{"id":18174,"date":"2018-04-21T14:04:13","date_gmt":"2018-04-21T14:04:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.impactmania.com\/im\/aliza-shvarts-introducing-off-scene\/"},"modified":"2025-11-24T17:03:12","modified_gmt":"2025-11-24T17:03:12","slug":"aliza-shvarts-introducing-off-scene","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.impactmania.com\/im\/aliza-shvarts-introducing-off-scene\/","title":{"rendered":"Aliza Shvarts: Introducing Off Scene, Artspace, May 11-June 25, 2018"},"content":{"rendered":"

Introducing Off Scene<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

By\u00a0Aliza Shvarts<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

For the past ten years I\u2019ve lived a strange contradiction for an artist: I\u2019m best known for a piece that no one has ever seen. In 2008, I came to national media attention for my senior thesis in the Art major at Yale, which was banned by the university and has never been shown in any public way<\/a><\/strong>. My project, though controversial, was inspired by questions that I think are central to both feminism and art: What are our capacities as makers? What can a body do?<\/p>\n

I was honored to have the opportunity to talk to Paksy Plackis-Cheng about this project and my more current work for <\/strong><\/a>impactmania<\/strong>.<\/em>\u00a0It is powerful to be contextualized within a larger collective of women who are exploring similar issues of agency and self-determination in different fields. And it\u2019s for this reason that I wanted to write directly to this community about a solo exhibition I\u2019ll be having in May of 2018\u2014something that is a big step for me, but something I believe is only truly meaningful insofar as it opens on to a broader shared conversation.<\/p>\n

The show, which I\u2019ve titled Off Scene<\/em>, is something I\u2019ve been developing with a women-run nonprofit gallery in New Haven, CT called Artspace<\/a><\/strong>. It will include some of the censored visual material from my 2008 senior thesis piece alongside a survey of my work from the past decade, including a brand-new piece. I am imagining the show in its entirety as a site-specific installation. The title refers to how Artspace exists in the shadow of several powerful institutions\u2014not only Yale University, but also the New York-centric art world. At the same time, it is a metaphor for other kinds of marginalization: for the kind of work that takes place in the shadows, gets overlooked, silenced, and erased.<\/p>\n

Off Scene<\/em> names for me a kind of feminist practice: not only my own efforts as an artist, but also our collective endeavors to navigate conditions that marginalize, erase, and silence us. It refers to the body\u2019s capacity to disrupt\u2014a capacity often disciplined as ob<\/em>-scene. Off Scene<\/em> describes a status of women\u2019s narratives: specifically, how the capacity to speak and testify is structured by gendered and racial exclusion\u2014an issue that has become timely again in the wake of the recent national speaking-out about systematic sexual assault. Off Scene<\/em> also refers to women\u2019s work: not only the fact that women are not payed an equal wage, but the fact that many of the labors we perform that have to do with the maintenance of our families, ourselves, and our communities, are not recognized or valued as \u201cwork\u201d at all.<\/p>\n

In addition to exploring these themes in my work, I will be undertaking several public initiatives in parallel with the exhibition. I\u2019m co-organizing a\u00a0roundtable entitled Living Fiction: Performance and Politics in the Space of Interdiction, <\/em>which will bring together art historians, legal scholars, and visual artists to discuss broader questions of feminist representation and censorship, political legibility, and institutional power. I\u2019m also requiring that Artspace<\/a><\/strong> become a W.A.G.E.-certified organization<\/a><\/strong>, meaning that they pledge to always remunerate all artists fairly and take a stand against the inherent exploitations of the art market.<\/p>\n

Much of my work brings together the personal and the political in a feminist tradition; yet equally important to me is the relationship between personal and collective experience. I make my work because we have all felt\u2014and have had to navigate\u2014the limitations of our own agency.\u00a0\u00a0 At a time when women\u2019s rights are under renewed attack, this seems to me an important conversation to open up beyond the gallery walls, which is why I wanted to extend an invitation to this community of impactful women to be in dialogue with me about these issues.\u00a0\u00a0 I hope you\u2019ll come to my show, but more importantly, I hope my show is the beginning of an ongoing conversation.<\/p>\n

Off Scene<\/em> will be on view at Artspace (50 Orange Street, New Haven, CT 06510)<\/a><\/strong> from May 11-June 25, 2018.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For the past ten years I\u2019ve lived a strange contradiction for an artist: I\u2019m best known for a piece that no one has ever seen. In 2008, I came to national media attention for my senior thesis in the Art major at Yale, which was banned by the university and has never been shown in any public way. My project, though controversial, was inspired by questions that I think are central to both feminism and art: What are our capacities as makers? What can a body do?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1170],"tags":[1997,98,356,1998,1999,2000,118,647,2001,2002,2003,2004],"class_list":["post-18174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-human-interests","tag-aliza-shvarts","tag-art","tag-artist","tag-artspace","tag-banned-art","tag-new-haven","tag-new-york","tag-ny","tag-off-scene","tag-performance-artist","tag-w-a-g-e","tag-yale-university"],"yoast_head":"\nAliza Shvarts: Introducing Off Scene, Artspace, May 11-June 25, 2018 - impactmania<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.impactmania.com\/im\/aliza-shvarts-introducing-off-scene\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Aliza Shvarts: Introducing Off Scene, Artspace, May 11-June 25, 2018 - impactmania\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"For the past ten years I\u2019ve lived a strange contradiction for an artist: I\u2019m best known for a piece that no one has ever seen. 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