Hystrionics and the Forgotten Arm- Conduit Gallery, Dallas, Texas

Histrionics was a term used in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to refer to a seductive overabundance of emotion. It was most commonly ascribed to women whom, it was believed, were more prone to fits of excessive feeling. Both Circassian women and those with werewolf syndrome offer images of another kind of excess – not of emotion but of hair. Hair has a long relationship to sexuality but hair also covers the body. Representing two separate and competing ideas, it is about both excess and restraint.
Boxing has similar dualities. Each boxer mirrors the other so that their opponent becomes a reflection of themselves. While pugilism appears to be about horrific aggression it actually is a calculated sport, as noted by such writers as Norman Mailer and Joyce Carol Oates, where the boxer struggles to remain noble, human and civilized. Boxing began with a simple chalk circle drawn on the ground where two men fought bare knuckled. As the sport developed gloves and other rules were introduced and confrontation became controlled.
The term “Forgotten Arm” stands for the arm that comes out of nowhere to clock you when two exhausted boxers are leaning on each other. Whether it is defense or offense, underdog or champ, boundaries are blurred through the course of a fight. In this exhibition these borderlines are embodied in the character of the Pugilist. Hystrionics and the Forgotten Arm imagines the aftermath of a fight through a series of relics that evoke an excess of hair, emotion and even ornament. It blurs the boundaries between the stage of the boxing ring and the world outside of it. Victims become aggressors and the feral becomes rarified. White is quickly emptied of its purity and black is no longer the dominion of abject mystery – both are caught in the hot bright lights of a performative spectacle filled with violence and beauty.

I’ll be part of

The Shamrock Hotel’s Open Studios and
Group Show in Dallas on

Saturday, April, 14th, 5 – 9pm

Come by and say hi!

8. Women and Their Work, Margaret Meehan Hystrionics and the Forgotten Arm

In this exhibition, Meehan wove a dense tale into her objects, photographs, and installations. But beyond the back stories (see: Victorian Pugilism, boxing, The Circassian beauties, and medical anomalies), I don’t think I saw a more elegantly installed exhibition all year. And that’s saying a lot, considering the gallery at Women and Their Work often feels stilted and constricting. Meehan essentially created a dramatic stage-set for both her works and the story she was longing to tell. Many Thanks to Katie Geha’s on Glasstire.com for including me in an amazing list of artists.

There is a figure in the history of the circus side-show who embodied the freak and the familiar and is often overlooked. Supposedly saved from a life of sexual slavery in the Harems of Turkish nobility by entrepreneurial showbiz men like P.T. Barnum, the Circassian beauties were said to be the most beautiful women in the world. With an exotic sounding name and hair teased high in an afro-like halo, the Circassian beauty’s alabaster skin reflected both a familiar and idealized beauty to bourgeois Victorian audiences as well as an otherized specter on which to lay their fantasies and sympathies.

Margaret Meehan digs deep into the registers of 19th century history for facts and mythologies to explore, explode and reassemble. Her work often investigates the quality of viewership, what it means to be a spectator—a gawker, a consumer of art and entertainment. In Hystrionics and the Forgotten Arm, on view at Women and Their Work, Meehan applies the metaphoric structure of the boxing ring to the tale of the Circassian beauty evoking a theater of structured violence by which exploitation and atrocity is made entertainment. Read More…

There is something not right about the first picture. A model in a snow-white gown is staring straight at you, into the camera. It’s fairly serene. But she has a white beard, actually more of a mane, linking forehead to chest, as if she hopped out of Narnia to warn you about the nefarious queen.

But below, out of focus, you realize that she is also wearing white boxing gloves. This is where “The Pugilist” comes in. Read more…