#dara birnbaum

[intersection-2]

Quiet Disaster. 1999

[abwwia]

Dara Birnbaum, born New York City 1946

Technology/Transformation: Wonder Woman

Credit Line: Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase made possible by the Ford Motor Company

Copyright© 1978-1979 Dara Birnbaum. Courtesy Electronic Arts Intermix, NY

[michellepamelalyons]

[brooklynmuseum]

If you ask someone to name five artists, they will likely name prominent male artists, but how many people can list five women artists? Throughout March’s Women’s History Month, we will be joining institutions around the world to answer this very question posed by the National Museum of Women in the Arts (NWMA). We will be featuring a woman artist every day this month, and highlighting artists in our current exhibition Half the Picture: A Feminist Look at the Collection which explores a wide range of art-making, focusing on enduring political subjects—encompassing gender, race, and class—that remain relevant today. The show is on view until March 31, 2019.

Together we hope to draw attention to the gender and race imbalance in the art world, inspire conversation and awareness, and hopefully add a few more women to everyone’s lists.

Groundbreaking video artist Dara Birnbaum was an early and prescient appropriator of television clichés and pop culture icons. In Technology/Transformation: Wonder Woman, she critiques media representations of women by repurposing footage from the well-known weekly television series, isolating and repeating the character’s signature movements of power transformation. Displaying the lyrics to “Wonder Woman Disco,”  released in 1978 by the Wonderland Disco Band, Birnbaum highlights the song’s sexual subtext and lays bare its double entendres.

Dara Birnbaum (born New York, New York, 1946) [Still] Technology/Transformation: Wonder Woman, 1978–79. Video, color, stereo sound; 5 min. 50 sec. Gift of Elizabeth A. Sackler, 2013.23

[contemporaryartdaily]

"Before Projection: Video Sculpture 1974-1994" at MIT List Visual Arts Center

[oculablog]

Dara Birnbaum, MJ 1987 - The Way You Make Me Feel (2017). Set of 4; UV curable pigment on acrylic Plexiglas, chrome finish aluminium supports, edition 1/3 + 2AP. Each: 30 x 30 x 1/2 inches. Courtesy Marian Goodman Gallery.

[sioxh]

Dara Birnbaum, Transmission Tower: Sentinel, 1992

[brooklynmuseum]

Here at @brooklynmuseum​ we're celebrating A Year of Yes, a yearlong recognition of feminism as a force for progressive change. During this season, we're reimagining next steps, expanding feminism from the struggle for gender parity to embrace broader social-justice issues of tolerance, inclusion, and diversity. Today as hundreds of thousands of Wonder People set out across the country for the Womens March, we salute you all on your march to defend equality and inclusion. If you want to continue the fight after today, our doors will be open for you.

Dara Birnbaum (American, born 1946). Technology/Transformation: Wonder Woman 1978/9. NTSC Digi-Beta Master (color, stereo sound), duration: 5.5 min. Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Elizabeth A. Sackler, 2013.23. © artist or artist's estate