In class we watched Simone Leigh’s lecture on her project “Free People’s Medical Clinic”, following up that video I want you to read the following article written by the curator Helen Molesoworth in response to Leigh’s work.
Article: https://www.artforum.com/print/201803/helen-molesworth-on-the-work-of-simone-leigh-74304
After reading the article, answer the below response questions based on your reading. In total, your answers to all three questions should be a minimum of 250 words. If you want to read more about Simone Leigh, you can on this link.
- Leigh describes her work as “an ongoing exploration of Black female subjectivity”, using your own words, what does that mean and how specifically is it actualized in the Free People’s Medical Clinic?
- Leigh’s work is inherently political, perhaps suggesting that the role of art is to transform experience and imagine new worlds. What do you believe the role of art is? (There is no wrong answer to this question!!)
In Molesworth’s essay she says;
“To be honest, there was a time I would have felt Leigh’s call for exclusively black women to organize this event “problematic” (I suppose I would have argued that it was “essentialist,” while sidestepping my feelings of being left out), but I no longer do. This is partly because of Leigh’s forthright insistence that black female subjectivity is the historical framework of her practice, that black women are its subject matter, and that black women are the work’s privileged audience. Given the lack of any such systematic inclusion of black women in the fields of Western culture prior to this moment, this recalibration seems both deeply necessary and positively exhilarating.”
Molesworth is arguing here that Leigh’s work is a “recalibration” on access, power, and the privilege of claiming space. What is an example of another artist, artwork, performance, or film that attempts to do this in some form? (You can choose an artist that we have gone over in class or any other)
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