Andrea Bowers's Artist Talk

Andrea Bowers fits nicely into the intersection of feminist and activist art. Her methodology seems to include multi-media interpretations of her research into a single topic. After a period of extensive research, she produced a series of works focusing on letters between Emma Goldman and her longtime lover, Ben. Bowers’s deep admiration for Emma Goldman is not surprising. Goldman, herself an early feminist activist and anarchist, was what Bowers described as a “party girl”: a sort of socialite with an attitude, and in her black leather boots and soft grey pants, it seemed that Bowers had found a connection with this woman that ran deeper than a research subject. Her research was conducted through a third party of sorts, Goldman’s biographer, Candace. This daisy-chain of women passing information adds a significant layer to her drawings and artwork produced on this topic. As she chronicled Goldman’s life through her artwork, it became clear that much of it was a tribute to the way she lived her carefree yet lonely life. The most intriguing pieces of the Emma Goldman works were the photorealist drawings of Goldman at rallies and protests, giving speeches and taking action in the name of her rights. By drawing something in exquisite detail, Bowers explained, she really understands it and absorbs it as part of herself.
Her next project spawned off of the same protest and activist themes. Selecting gift wrap as her paper medium, she spray painted feminist and anarchist slogans onto poster-sized pieces. These posters are unique, each with a different gift wrap background and message. She later commented that she saw the gift wrap as a symbol of femininity and domesticity, but impermanence and disposability was the first issue that came to light for this viewer. Perhaps a hybrid of these two ideas was at play; the flowery papers signifying an end to feminine struggles more than the mottos they display.
Though distinctly feminist at times, her body of activist artwork seems to explore general human rights issues. When Elvira Arellano, an undocumented Chicagoan who faced deportation although her son was an American citizen, took refuge in her church, Bowers became fascinated once again with new images of protest. Her three channel video piece, entitled An Act of Radical Hospitality (2008), explores the human side of the issue with a painstakingly long zoom on Elvira alone, with her son, and the son without her. Each features the subject staring directly at the viewer, questioning the traditional passive viewer format. Bowers explored the effect of art that looks back.
The most effective part of this collection of pieces for me was the display of the two yellow quilts inspired by a sign in Elvira’s church, Quilts of radical Hospitality (2008). Each quilt says “I was a stranger and you welcomed me” in either English or Spanish. The English phrase is written on a traditional Mexican style blanket, and the Spanish on an American Log Cabin quilt. Again she reverts to a feminine medium to embed in her work a whole other issue. She continued with a quilting theme in her most recent works concerning the AIDS quilt. These displays harken back to her photorealist drawings as she studies one panel of the massive quilt and copies it directly.
While I find much of Bowers’s work to be an effective representation of pressing issues such as immigration, AIDS awareness, or international relations, she tends to leave glaring fingerprints of herself where she doesn’t have enough content to round out a piece. She starts with effective, fairly potent ideas and dilutes them with choices that incorporate too many issues, leaving some pieces simple at best and unfocused at worst.