Thursday October 6, 7pm
Artist Talk: Performing Childrearing
Marni Kotak in conversation with Tamara Gayer
In-Person and livestreamed
“I believe Tracey Emin’s comment regarding the good artists with children being men to be very outdated and even offensive to all of the amazing women artists I know who have children, however, I realize that many people still feel this way. One only needs to visit art galleries and museums and browse through art magazines to see virtually no representation of motherhood or childrearing in art.” — MK
Microscope is very pleased to present an artist talk with Marni Kotak in connection with her current exhibition at the gallery, “Seriously Kidding Around,” with individual and collaborative works by the artist and her 10-year old son Ajax Kotak Bell. She will be joined in conversation with artist Tamara Gayer to discuss her current installation/performance and other works on view within the context of her art practice at large.
“Seriously Kidding Around” marks the 10th year of Kotak’s long-term ongoing project drawing attention to her “Raising Baby X (RBX)”, which commenced on October 25th, 2011 when Kotak give birth to her son, Ajax Kotak Bell as part of the durational performance/installation/exhibition “The Birth of Baby X” at Microscope’s original Brooklyn location. RBX explores the unseen labor of childrearing through various mediums including video, installation, and performance. During the viewing period of “Seriously Kidding Around”, Kotak and Ajax are present in the gallery undergoing their usual activities – such as preparing food, doing homework, playing games, and making art – within a large-scale installation. The piece loosely replicates Ajax’s bedroom and Kotak’s art studio, incorporating furniture, documentation, diary entries, and other elements accumulated over the last decade. The separation between artists’ practice and private life is continually and more narrowly challenged in Kotak’s work.
One does not expect to walk into an art gallery to find a mother raising her child as the work of art. Usually people work at a job — in the case of an artist, this is making art— to then afford to go home and care for their families. In my ideal world, life and art are one and the same and feed into each other… – MK
Kotak and Gayer, who is also an artist mother and previously participated on a panel with Kotak on the topic, will discuss among other topics surrounding the show: the evolution of project RBX, her collaborative relationship with Ajax Kotak Bell, as well as recent political events that affect the reproductive rights of women.
More info about Marni Kotak and “Seriously Kidding Around” can be found HERE.
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Marni Kotak is a multimedia and performance artist presenting everyday life being lived. She has received international attention for her durational performances and exhibitions, most notably “The Birth of Baby X” (2011) in which she gave birth to her son as a live performance and “Mad Meds” (2014) during which the artist slowly withdrew from psychiatric medications prescribed for postpartum depression. In “Treehouse” (2017), Kotak — who had just experienced a devastating fire in her home — created a refuge for herself and others to pause from the overwhelming aspects of life and in “Dancing in the Oval Office” (2019) she danced each day within a recreation of the White House Oval Office. Kotak’s works have also appeared at the Santiago Museum of Contemporary Art, Santiago, Chile; Artists Space, New York, NY; Exit Art, New York, NY; White Box, New York, NY Momenta Art, Brooklyn, NY; English Kills Gallery, Brooklyn, NY; Grace Exhibition Space, Brooklyn, NY; among others. She has performed extensively in the US and abroad. Her exhibitions have been featured in Artforum, Blouin Artinfo, Art Pulse, The Huffington Post, Hyperallergic, Los Angeles Times, Studio International, The Brooklyn Rail, The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Village Voice, Time Magazine, Washington Post, among many others. Kotak’s work also appear in books and publications including “The Maternal, Digital Subjectivity, and the Aesthetics of Interruption,” Bloomsbury (2022); Maternal Performance: Feminist Relations, Palgrave McMillian (2021); The Art of Feminisim: Images that shaped the Fight for Equality, 1957-2017, Chronicle Books (2018); and Blackwells Companions to Contemporary Art: A Companion to Feminist Art, John Wiley & Sons (2019), among others. Kotak has appeared on Good Morning America (ABC), CBC Radio, NPR, ZDFKultur, and other broadcasts as well as in the documentary “The Art of Making it,” (2021) currently streaming on Amazon Prime. Marni Kotak received a BA from Bard College and an MFA from Brooklyn College.
Suspended between the impulses of an image maker and those of a builder, Tamara Gayer is transfixed by cities. Drawing a lifelong love letter, she explores the effect of our hard-wired compulsion to create patterns on the shape and perception of urban space; the ultimate expression of which is integrating this work into the city itself. She holds a BA from Sarah Lawrence and an MFA from Hunter College. She is a founding member of the Hint House one of NYC’s longest running artist/musician collectives. Her work has been shown around the world from Smackmellon and Old Stone House in Brooklyn to Artscape Youngplace in Toronto to Kusnt Bureau in Vienna. She is represented in several prominent collections including that of the Museum of Modern Art. Seeking closeness to the city, she has emphasized showing in less traditional settings including storefronts, festivals and political events. Her latest public art piece was inaugurated at the center for Sexual and Gender Diversity at Penn State University in 2021. In 2022 she was awarded the National Academy’s Abbey Mural Prize to create a public artwork at Williamsburg Houses in Brooklyn.