Mary Beth Edelson:
Art And Activism

Recognized internationally for her multi-dimensional art work using diverse media, Mary Beth Edelson has been a dominant force in feminist groups and actions since the 1960s. Her prominence in, and significant contributions to, the feminist art world make Edelson an ideal selection for The Feminist Institute’s mission to “be the world’s most significant online repository for the study of feminist documentation.” This Feminist Institute project on Edelson highlights the depth of artistic production and historical documentation that is found in her archives now in the Fales Library and Special Collections at New York University. This feature presents a selection from the artist’s decades-long collecting of material on feminist events, exhibitions, panels, projects, collaborations, brochures, letters, and photographs—mostly the countless images Edelson took herself—but also her own drawings, collages, artist books, and more.

Edelson almost always carried her Hasselblad or Nikon camera to feminist art events, shooting images of the activities and those involved in the events, but she also took headshots of women artists who were active in the community. These photographs were resources, most notably for the series of five collaged posters from the 1970s that began with “Some Living American Women Artists/Last Supper” (1971-72) and the numerous wall collages that covered her studio walls and were included in exhibitions in the United States and abroad. The themes found in the wall collages that Edelson created since the 1970s parallel with those in her prolific body of work including ancient goddesses, Sheela-Na-Gig, Baubo, Medusa, Venus, snakes, movie stars, stereotypes, beauty, mythology, humor, and a celebration of her feminist colleagues.

In the 1980s and 1990s, Edelson also continued with her private performative photographic works that include the “Backlash” (1985) series taken in Port Clyde, Maine and others taken in upstate New York such as “Staged Exit,” High Falls, NY (1992) and “Springing Traps: Diversity Replacing Duality,” the Widow Jane Cave, Rosendale, NY (1992). Edelson also started making sculptures especially in bronze in 1983 that included images of the Sheela-Na-Gig and other forms based on materials found in nature and the urban landscape. Anyone who had the opportunity to visit Edelson’s dynamic studio could not have missed the numerous rat sculptures!

Throughout her life, Edelson’s activist work permeated her artistic production and vis versa. For her performance and activist work, she frequently used her studio as a space for such work inviting others there to collaborate, especially on the various activist causes in which she was involved such as the Women’s Action Coalition (WAC, founded in 1992) and “Combat Zone: Campaign HQ Against Domestic Violence” (1994), a three-month long project to assist victims of domestic violence in self-defense that became a model for similar programs around the country. Throughout the 1990s her work was included in numerous exhibitions and publications is the US and Europe that included the broad range of her work.