brides of frankenstein

Sunday, July 31, 2005 through Sunday, October 30, 2005

Brides of Frankenstein will exhibit experimental work by a new generation of female artists working with video, installation, robotics, the Internet, computer animation, and other digital and traditional media, to animate synthetic creatures with virtual life. Presenting visually and conceptually compelling pieces by approximately fifteen artists, the exhibition will survey the diverse ways contemporary women artists animate synthetic creatures to investigate a range of humanistic and aesthetic concerns.

Creating living or lifelike creatures—often, the “ideal” woman—from inanimate materials has traditionally been viewed in Western culture as an exclusively male enterprise. Brides of Frankenstein challenges the notion that men are the prime movers in the project to fabricate animated, lifelike creatures (and by extension, art). It suggests that the impulse to create is more universal.

In Brides of Frankenstein, the artists are the “brides." As metaphorical consorts of Mary Shelley’s fictional, and archetypal, Dr. Victor Frankenstein, they engender lifelike creatures. Like his, their artificial progeny embody complex responses to the human implications of the technologies they use. Their projects incorporate critiques of the unreflective hubris that motivated Dr. Frankenstein, and explore the profound social, cultural and moral issues his activities raise. But they also address the potential for transformation and inquiry, and the new forms of identity, perception, movement, presence, representation, meaning and expression, that new technologies allow.

Participating artists include: Andrea Ackerman, Peggy Ahwesh, Erzsebet Baerveldt, Kirsten Geisler, Elizabeth King, Heidi Kumao, Kristin Lucas, Amy Myers, Patricia Piccinini, Sabrina Raaf, Tamara Stone, Camille Utterback, Gail Wight, and Adrianne Wortzel.
Read the press release.
view images from this exhibition
from the san jose museum of art
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