| Meet
the Invulnerable Woman - no matter what the abuse, she'll
take it! Spin the Baby Wheel of Fortune to find
out how your life is determined by your reproductive cycle!
Visit the Torture Museum and adjoining Beauty
Shop to share recipes of domestication! Or have your
future told by The Alien Fortune Teller, who might
suggest you solve your troubles by going to live on her
planet, "where everyone is truly equal."
While The Sideshow duplicates an appealing carnival
atmosphere, it has also received critical recognition
as an art installation that playfully questions the way
femininity has been constructed in Western culture over
the last century. As The Sideshow explores social
constraints, simulations of the feminine and power relationships,
it also pokes fun at the institution of the museum and
its complicity in the exploitation of people for the sake
of art.
Since the 1830's, when P.T. Barnum first acquired the
five-story American Museum and began traveling the world
to find the most spectacular human oddities, the idea
of the "freak show" has been oddly conjoined
with the enterprise of the museum. However overshadowed
by the ubiquity of televised spectacle, the carnival and
the museum nevertheless still hold an interest for the
American psyche. As a re-staging of both the carnival
and the museological display, Joseph's Sideshow
is no less popular, having drawn record-breaking audiences
at all of its venues to date.
Joseph's work has been described as "well-executed,
powerful, and edgy, ... combining large-scale work with
intricate detail" by The Colorado Council of the
Arts, who awarded her a Fellowship in 2001. The Sideshow
has also been picked as a "favorite" exhibition
by art writers in New Mexico, Colorado and the Midwest
for being "funky," "freaky," and "fascinating."
The Sideshow of the Absurd opened at The Boulder
Museum of Contemporary Art, Boulder, Colorado in January,
2001 and has since traveled to the McKinney Avenue Contemporary
in Dallas, Texas, Erie Art Museum in Erie, Pennsylvania,
the William J. Bachman Gallery at The Center for Visual
and Performing Arts in Munster, Indiana as well as the
Jonson Gallery at the University of New Mexico Art Museums.
A catalogue and video of the exhibition is available.
More
information: www.pamelajoseph.com
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Alien
Fortune Teller, 2001
Multi-media with digital video machine and sound
10' x 4'1" x 3'9" |
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| Alien
Fortune Teller
- detail |
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Shelly
The Human Tortoise
Painted Banner - 2001
Acrylic on canvas
4'10" x 4' |
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