La Mama La Galleria presents Movement Schmoovement.

With a nod to Jill Johnston’s 1971 essay, Movement Schmoovement, which highlighted the tension between movement and stasis, collective power and individuality, the desire to work with others to create change, alongside the desire to set out alone, this exhibition brings together 12 artists who have pursued their work for as long as thirty years.

Living and working in New York from as early as the 1980’s, these artists collaborated as activists in ACT-UP, WAC, in anti-war and social justice efforts and alternative art projects. Four of the artists collaborate in the lesbian collective fierce pussy, one founded the exhibition space Trial Balloon. They have been drawn to the potency of collective action and have generated tremendous transformative energy outward.

As mid-career artists, they have maintained rigorous studio practices for two to three decades, through times thick and thin. They have maintained their artistic integrity and curiosity during times of being sought after, exhibited, collected and written about, as well as times when there was little or no external support, times of terrific privacy, unconsidered by art world dialogue.

The artists are not unified by dogma, a common technique, medium, or subject, but have lived and worked in proximity. They have balanced the outward impulse to foster change with the inward impulse to persist in maintaining rigorous art practices. In the 39 years since Johnston wrote her essay, the specific political issues may have changed but the fundamental challenge remains the same.