Kate Gilmore & Karen Heagle Depict Women's Power Structure Anger In 'Stomp'

Writing for Artnet, Blake Gopnik stopped by New York's On Stellar Rays gallery to catch Kate Gilmore's Stomp, performed Saturdays and Sundays, 4 to 6 pm. until February 19, 2017. Dressed in red sweatsuits and Kodiak construction boots, every few seconds three young women stamp and slap and punch out out their anger at the status quo. The sounds of their anger make the entire gallery echo with their ritual designed to dismantle the power structure. 

The stompers are juxtaposed against the backdrop of Gilmore's friend artist Karen Heagle's works on paper that "depict still life, landscape, portraiture and animal subjects. Her work often reflects autobiographical symbolism thematically focused on memento mori, feminism, sexuality and queer identity."

The New Yorker writes that the women's combat boots and brass knuckles had succeeded in chipping away only small bits of red enamel; Gilmore herself spent a week "attacking a fourth cube with a sledgehammer", on view in an adjacent room. The artist and her performers are protagonists, channeling the emotion, fury, and frustration in America's unsettling political moment -- one that threatens to dismantle political rights for women, the LGBTQ community and people of color gained over the last 50 years. Meanwhile, Heagle summons her "inner Ovid", comments New York Magazine, "giving us a scary menagerie of birds tearing at flesh".

'The Grief Which Has Not Yet Come May Be Avoided' by Karen Heagle