Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art
Feminist Art Base: Mary Ellen Strom

Strom’s work takes the form of video installation and site projects. It has been exhibited in a range of contexts, including museums, galleries, passenger trains, large-scale video projections onto mountains, empty retail stores, and horse arenas. Recent projects: "Day Labor", 2007, video installation made with choreographer Ann Carlson and four men who work as day laborers, Jose Bautista, Joel Gomez, Lisandrow Vicente and Carlos Hernandez. In the video, the men re-create an earthwork, “Two Parallel Lines” by Walter De Marias, 1968. Support from Rockefeller Foundation and St. Gauden’s prize. "Future Memory", 2006, solo show, Judi Rotenberg Gallery, Boston. This collection of video projections works to further understand intersections between embodiment and representation. Settings of the videos are meticulously produced, visual fields from paintings by Magritte, Courbet and Botticelli. Contemporary women artists embody these settings bringing their subectivity to the narratives. Boston Globe’s, “Ten Top Shows, 2006” and Big, Red &Shiny’s, “Top 3 Shows in a Commercial Gallery”. "CAke" (Collecting Action and Knowledge about the Every Day), 2005, site installation with Ann Carlson explores the source to use trajectory of the apparel industry, presenting labor issues and ethical complexities facing consumers. CAke took place in an empty retail store, featuring life-size video portraits of legal and illegal garment workers. The installation design exploited strategies of retail marketing that constructs consumer desire and brought the consumer/spectator in direct contact with the laborers. Produced by LMCC. "The Nudes", 2005, solo show, Judi Rotenberg Gallery, series of video projections re-staging paintings of female nudes. Installations feature contemporary women artists, who become subjects (not objects) of the work. Individual projections are titled with names of the women artists. Also exhibited at Gray-Kapernecas Gallery, NYC, Exit Art, NYC, Wood Street Gallery, Pittsburgh, Art Interactive, Boston. "Geyser Land", 2003, with Ann Carlson, site installation presented in Montana. The audience boarded a train and traveled 25 miles through the Bozeman pass. Out of the train’s windows spectators witnessed video projections on the mountains. The conceptual strategy used the train to establish the spectator’s point of view, to locate the spectator in a tourist position and to point to the railroad as a tool of colonialism. Work has also been exhibited at MOCA, LA, MoMA, NYC, the ICA, Boston, Yerba Buena, SF, Archa, Divaldo, Prague, Museo de Arte, Mexico City, Temple Bar, Dublin, Ars Electronica , Linz Austria, Chapter Art Centre, Cardiff Wales. Represented by Judi Rotenberg Gallery.

The Nudes are a series of video projections that re-stage paintings of female nudes. The series continues my desire to represent the human body and to further understand the intersections between embodiment and representation using technology. The women who are models for this project are contemporary artists, so they become the subjects (not objects) of the work. The project explores the contested site of the female nude by literally embodying the territory that was formerly the location of male artistic desire and production. The individual works are titled with the names of the women artists. The paintings are staged with a live model and set and videotaped with a high definition video camera. The nudes are installed as a series of individual video projections onto gallery walls. The projections are the size of the original paintings. A performative space is produced for the viewer to engage with the subject and to heighten their consciousness of the spectator experience. The project has sought to celebrate the desire created by the women's bodies and to recognize their strength, confidence and self-possession. The subjectivity of artists is intact, with or without their clothes on. We can identify with the subjects and feel power and sexuality not passivity. We can be conscious of our act of viewing while allowing ourselves to experience pleasure, theirs and ours.