Tracing Feminism is an all-female panel discussion organized in conjunction with the New York debut of Suzy Kellems Dominik’s "I Can Feel."
Featured panelists will engage in conversation as they trace representations of the female throughout art history, from the ancient to the contemporary. Delving further, panelists will discuss equity and equal representation in the arts, symbolically mining the cultural archives, and embarking upon an investigation of alternative artistic practices, and non-profit art models that exist in the name of gender parity, equal opportunity, and visibility of the female experience.
The panel will launch anew the discourse surrounding "I Can Feel", extending themes of female creative representation into a richly layered discussion.
Suzy is a multi-disciplinary artist and emotional autobiographer. Her body of work seeks to encourage the amplification of strong female voices with a focus on self-empowerment, pleasure, and the private-made-public, often characterized by her diligent research of our culture’s visual traditions, societal taboos, and religious legacy. She uses her own body to expose rigidly antiquated social constructs and to examine the role of female sensuality and agency in subversion of patriarchal social and aesthetic conventions.
Driven by a mission to speak to broad and diverse audiences and striving to disrupt the dogmas of the contemporary art market, Kellems Dominik’s work has been exhibited internationally both within and beyond the white-cube space of the traditional art gallery, including with The Laundry San Francisco, The Nautilus Hotel Miami, Freehand Hotels, and Coup d'Etat.
Kathleen Landy is the Founder and President of The Feminist Institute, digitizing the archival records of feminist activity since the 1960s and the life papers of innovative women in all fields of human endeavor. She co-owned and directed LiebmanMagnan Gallery in Chelsea from 1997 to 2003, focusing on young emerging artists including Tania Bruguera, Karen Finley, Valeska Soares, and Jana Sterbak.
She has published in ARTS Magazine, World Art, ARTAsiaPacific and Asian Art News, is a member of the Hunter College Art Advisory Board, and is actively involved in TimeIn Children’s Art Initiative, MoMA/PS1, and the C12 Fellowship Award for Hunter MFA graduates, and the Feminist Council for Art at the Brooklyn Museum. Landy has a BA from Villanova University and an MA in Art History from Hunter College where her experiences in feminist scholarship framed her vision for the founding of The Feminist Institute.
Jasmine Wahi is a curator, activist, and a founder and co-director of nomadic non-profit Project for Empty Space. Her practice focuses on issues of female empowerment, complicating binary structures within social discourses, and exploring multipositional cultural identities through the lens of intersectional feminism.
She received her Masters from New York University's Institute of Fine Arts, where she focused on issues of intersectional narratives and authorship. In addition to running Project for Empty Space, and curating international shows independently, Ms. Wahi is also a professor at the School of Visual Arts, and a former board member of the South Asian Women's Creative Collective (SAWCC). Her work has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Vogue, Hyperallergic, ARTNews and more. On September 19th, she will be presenting at TEDxNJIT on Resilience.
Ellie is a Cuban-American entrepreneur and the founder of Hayworth, an independent PR and communications consultancy committed to promoting intrepid ideas in the arts. Ellie's passion lies in galvanizing a community of curious culture-seekers around events, programs, and panels that both reference and unpack contemporary social phenomena — in the arts and well beyond.
Hayworth spearheads comprehensive programmatic campaigns in collaboration with SUITE NY, Social Studies, and Studio SKD, among others. In past roles, she oversaw communications for clients such as the Aspen Art Museum, Frieze Art Fairs, 21c Museum Hotels, The Brant Foundation, New York Botanical Garden, kurimanzutto new york, and Andrea Rosen Gallery, amonth others. Ellie has held positions with Third Eye, Lehmann Maupin Gallery, Marianne Boesky Gallery, Vogue, and the NEWD Art Fair in Bushwick, Brooklyn. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in Communication Studies and Art History at Vanderbilt University and a Masters of Art Business from Sotheby's Institute.
"I Can Feel" is a visually arresting neon sculpture, choreographed light performance, and Kellems Dominik’s largest neon work. Standing at 12′ tall, the 27.68 second neon performance illuminates the rising emotion and viscerally glorifies the female orgasm in its overt monumentality. Described as a work of emotional autobiography the sculpture’s central feature is a 5’ 3.5” vagina, a number that symbolically represents the artist’s height.
The viewer basks in an effusive pink and blue neon glow as the choreography elicits the warmth of human touch and the vindication of emotional redemption. The title of the work describes a self-affirmation, a personal breakthrough experienced in the wake of a mourned relationship, wherein the subject has progressed beyond the stages of grief to proclaim the achievement of self-empowerment and to ultimately embrace both physical and spiritual joy.
At a time when autonomy of the female body remains a topic for public debate, "I Can Feel" reaffirms the need to assert our agency. The piece seeks to transcend gender and focus on the innate human need to connect, communicate, and commune. The artwork is a poetic reclamation of the self.