For over 30 years, Donna Sternberg and Dancers has been creating and performing contemporary dance on the Westside. In a continued effort to build bridges between artists and institutions, on Sunday, December 8, 2019, Donna Sternberg & Dancers will present Iron Women in Culver City. The site-specific performance at the Wende Museum is based on the exhibit The Medea Insurrection: Radical Women Artists Behind the Iron Curtain. The exhibit and performance explore the artistic contributions and works of women that have been largely ignored. This timely exhibit addresses issues that are relevant today, particularly the marginalization of female artists and their exclusion in the annals of art history.
Employing a panoply of mediums, these female artists struggled against bourgeois and socialist role models addressing a wide range of themes including the perception and representation of the female body, loneliness, autonomy from the collective and not being heard. These ideas and more are taken up in the performance which also employs the spatial arrangement of the exhibition that includes hanging objects, video installations, sculpture and photography. While there is greater recognition for the importance of different art forms there is still a hierarchy of what is considered “high” art. Iron Women wrestles with these topics as we explore the work and aesthetics of these artists and how they resonant today. The performance soundtrack is comprised of music and soundtracks from female composers and artists from Eastern Europe, adding an additional element of time and place. The performance will be followed by a Q&A with the artists and audience.
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