Synopsis:
With an ambitious sculpture and performance project in Brooklyn, New York, artist Doreen Garner unflinchingly forces audiences to face the profound racism underlying the life and work of Dr. J. Marion Sims, long considered the “father of modern gynecology.” In the nineteenth century the celebrated Sims performed torturous procedures on enslaved Black women without anesthesia or consent, for the purposes of experimentation and research. As part of the exhibition “White Man On A Pedestal,” Garner creates visceral, life-like sculptures made of silicone, pearls, Swarovski crystals, and glass beads, that acknowledge the brutality endured by Sims’s subjects. For her performance “Purge,” Garner recreates the monument to Sims that stands in Central Park, casting a silicone replica of the statue. With a group of Black female performers, she then enacts the very gynecological surgery that Sims became famous for—repair of the vesicovaginal fistula—upon this silicone body. “I’m operating in a really weird place,” explains Garner. “I’m a Black woman horrified by these actions, and yet I have to show all these actions so that it’s not a situation where people are able to overlook this information anymore.” In April 2018, after growing public scrutiny, the City of New York relocated Sims’s monument to Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, where Sims is currently buried.
Country:
United States
Directed by:
Brian Redondo