Martha
Wilson

Martha
Wilson

American, born in 1947


Martha Wilson (b. 1947) is a feminist artist from New York. A pioneer of performance art, in the 1970s, she lent her body, transformed by make-up, to a gallery of subversive characters. Staging herself in her photographs and videos, she borrowed identities to question the models imposed on women. In 1976, she created DISBAND, a group of New York female artists active from 1978 to 1982, who produced music by shouting and stamping on the ground, blurring the line between concert and performance. What do women want? Or more precisely, how does society shape what they want? Martha Wilson examines the way women are supposed to appear in the public sphere and how these conventions are learned.