BEAVER ART

Beaver is an independent feminist initiative led by Mexican-American artist Naomi Elena Ramirez inviting interdisciplinary practices to a series of curatorial exhibitions and book projects. Beaver Art (exhibitions and books) brings together artists who delve into contemporary feminist perspectives on pornography, gender performance, and female sexual self-expression. Featuring a diverse cross-section of perspectives on female sexuality and women’s embodied experiences through visual art, films, performance, and discussion, each iteration manifests in a polyphony of voices.

Interrogating the contradictions, taboos, and proscribed expectations of female gender performance, hypersexualization of the female body in male-dominant cultures, and the pornography, the Beaver art project explores concepts of racial sexual identities, displacements and conflicted realities. Displayed, groping, feared, and indulged in an arch provoking the viewer and its relationship to these culture phenomena, this collection of alternative responses act as a pivot to systemic patriarchal objectification.

Each iteration of Beaver (exhibitions and books), occurs through the process of an open call, bringing together a selection of artists and individuals. Past exhibitions have included readings by sex workers, films about the stereotypes forced onto women of color, and visual art works that explore representations of the female form. The Beaver art project is committed to diverse representations of race, sex, gender, sexuality, and class.

Inspired by artist Naomi Elena Ramirez’s work of the same name which interrogates porn culture and female sexual expression through dance and visual scores for the body, Beaver art, seeks to create discourse, awareness, and community.  Its title is derived from the vulgar association of the female genitalia and pubic hair in pornographic slang.

Ramirez’s work Beaver, score and performance were first exhibited and performed at Vermont College of Fine Arts' MFA in Visual Art Summer 2013 Exhibition.  The work brought up a lot of questions from viewers at VCFA and subsequently at Northwestern University's Performance Studies Conference, In Bodies We Trust October 11-13, 2013, where Ramirez present both score and performance.   The desire of viewers to engage in discussion inspired Ramirez to facilitate a group discourse by means of to the inclusion of a group exhibition and panel discussion along side her work.  Ramirez asked Kristen Sollee of Slutist.com to moderate the discussion and co-curate the exhibition.  

Ramirez’s work and Beaver Art respond to the following questions:

• How do representations of female sexuality in advertising, mass media, and mainstream pornography affect how female sexuality is expressed both individually and collectively?

• How do phenomena like “slut-shaming” and the threat of sexual violence delineate, thwart, or promote female sexual self-expression?

• What are the different ways that racial and sexual identities are culturally inscribed on the female body?

• How can sexualized representations of the female body be used to contradict systemic patriarchal objectification without perpetuating it?

The first Beaver exhibition was held January 14, 2014 at the Center for Performance Research in Brooklyn, NY.