Jimmy DeSana’s 101 Nudes, 1972 was originally self-published as a portfolio for his undergraduate thesis at Georgia State University, where homosexual sex was still illegal and classified as a felony. This suite of 56 offset prints combines the artist’s early exploration of post-war suburban culture and nude figuration to subvert the image of the ideal American family. In doing so, DeSana reframes the domestic setting as a site of freedom and expression for both himself and his community. Facing censorship and regulation from both school officials and the city, DeSana’s grainy, flash-lit images depicted his queer and female friends erotically posing in various domestic and suburban settings. Humorously inverting conventions of 1950s mass market softcore pornography, DeSana’s playfully staged snapshots articulated a far more informal and participatory set of aesthetic and social relationships. Bringing a conceptual and performative approach to the medium of photography, the startling immediacy of 101 Nudes is as apparent today as when originally created fifty years ago.

In 1973, Martha Wilson was 26 years old and just beginning to understand herself as an artist while teaching English at Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, then a hotbed of conceptual art. Without any female faculty members at the art school or visiting artist program, it was not until Wilson met the influential curator and critic Lucy Lippard that she became aware of the word “feminism,” found encouragement as an artist, and discovered other women that were making performance-based work. Lippard would introduce Wilson to Jacki Apple and soon after the two began planning Transformance: Claudia. “Claudia” was a composite character based on Apple and Wilson’s idealized feminine selves as dictated by the standards of 1970s America. Claudia was powerful, gorgeous, sensual, self-assured, rich, and mobile. On December 15, 1973, Wilson and Apple invited four other women, and one man, to join them in performing their fantasy selves throughout a selection of New York City locales: lunch at the Palm Court in the Plaza Hotel, a limousine ride down Fifth Avenue, and art galleries in Soho. The group also included friends who documented the day while posturing as journalists and paparazzi. In the resulting 36 photos and 33 related texts, Wilson reveals that by mimicking ingrained neoliberal American female stereotypes, she and Apple transformed oppressive gender and class ideals into devices for genuine self-awakening.

Carolee Schneemann (1939- 2019) received a BA in poetry and philosophy from Bard College and a MFA from the University of Illinois. Her work has been exhibited worldwide, and is in the permanent collection of major public institutions including Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, DC; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA; Centre Pompidou, Paris, France; Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA; San Francisco Museum of Art, San Francisco, CA; Tate Museum, London, UK; The Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; among many others. The comprehensive retrospective Carolee Schneemann: Kinetic Painting traveled from Museum der Moderne, Salzburg, Austria (2015), to the Museum fur Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt am Main, Germany (2017) and MoMA PS1, New York (2018). And in 2022, the major survey Carolee Schneemann: Body Politics was on view at the Barbican Art Centre, London, UK. In 2017, Schneemann was awarded Venice Biennale’s Golden Lion, honoring lifetime achievement. Of Course You Can / Don’t You Dare, an exhibition highlighting Schneemann’s early painting constructions, drawings, and works surrounding gesture, movement, and materiality, building up to the making of the artist’s iconic film Fuses in 1964, was on view at P·P·O·W in early 2024. Her work was recently on view in her first solo exhibition with Lisson Gallery, Los Angeles, CA.