By Raymond Simon
Nestled comfortably on the Main Line, Haverford College epitomizes the liberal arts school. Its students are bright; its faculty is first-rate; and its facilities, from the playing fields to the labs, are state-of-the-art. In fact, there would seem to be little reason for Haverford students to venture beyond the confines of their verdant, tree-lined campus.
So it will probably come as a surprise to learn that this sleepy little college is currently hosting what just might be the most engaging, edgiest art exhibit in the Philadelphia region: Sex Drive.
The exhibit, which opened on January 28 in Haverford’s Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery, is free and open to the public. It features 22 artists whose work explores issues of sexuality, gender, and the way public norms encroach on personal concerns. The artists range from well-known figures like Duncan Grant, a central participant in the Bloomsbury Group, to contemporary film-maker and photographer, Melanie Manchot.
Visitors expecting to be entertained or titillated will be disappointed. Of course, the show features its fair share of suggestive poses and naked flesh but the work on display avoids both the tasteful aesthetics of erotica and the explicit vulgarity of pornography.
Consider Ion Birch’s 2007 piece, “Young Love.” The drawing, graphite on paper, depicts young people engaging in an orgy. At first glance, they appear to be enjoying themselves, but that initial impression collapses on closer inspection. To begin, the massive phallus and swollen pudenda at the center of the drawing are patently absurd. Looking still closer still, the orgiasts’ smiles begin to resemble leers and their gaze, at first confident and inviting, becomes vacant and, possibly, feral. In other words, Birch’s drawing won’t make it into your spank bank.
The idea for Sex Drive emerged from a faculty seminar called “Sex, State, and Society in the Early Modern World.” In that seminar, a group of Haverford professors use art, history, literature, and theory to examine sex and sexuality from 1500 through 1800. Michel Foucault, a French philosopher, serves as their guiding spirit.
Fairly abstract stuff, but these ideas will eventually make their way from this faculty-only working group and into the classroom. Consequently, the professors began searching for a way to include their students by making their research concrete and relevant.
For assistance, they turned to Stuart Horodner, Artistic Director and Curator at the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center. One of Horodner’s recent projects was an exhibit of erotic drawings, and the professors felt he would be an ideal collaborator.
The learning opportunity afforded by displaying politically and sexually-charged works to a group of inquisitive, thoughtful young people was not lost on them. As Horodner explained via email, “A show like Sex Drive could easily have taken place at the ICA or another venue, but I think in the context of a college it becomes more about the education of young people and raising various questions about a topic that must be on their minds and in their bodies-choice, desire, identity, what struggles on the topic have come before and still persist.”
One way the exhibit teaches viewers is by linking it to the ongoing brouhaha regarding public funding for sexually explicit art. This controversy flared up most recently late last fall, when religious leaders and House Republicans banded together and pressured the National Portrait Gallery to remove artist David Wojnarowicz’s video, “A Fire in My Belly,” from a major exhibition about sexuality called “Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture.”
Horodner and his colleagues made the connection between Sex Drive and the larger context explicit by adding, at the last minute, a vinyl reproduction of a 1990 photostat Wojnarowicz created known as “One Day This Kid….” Situated at the beginning of the exhibit, this work confronts visitors. An oversized image of Wojnarowicz as a little boy, looking innocent and smiling sweetly, is surrounded by two columns of official-looking text as it might appear in a newspaper. That text recounts the many ways “this kid” will have his sexuality molded, warped, distorted and even demonized by adults, the public, and the institutions that shape us all.
Sex Drive is also noteworthy for including Haverfordians in every stage of the exhibit, from research and planning to actually making art. Early last fall, student volunteers were solicited. Roughly ten spent the next few weeks combing through the library and scouring the Web to gather images. Most bowed out as finals neared, but three persevered. The trio ended up contributing to the artwork and writing essays for the show: Ellen Freeman, Patrick Phelan, and Michael Rushmore.
Freeman, a senior from the Pacific Northwest majoring in comparative literature, worked with Phelan on locating images that artist Nancy VanDevender incorporated into a wallpaper design created for the show. At the outset, before becoming immersed in the project, she believed the exhibit was “just about sex,” a pretty blas� topic for most college students.
“Well, that’s not very interesting,” was her first thought, Freeman explained by phone. “We’re college students, and I don’t feel we’re that repressed about sex. Especially queer sex practices. In my group of friends that’s just not a taboo subject.”
Freeman very quickly learned that not everyone shares her beliefs. The students’ Flickr account, created to stockpile images for VanDevender’s use, was deleted-suddenly and without explanation. Although the images were primarily drawn from art history and from medical textbooks, someone had deemed them “unsafe.”
By omitting a brief note explaining that the images were research for an art exhibit, they were, in effect, censored. Freeman refers to what happened as an example of “cultural separation,” referring to the curious, arbitrary way that some work is labeled art and other work is deemed pornography.
Fortunately, Sex Drive escaped similar censorship. But as the show prepares to close its brief run (it returns to Atlanta in March), one can’t help but regret that more people outside Haverford’s student body did not get to see this provocative, timely exhibit.
To learn more about Sex Drive, and its attendant projects, visit news.haverford.edu/blogs/sexdrive
