Artist Presentation #1: Cecilia Dougherty

Cecilia Dougherty
Cecilia Dougherty is an artist and writer who is mostly known for her video work and exploration of language, sexuality, feminism, human rights, queer rights, critical theory, visual culture, outsider interpretation and perception of popular culture and global politics. Many but not all of Dougherty's work have a focus in one or more of these themes or ones closely relating. She produces her work in a way of exploitation of these themes, a way of showing the importance of what is being said and shown. I became more interested in her work the more videos I found and the more information I was able to gather about her, her work and any reason for her ideas of developing her videos.

One of the videos I chose for this assignment was Gay Tape: Butch and Femme. I chose this because I personally found it interesting out of the videos I was able to see clips of but I also thought that this was extremely closely related to this course and what we have been studying. This video was about women who identify as lesbians talking about what it is like, experiences they have had and expressing some of their opinions about the impact of society on their lives and experiences. The way in which this is conducted seems to be in a form of criticism but in an almost light hearted or understanding way rather that accusing, angered form. I find this to be an interesting approach but also like it would be the most productive and that if it were too forceful the video work would not make the impact it did.

The other work I chose to focus on was Dougherty's Grapefruit. I was a little unsure about this video at first until I re-watched it and looked in to what is was supposed to be about beyond the obvious. Once I realized that I thought that it too worked really well for this class material and was using a cultural phenomenon that is known to most people. I think that how Dougherty used the relationship
of The Beatles and John Legend and Yoko Ono to show something so much more than that. Dougherty was able to manipulate these individuals as characters played to make inferences about the lesbian sub-culture and its relationship to the dominant heterosexual culture which is something that has been plagued with stereotypes and assumptions that Daugherty inherently uses to her advantage in this video.

Gay Tape: Butch and Femme: https://vimeo.com/159292230
Grapefruit: https://vimeo.com/31576479