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Participating Artists:
Farah Al Qasimi, Natalie Baxter, Deborah Castillo, Kristina Davis, Dynasty Handbag, Jesse Harrod, INNER COURSE (Rya Kleinpeter and Tora López),
Lady Parts Justice League’s Vagical Mystery Tour, Jen Liu, Rachel Mason, Jan Mun, Luis Mejico, Madhini Nirmal, Kameelah Janan Rasheed,
Katherine Simóne Reynolds, Andréa Stanislav
On January 10, 2017, CODEPINK activist Desiree Fairooz was arrested and later convicted for laughing during Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s Senate confirmation hearing. As Senator Richard Shelby commended Sessions for his record of “treating all Americans equally under the law,” Fairooz let out a quick, sharp cackle before being escorted from the courtroom and arrested for “disorderly and disruptive” behavior.
Fairooz’s reflexive outburst is just one scenario conveying the transgressive potential of laughter to threaten authority, as power and control are briefly shifted and destabilized. In an increasingly tense political landscape, laughing is an everyday gesture capable of unsettling norms, subverting power, and challenging dominant systems. Laugh Back examines the diverse cultural production of self-identifying women who engage the defiant possibilities of humor, satire, and the absurd as subversive tools for cultural change.
The artists in Laugh Back use humor to create a symbolic space for transformation in which structures of power and repression are recognized and confronted. Focusing specifically on the practices of self-identifying women, the exhibition reframes the trope of humorless feminist resistance by emphasizing deployments of the absurd that disrupt presumed stable discourses. The works in the exhibition speak directly to the contemporary sociopolitical climate, examining race, gender, labor, and politics from multicultural perspectives to uncover a current, uniquely feminist brand of humor that is an increasingly threatened and threatening vehicle to speak truth to power. Employing diverse comedic genres, these artists use humor as a means to upset, if only for a visceral moment, established ways of being.
Lindsey O’Connor is an exhibition organizer and arts writer living in New York City. She is currently the Biennial Co-Coordinator at the Whitney Museum of American Art and has held past positions at the Guggenheim Museum, American Federation of Arts, and Biennial of the Americas. She has curated and co-curated exhibitions with Greatmore Studios in Cape Town, South Africa, and the NLE Curatorial Lab in New York. Her writing has been published in Hyperallergic, CAA.Reviews, Art Papers, and Ada: Journal of Gender, New Media, and Technology.
Image: Jen Liu, still from Pink Slime Caesar Shift, 2018. Single-channel 4K video, two-channel audio; 24:20 min. Courtesy of the artist and Upstream Gallery, Amsterdam
This exhibition is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, New York City Council Member Stephen Levin, and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature, and with generous support from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Robert Lehman Foundation, Iorio Charitable Foundation, Select Equity Group Foundation, many individuals and Smack Mellon’s Members.
Smack Mellon’s programs are also made possible with public funds from the National Endowment for the Arts and with generous support from The New York Community Trust, The Edward and Sally Van Lier Fund of The New York Community Trust, The Roy and Niuta Titus Foundation, Jerome Foundation, The Greenwich Collection Ltd, Milton and Sally Avery Arts Foundation Inc., Brooklyn Arts Council, and Exploring The Arts.
Smack Mellon is a participant of NextDayFlyers Nonprofit Sponsorship Program.
Space for Smack Mellon’s programs is generously provided by the Walentas family and Two Trees Management.
