“The Ladies Room: Art by Wanda Ewing & Anita Drieseberg” runs to Oct 30. By appointment only. Whippersnapper Gallery, 587A College. 416-887-7483.
www.whippersnapper.ca.
Wanda Ewing’s work has been called any number of things: provocative, feminist, cheeky, self-deprecating. The Omaha-based printmaker is known for interrogating the female form via self-portraiture. In a long-running series included in this exhibit (her first in Toronto), Ewing examines the politics of hair by painting different ’dos — from a Marge Simpson beehive to Stevie Wonder-style beaded braids — above the same, simple, outlined print of her face. Ewing is clearly preoccupied with issues surrounding self-image — size-ism, the lack of pluralistic representations of black beauty — which supposedly derive from a personal narrative of growing up black in Midwestern America.
The “Wallpaper Pin-Ups” series is a relational riff on the 2004 series “Black as Pitch / Hot as Hell,” but replaces the original plywood panels with found wallpaper. The linocut prints loosely appropriate, with a feminist bent, the postwar pinup style of American illustrator Peter Driben. Ewing is true to Driben’s well-known, contortionist emphasis on legs, complementing it with thick thighs, rounded apple bottoms, lacquered, Josephine-Baker hair curls and coquettish, direct stares. This is, presumably, a counter-historical reclamation, yet it never quite reads as contemporary.
It’s the wallpaper in particular that’s conflicting. Aesthetically pleasing, this conservative chintz seems to recall that first, bland floral couch prominently displayed in the Huxtable living room — the ultimate representation of the American middle-class “buppie” experience. There’s something very personal about this, suggesting Ewing’s own “bougie” background, which she explores further in her satirical prints of Essence-like magazine covers (exhibiting in New York later this week, but not included in this show). Yet such exciting explorations are hindered by the one-size-fits-all feminism suggested by the figures. It’s a politically-correct, yet woefully non-committal, approach that is a disservice to Ewing’s ideas, patting viewers on the back for considering the issues, but never rising to a real, provocative challenge.