Suzanne Lacy

Suzanne Lacy (born 1945) is an American artist, educator, writer, and professor at the USC Roski School of Art and Design.

She has worked in a variety of media, including installation, video, performance, public art, photography, and art books, in which she focuses on "social themes and urban issues."

She served in the education cabinet of Jerry Brown, then mayor of Oakland, California, and as arts commissioner for the city.

She designed multiple educational programs beginning with her role as performance faculty at the Feminist Studio Workshop at the Woman's Building in Los Angeles.

Having been involved with feminism since the late 1960s, Lacy attended California State University, Fresno in 1969, taking up graduate studies in psychology.

There, Lacy and fellow graduate student Faith Wilding established the first feminist consciousness-raising group on campus.

This led to her attendance in Judy Chicago's Feminist Art Program during the fall of 1970.

The 1970s became a period where Lacy continued to explore identities, women's bodies, and social conditions.

Ablutions

In 1972 Lacy collaborated with three women; Judy Chicago, Sandra Orgel and Aviva Rahmani creating a piece of performance art called Ablutions.

This performance was inspired by the women's earlier exploration of rape within their different practices.

The performance itself included explicit audio recorded experiences of female rape victims, which continuously played on a loop.

As well as this there was also the visual aspects of the performance, which included women bathing in body-sized metal tubs of eggs, blood and clay.

Additionally eggshells, ropes, chains and animal kidneys were scattered across the floor.

This performance was self produced in a studio in California and has been categorised as a revolutionary art performance in regards to feminism.

Inevitable Associations

The 1976 renovation of the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles sparked Lacy's performance art piece, Inevitable Associations.

The marketing surrounding the old hotel's renovations compared the hotel to an old woman.

Photographs showing the hotels' original structure stating "There May Be Life in the Old Girl Yet" forced the artist to question the ways in which our society views older women.

In 1977, Lacy and collaborator Leslie Labowitz combined performance art with activism in Three Weeks in May.

The event included a performance piece on the steps of Los Angeles City Hall and self-defense classes for women in an attempt to highlight and curb sexual violence against women.

The artists updated a map with reports from the Los Angeles Police Department, printing the word "rape" on spots on a map of the greater Los Angeles Area.

The goal, Lacy explained, "was not only to raise public awareness, but to empower women to fight back and to transcend the sense of secrecy and shame associated with rape."

In Mourning and In Rage

Lacy and Labowitz teamed up with Bia Lowe, and other artists, in 1977 to create, In Mourning and In Rage, a large-scale public protest performance.

It had been designed to challenge media coverage that sensationalized a rash of murders of women by the so-called Hillside Strangler; the tone of the press coverage seemed geared to heighten the climate of fear which reinforced the image of women as victims.

The performance began when a group of exceptionally tall women, made taller by towering black headpieces, arrived at City Hall in a hearse, followed by a caravan of cars filled with women in black.

The Performers debarked and formed a circle in front of the steps of City Hall, beneath a banner that read, ”In memory of our sisters, women fight back.” The artist's designed the performance, action and imagery, specifically to captivate the interest of television news; and, in successfully achieving this network coverage, used the media to critique itself—which extended the impact of the art performance far beyond the usual feminist and/or art audience.

Throughout her career one can see Lacy's awareness and desire to rebuttal the invisibility of aging women in performances such as Whisper, the Waves, the Wind (1984) and Crystal Quilt (1987).

The performance of Inevitable Associations took place over a span of two days in the lobby of the Biltmore Hotel.

The first day of the performance featured a public makeover of Lacy.

It took nearly three hours for a makeup artist to publicly turn Lacy into an old woman.

As the makeover was occurring, collaborators passed out flyers and literature on the hotel renovation as well as information about cosmetic surgery.

Throughout the performance old women dressed in all black began to slowly enter the lobby and take seats on the opposite side of Lacy.

This went nearly unnoticed until the number of elderly women had grown so large that their presence became undeniable to all of those in the lobby.

Once Lacy's makeover was complete the mass of older women silently dressed Lacy in black clothes.

The second day of the performance featured three elderly women participants who sat in red chairs in the lobby and told stories about their lives after the age of 60 and the effects of aging to passerby's and any audience that formed.

Lacy's goal throughout the performance was to bring awareness to the invisibility women must struggle with as they age and no longer fit into society's standards of beauty.

Inevitable Associations was a crucial point in Lacy's career as it was the first time in which Lacy took her performance to the public streets.

Three Weeks in May