Bonnie Ora Sherk Went to the Zoo
Besides sitting still and establishing a community farm beside a freeway in the 1970s, Bonnie Ora Sherk presented public performances in which she worked as a short-order cook in a donut shop and ate lunch in a cage at the San Francisco Zoo. The latter if featured in an exhibition, "Feast: Radical Hospitality in Contemporary Art" curated by Stephanie Smith, Deputy Director & Chief Curator at the Smart Museum of Art, The University of Chicago. Sherk explained the ecological and social implications of this performance in a wonderful interview conducted by Smith. It contains the following highlights:
Photographs of Public Lunch (1971) depict Sherk well-groomed and neatly dressed calmly eating an elegant meal. She is seated behind bars as a tiger evokes the opposite demeanor. It is devouring raw meat in the neighboring cage. Sherk timed the piece to coincide with the animals feeding schedule when many visitors congregate at these cages. They discovered that a female human animal was being fed like the non-human population at the zoo.
As Smith notes, by introducing the theme of human/animal relationships and communication, this solo meal blurred boundaries between human and animal behavior, public and private space, everyday life and spectacle, and biological versus cultural systems.
Sherk’s early work is currently being honored in three important exhibitions:
“State of Mind: New California Art Circa 1970” curated by Constance Lewallan & Karen Moss at The Bronx Museum of the Arts through September 8, 2013. This exhibition will travel to The Smart Museum, University of Chicago from October 3, 2013 to January 12, 2014. This exhibition originated at the Orange County Museum of Art as part of The Getty’s Pacific Standard Time, and then traveled to Berkeley Art Museum, Belkin Gallery, University of Vancouver, and Site Santa Fe in New Mexico.
Feast: Radical Hospitality in Contemporary Art
curated by Stephanie Smith, Deputy Director & Chief Curator at the Smart Museum of Art, The University of Chicago will be at The Blaffer Museum, University of Houston TX from August 31, 2013 to January 5, 2014. This exhibition will then travel to SITE Santa Fe, New Mexico, February 1-May 17, 2014; Gund Gallery at Kenyon College, Gambier, Ohio, July 25-November 30, 2014; and Weisman Art Museum, Minneapolis, Minnesota, January 31-May 10, 2015.
“Green Acres: Artists Farming Fields, Greenhouses and Abandoned Lots“, curated by Sue Spaid opened at the Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, Ohio is now traveling to the Katzen Arts Center at American University, Washington DC, September 3 to October 20, 2013.