Miami Beach Cinematheque to Showcase Feminism’s 4th Wave in Film and Photography

Miami Beach Cinematheque will open its Art Basel exhibition featuring New York-based multidisciplinary artist Leah Schrager on Wednesday, November 30 at 5:30pm, on view until December 4th. Fourth Wave Feminist: The Photographic Works of Leah Schrager will feature fifteen self-portraits from Schrager’s new series, Glittering Gold, which she shot in various locations including Miami Beach. In addition to the exhibition, The F Word, a documentary featuring Schrager and other Brooklyn-based feminist artists, will also screen November 30th. The film’s director Robert Adanto, who curated the exhibition, will be joined by Schrager during a post-screening Q&A. The reception begins at 5:30pm, with the screening at 6:30pm.

Leah Schrager is an artist who works between the web and NYC. In her work she photographs, appears in, augments, and markets her own image. She’s interested in the line, movement, biography, and digital life of the female body. She co-curated the female-positive BodyAnxiety.com exhibition, which is featured in the April 2015 issue of Art Forum. She graduated in 2015 with an MFA in Fine Art from Parsons, The New School.

"Glittering Gold" is Leah Schrager’s recent body of work made in late 2016, as part of her celebrity project, ONA. Through ONA, she explores the glamor, play, tragedy, virality, and aesthetics of a self-made internet celebrity. The base of each work is a self-portrait shot in locations around America - desert mountaintops of Utah, cabins in Woodstock, condos in Miami, hotels in NYC, and more. She uses Photoshop to digitally paint/manipulate the images. The final works are printed on glossy aluminum and are displayed with black censor bars that may be removed by the collector.

Robert Adanto's The F Word explores radical “4th wave” feminist performance through interviews with a new generation of feminist artists who use their bodies as subject matter. Because the female body continues to be politicized and policed, and because these artists delve into the fecund territory of female sexuality, self-objectification, and the female form as a site of resistance, many remain marginalized by the mainstream art world. Brooklyn-based Leah Schrager, well known for her performance practice, Naked Therapy, states, “As soon as you introduce a bit of sexiness or sexuality into an artwork it suddenly becomes questionable. Just because something elicits arousal or shows elements of sexiness does absolutely not make it not art.” While some 4th wave artists, like Ann Hirsch and Kate Durbin, choose to analyze representations of female identity through digital media, others, like the radical, queer, transnational feminist art collective, Go! Push Pops, explore sexuality and gender in pop culture in the digital age. As feminist lecturer Kristen Sollee explains, 4th wavers, unlike their predecessors, “are not afraid to be ‘girly’, (or) to be hyper-feminine, or to wear a mini-skirt, to self-objectify” in the service of challenging patriarchal oppression or sexist ideals.

Featured artists: Narcissister, Ann Hirsch, Go! Push Pops, Leah Schrager, Kate Durbin, Rebecca Goyette, Rachel Mason, Rafia Santana, Damali Abrams, Faith Holland, Claudia Bitran, Michelle Charles, and Sadaf.

Official Trailer: https://vimeo.com/133657286