Winter/Miller Lecture
“When I was a sophomore, I remember going to the first Winter/Miller Lecture with Nicole Eisenman, and how my painting professor, Joanne Vella, said what a privilege the opportunity was that a student got to bring her to campus,” said Caroline Coxe, a studio art major. “I remember thinking, ‘I have to get that internship!’”
Coxe volunteered on the Tang Student Advisory Council and worked as a Gallery Monitor and as a programming assistant before being awarded the 2019-20 Eleanor Linder Winter ‘45 Endowed Internship.
The acclaimed artist Wangechi Mutu was her first choice for the Winter/Miller Lecture.
“I thought she would be completely out of reach, so I included her on a list with others who I thought would more realistic options,” Coxe said. “When I was sixteen I had an art-class assignment to pick an object and render it in the style of any artist. I chose mushrooms as my object. Then, for inspiration, I Googled ‘mushroom paintings.’ Amidst the mass of colorful, melting ‘shroom art, I stumbled across a 2002 artwork entitled Riding Death in My Sleep by Wangechi Mutu.
"It was a collage depicting a colossal female figure squatting in high heels in a field of mushrooms. She is surrounded by a flying elephant, a bald eagle comprised of just a head and talons, and a number of other hybrid creatures. I was struck by the fierce, graceful figure staring me dead in the eyes, and the textures and collage elements that were used to construct her. Once I found this piece, I scoured her website, finding myself more and more enchanted with her surreal figurative collages. At sixteen, I had never experienced such emotional complexity in art. It changed my perception of making.
“Wangechi Mutu has been my biggest artistic inspiration for five years now, and getting to meet her is incredible. To this day, because of her influence, my studio is scattered with magazine clippings, and fabric scraps with which I constructs landscapes and bodies.”
Lover Earth
Lover Earth: Art and Ecosexuality draws on the ideas of Elizabeth Stephens and Annie Sprinkle, collaborative performance artists who coined the term “ecosexuality” to describe an erotic connection to nature. Instead of “Mother Earth,” they opt to use the phrase “Lover Earth” to denote a reciprocal relationship between humans and Earth.
“I came across Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens and their ecosex movement last summer, and I was really struck by the ways it embraced environmental activism, art, and sex positivity all at once,” Coxe said. “It’s a really fresh, exciting perspective on environmental justice. It’s rare to see museums tackling environmental issues through their exhibitions, so I thought by using ecosexuality as a framework, I could get viewers to think critically about their relationship with the earth through art.”
Through a selection of paintings, prints, photographs, and moving images, Lover Earth recontextualizes artworks from the Tang collection—many being shown by the Museum for the first time—to create a diverse ecology that celebrates nature, sexuality, and the ways in which these ideas intersect.
