Konstnären säger hon är konstnär. Om monologdialogen i Tracey Roses performance The Cunt Show

Abstract

This article focuses on the South African artist Tracey Rose’s performance The Cunt Show (2007). The c-word in the title makes me feel linguistically embarrassed (Reily 2005), but cannot be avoided as it opens up a both material and immaterial feminist art archive central to the discussion. The Cunt Show was presented during the inaugural weekend of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center For Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum, New York in March 2007. The inauguration included the parallel opening of two exhibitions. One of these was the temporary, contemporary, transnational all women show Global Feminisms. The other was the permanent display of Judy Chicago’s monumental installation The Dinner Party from 1979. As an invited artist of Global Feminisms Tracey Rose had been asked to present her art. However, instead of doing this she performed The Cunt Show and by way of what I call a monologuedialogue, she critically addressed Global Feminisms and The Dinner Party. She delivered a critique of North American art feminism and its invitation politics. This article aims to investigate this critique. What is being criticized? How is it criticized? What do the words do? How does colour come into play? My investigation ends with Tracey Rose’s solo exhibition Waiting for God at Bildmuseet in Umeå, Sweden 2011. In this exhibition, The Cunt Show led me to Rose’s video work Ciao Bella (2001) and to the invitation politics that this work presents.