Psychosexual Video Art Work Censored - Too Nasty for Connecticut

New York-based artist, educator and curator, Rebecca Goyette, was invited to submit a work for the 6th Annual Nasty Women Connecticut exhibition -?The Will To Change: Gathering as Praxis?- at the Lyman Allyn Art Museum in New London, Connecticut. The show runs from June 18 to August 12.?

There was no budget for shipping work. Goyette, who works in various mediums, sent one of her humorous psychosexual video works My Snake is Bigger Than Your Snake. The video played for three days before the Museum's curator, Jane LeGraw, contacted Goyette to say the work was drawing too much attention, upsetting parents, and they wanted to take it down.?

In a letter to Goyette, LeGraw said she and Samuel Quigley had "concluded that...despite its relative merits, the Lyman Allyn, with our family-centric audience, is not the right venue for this piece."

"While the video itself isn’t a good fit for us, we would very much like to include your work in the exhibition—perhaps an alternate, non-video piece exploring some of the same themes, such as one of your drawings from the same series? Another possibility would be to include a printed still from the movie in the show with a QR code that would take interested viewers to the full film on your website. That way they could view it on their own devices, even while in the gallery."?

The video work is just over 13 minutes. Why would Museum curator's find the work inappropriate for family-centric viewing in the gallery?

"All my films operate to create conversations about sexuality through performance art and costuming. This film was part of my series LobstaPorns. They are not porn. There's no actual sex happening in the films. I create costumes with handsewn genitalia that people wear on the outside. In this case, the film is called?My Snake is Bigger than your Snake.?The genitalia was actually green snakes. So it didn't even really look like you know much of anything," said Goyette. "The basic premise of the film was I was making a comedy film about my father passing away, and the idea of selling his house to a man wearing a t-shirt that said,?My Snake is Bigger than your Snake. I was doing a parody. It was about sexuality. But it was really a camp film that talked about dysfunctional family values."

A compromise was reached with the Museum. Another work submitted - a painting - with a written statement from Nasty Women Connecticut about the censorship and QR code linking to the video but remaining out of view.

"As the organization of this exhibition, felt it was import to address this matter, especially as we consider the ways of censorship has hurt and erased women, queer, trans, non-binary, black and brown and indigenous tribes," stated Nasty Women Connecticut in the statement.

"Rebecca Goyette’s films feature psychosexual improvisation to gain access to inner workings of self and the human experience. When casting “My Snake is Bigger Than Your Snake,” she asked each performer about their specific kinks. Their preferences shaped each character’s persona in the film. Through creating a consent-based community, Goyette sought for the performers to fulfill themselves within the role play that served to dramatize her personal story. Using sex play as healing, a utopic world was formed where straight folks and queer folks could play together in ways that don’t often happen," they added.

Nasty Women art shows began as a call out on Facebook by Roxanne Jackson and Jessamyn Fiore for women artists/curators to create exhibitions in a rebuke of Donald Trump's phrase "such a nasty woman," a diss he made about Hillary Clinton during 2016 presidential debate. Since then there have been 40 such exhibitions around the world.?

Goyette said she didn't know if she made the right decision or not. She didn't want to give up the territory of having a work in the show after the she had been invited to participate by the two curators from Nasty Women Connecticut. She said she told the head curator of the museum that she thought the censorship was really shameful especially as they gave space to the Nasty Women Connecticut to create an edgy political exhibition and at a politically sensitive time with the reversal of Roe v. Wade decision by the United State Supreme Court, and the ongoing ordeals faced by many in the LGBTQ community.

Art work has been censored and often misunderstood before. When the American photographer, Andres Serrano's Piss Christ, featuring a photograph of a plastic crucifix submerged in the artist's urine, went on view in 1987 t lead to rebukes by baptists in Virginia and North Carolina for blasphemy. The work was called out by North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms outraged the artist had received taxpayer funds via the National Endowment for the Arts and led to a cut in funding to NEA. American photographer Robert Mapplethorpe's X Portfolio featured homoerotic and sadomasochistic images. His 1989 solo show The Perfect Moment brought national attention when it traveled to the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.,?in 1989. The Corcoran cancelled the show following protests over the images. Then there was Renee Cox Yo Mama's Last Supper in 1999 which featured the artist posing nude at the center as a Christ-like figure in imitation of Leonardo da Vinci's 1490s painting the Last Supper. Then New York City Mayor, Rudy Giuliani, was offended by the work and called for the creation of a panel to create decency standards for all art shown at publicly funded museums in the city. And most recently was American performance artists and sculptor, Paul McCarthy upset the French when he placed Tree in 2014 in Place Vendome in Paris.

What is lost when a video art work is censored?

"I think what is lost are opportunities. So for instance, for many years, I was an educator at the Museum of Modern Art, and I gave tours of provocative works to children. You walked by a Kara Walker mural or a Carolee Schneemann's Meat Joy. And these artworks have provocative sexual imagery. Carolee Schneemann's work in a celebratory sense, and Kara Walker's work talking about rape that happened during times when black people were enslaved in America. Right, " said Goyette.?

"But in both cases, the imagery is sexual, and it can sneak up on you when you're in a gallery space with children. Well, if a child asks a question about one of these artworks, I'm willing to create a conversation about that. It's an open opportunity to talk about what is what is it that we are seeing, because these things are in the museum for a reason. So that all people have to confront them, and have some kind of conversation. So in the case of Kara Walker's work, you know, you're gonna have a conversation that's different with a five year old versus a 15 year old versus an 18 year old. But those are all useful conversations, right? Because you're not trying to get rid of the artwork, we can have different types of conversations with different age groups about an artwork, you know, and, and, by not avoiding sexuality."

Goyette said there is also a general lack of support for performance artists and video artists who are some of the lowest paid artists in the art word as the work is considered less commercially viable. She said she and others are making work to create a reaction and create conversation and take a risk to do it, and a financial loss but there is a reason for making the work.

Goyette said viewing her work offers a deeper understanding of the dynamics of power that exists in sexuality. Some of her work is celebratory, and others lead towards exploring sexual violence.

"But no matter which direction I go in, what I'm trying to say is, let's wear our organs on the outside. Let's talk about these things out in the open, where we can manage it, "said Goyette. "because guess what, if we did that on a daily basis, maybe we would have been able to protect our right to choose much better, because we would already be armed and equipped to talk about these issues across all age groups with no shame."

Goyette's work can be found at?RebeccaGoyette.com?https://www.rebeccagoyette.com/