Ewa Majewska

This Episode is dedicated to the amazing feminist artist and a great Friend, Martha Rosler, and I need to express my sincere apologies for waiting more than 10 years with the realization of my idea - first to compare Rosler and Abramovich, and then also to discuss the Meta Monumental Garage Sale, shown at the NY's MoMA in 2012. In this podcast I offer some initial points and analysis, basically leading to the conclusion that the performative, critical, political and artistic value of Martha Rosler's intervention at the NY MoMA in 2012 consisted in spectacularly failing.

Referencing the concept of “queer art of failure” of Jack Halberstam, I show, how the unwillingness, inability and resistance to succeeding as the “yet another MoMA exhibited artist” made of Rosler and her garage sale project a true mile stone in the feminist and Marxist strategizing of entering the canon. Differently from most critics, who most frequently suggest that Rosler's project, while interesting, and invested in feminist anthropology and critical theory, did not have a groundbreaking value, I argue for appreciating the project's ultimate resignation, whether intended or not is something I still need to debate with the artist, of making any success - her older works were not presented, thus their value did not experience a sudden magnifying effect; no art object (not even documentation) was created, the newspaper published as a companion to the project, cannot be seen as an art object, the artist's competence, beauty, intelligence and craft were not sanctified (as was the case during Abramovic's show The Artist is present). So my claim is that by means of refusing to successfully use the incredible opportunities the show at NY MoMA offered her, Rosler not only failed at being a successful contemporary artist, but also undermined and unmasked the very problematic character of succeeding in neoliberal capitalism's economy and the artistic field of it in particular.

Zrealizowano w ramach stypendium Ministra Kultury i Dziedzictwa Narodowego.