Lutz Bacher, Closed Circuit, (1997-2000). 40 minutes. Digital animation of video stills on LCD monitor, color, silent.

At the P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center in Queens this past fall, Lutz Bacher’s “MY SECRET LIFE” exhibition opened my eyes unexpectedly.  This painting, photography, drawing and video exhibit presented a point about sexism and violence in our society.  This exhibit has wall to wall pictures that represent many things about sexism toward women thought our history;  some things go really far back.

As I walked through the exhibit I immediately was taken in to it, but probably not the way the artist wants its viewers to be. 

The first thing you see are these pictures of toy trolls.  I love toy trolls, so that got me interested.  (See these trolls in the pic to the right.)  In the exhibition, they were dressed up as different professions:  doctor, an Olympic swimmer, an astronaut and Miss America Pageant troll.  Miss America troll and the doctor troll were next to paintings of half nude women saying provocative and eye opening quotes.

Then I started to wonder, why trolls?  Why trolls next to women?  A simple troll picture (Miss America one) made me realize how some people in our world perceive women achieving great things as bad.  Accomplishments that woman have made the same and just as good as men’s.  The troll was a basic mockery to bring our focus towards sexism.  All the other pictures weren’t inviting and gave away their meaning as easy as the troll, but once you understand the trolls presence in the exhibit your eye opened.

There were some photos of famous people as well photo-shopped quotes added to them.  Patti LaBelle photo had the added quote “cock suckers” motioning to her mouth, portraying as if she does this all the time.  Then there was another of an actress called Jane Fonda saying “im really weird. Im really fucked up,” as if both of these women would just say this and ruin their careers.  Or I guess it also could be perceived that women can get away with anything.  But it’s not true because women have been put down and forced to do everything but what they wanted to do.

As if she didn’t make her point about sexism enough, she also had a video area.  This video was of a man at first, but only 25 seconds of him then automatically switched to a woman and taped over a couple of minutes of her.  This shows how we are not only humiliated, made fun of in many ways for achievements, and make our leaders look terrible, women are not trusted equally as men are.  These things can be experienced in real life but I love the fact that she made me realize that the pieces of art may not be commenting on America alone, but points to other countries in the world and their views of women.  These pieces were eye opening to me because as a woman I have a very bad grudge against the people who put down women in the past.  Women then fought for us now.  Lutz Bacher made me realize that, too.

So although I may have been interested in this exhibition at first because of the trolls, the artist point of view was just as important as my fascinations of toy trolls. Sexism should be stopped all over the world.  Why shouldn’t I have the same chance as my father, brother, or boyfriend in a high-paid job, and not be taken for a sucker?  That’s what I kept thinking about while walking through Bacher’s art.  I’m still thinking about it.