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Micol Hebron

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Micol Hebron & William Kentridge
Artist Bios

Micol Hebron is an interdisciplinary artist who primarily works out of Los Angeles and is currently an associate professor at Chapman University in the New Genres department. Her work explores feminist activism through performance and the documentation of these performances as she aims to reclaim agency over the feminine body. Hebron is the creator of the “Male nipple template” which was in response to social media platforms, specifically Instagram, taking down posts with female nipples. Pasting these male nipples atop female nipples made the picture allowable to post, according to Instagram’s headquarters' standards. With feminist activism driving her work, Hebron uses her body as a medium as seen in her performace series In (Decent) Exposure. Hebron has two works in the show both of which are from a performance series documented throughout Los Angeles and connects to William Kentridge’s piece, which is also in the exhibition.

William Kentridge is a South African artist born in Johannesburg who works across media such as drawing, animation, film, sculpture, and more. A major theme across his work focuses on the post-apartheid work of South Africa and the desolation and need for rebuilding because of colonialism. Kentridge often criticizes the South African government in his work and aims to bring more awareness to the country’s history and long-awaiting change. With his most recent show at The Broad in Los Angeles, Kentridge has shown in many blue-chip galleries including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Tate Modern in London, and the Centre George’s Pompidou in Paris. Executed in his signature style incorporating newspaper Kentridge’s charcoal drawing Olympia is placed in dialog with Hebron’s performative photographs.

Works

The two works by Micol Hebron are part of a larger series called (In) Decent Exposure where Hebron's body is the catalyst for her concept which is to normalize the female body and to see it in a non-sexual light. However, because of societal norms and pressures, anytime there is a nude female body, there is a sexual connotation put onto it, regardless of what it may be doing. The first piece titled Commute measures 16 x 24 in and is a photograph of the artist driving a car without a shirt on. Driving a car is an everyday, mundane task for most, but when the person driving it is a topless woman, Hebron shows that the context of the image changes. If a man were to be driving his car without a shirt on, it would be seen as normal and no one would bat an eye. This piece explicitly points out the lack of normality that exists in the conversations about women's bodies and the sexual undertone that is seemingly inherent to them. Similarly in the second piece, Domestic, the artist waters the grass on her lawn while nude. The photograph measures 24 x16 in and displays the artist with a watering hose placed in front of her genitals, making the hose look rather phallic. All throughout art history the use of the naked man is often used in European fountains, and this piece emulates that but through a feminine lens being that Hebron acts as the fountain. The same commentary is made through this piece because watering the lawn is a banal act but becomes more exciting when a naked woman is placed into it. Ironically, the grass is almost completely dead and brown, but Hebron continues to water it. Though this piece was made in 2016, its relevance still stands with the recent overturn of Roe V. Wade and constant legislative change across the world concerning women and shier body autonomy.

William Kentridge’s Olympia (Wing) is interesting to look at with Hebron’s work because Hebron is a woman making work about being a woman and Kentridge’s piece is a man making work about women. Olympia (Wing) measures 29.5 x 36.75 in and is. a lithograph and collage. the work depicts a cherub laying back with a pleasured facial expression atop collaged pages from an encyclopedia. While this is a challenge to the usual way women’s bodies are depicted in art history, it does not make any comment about women other than their bodies. This phenomenon is common in art and culture because women are stripped of any personalization, and their value only comes from their physical appearance. Kentridge’s piece, though formally sound, depicts the female body as it is all over art history, a subject of the male gaze, while Hebron makes herself the subject of her own gaze: the female gaze.