Portland Community College | Portland, Oregon

Carolee Schneemann presents ‘Mysteries of the Iconographies’

Photos and story by James Hill

At 7 p.m., Thursday, Feb. 17, renowned artist Carolee Schneemann will give a performance lecture at the Performing Arts Center on the Sylvania Campus. In “Mysteries of the Iconographies,” Schneemann will talk about her five decades of artmaking exploring some of the themes and imagery that have informed her explorations of sensuality, the cultural mind-body divide and personal freedom in works as varied as film and video, drawing, painting, performance and photography.

Her video, film, painting, photography, performance art and installation works have been shown at such institutions as the Los Angeles County Museum of Contemporary Art, New York’s New Museum of Contemporary Art, Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid, the Moderna Museet in Stockholm and the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris.

“Precarious,” Schneemann’s multichannel video installation, was presented at the Tate Liverpool Abandon Normal Devices Festival in 2009. In 2010, the Dorsky Museum at SUNY New Paltz presented a major retrospective encompassing the full range of Schneemann’s visual work.

Schneeman is the author of several books, including “Imaging her Erotics  Essays, Interviews, Projects” (2002), and “Correspondence Course: An Epistolatory History of Carolee Schneemann and her Circle” (2010), edited by Kristine Stiles. She has taught at such institutions as New York University, Bard College, California Institute of the Arts and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

This is Schneemann’s first visit to Portland. Her trip is sponsored by Portland Community College’s student government and the Women’s Resource Center.