a takedown. Wilson's impersonations are not disguises; they are, to paraphrase Philip Core, lies that tell the truth. And the truths they tell are legion: truths about the concentration and abuse of power, truths about the artificiality of sex appeal and the irreversibility of aging, and, most tellingly of all, truths about the way we—as members of various publics—project power onto certain bodies and not others. Dressed as former First Lady Barbara Bush in 2008, Wilson declared, "If power is the ultimate aphrodisiac, I guess you might say I'm the sexiest woman in the free world."³ Wilson's words are striking for the extent to which they sexualize a figure whose geriatric asexuality had been so fully naturalized by the American public as to eclipse her abiding connection to state power.

Figure 1.

Martha Wilson, Political Evolution (Barbara Bush) (2005 / 2019.) Photo by Dennis W. Ho. Compositing artist Gary Nichols. Pigment print in blue commercial frame.14 × 11 ins./35.6 × 27.9 cm. Image courtesy of Martha Wilson and P·P·O·W, New York.

Wilson's impersonation-based artistic practice dates from her earliest performance works, when Wilson began presenting the photographic record of her self-transformations into a variety of deeply reflexive and layered personae. Though documented in striking still images, Wilson's performances are also deeply discursive, even downright textual. Not only do her personae give speeches, but their very basis in self-transformation derives from the "translation" into reality of the fantasy-personae they embody. Such personae incorporate the "intense desire for personal power and mobility" shared by many women, as Wilson explains in her 1973 collaboration with Jacki Apple, but they also channel the more troubling historical and virtual figures that haunt our imaginations and structure our existence.⁴

Figure 2.

Martha Wilson, Thump (2016). Photographer and Compositing Artist: Kathy Grove. Color photograph. 38 × 32 ins./96.5 × 81.3 cm. Image courtesy of Martha Wilson and P·P·O·W, New York.

Born in Pennsylvania and based in New York City since the early 1970s, Martha Wilson is deeply attentive to the fantasies and fictions that structure the contemporary: from gendered and...