Hiss on Passivity, Hiss on Patriarchy: The Curatorial Praxis of the SisterSerpents

by Claire L. Kovacs

A version of this paper was originally presented as part of The Feminist Art Project’s 2022 day of panels on “Feminist Solidarities and Kinships”

The anonymous, Chicago-based feminist collective known as the SisterSerpents[i] slithered into being on July 4, 1989, meeting secretly, “hiding from ostentatious, bombastic forms of patriotism” happening outside.[ii] Made up of a constantly shifting roster of women, the first generation of vipers was small – a painter, a graffiti artist, a mail art specialist, and a photographer. The collective was the brainchild of Jeramy Turner, who put a classified ad in a local paper asking for artists who wanted to form a politically minded art group. Feminism, a central tenant of the yet-to-be-named Serpents, was not the main organizing catalyst for Turner’s classified ad. However, the Supreme Court’s ruling on Webster v. Reproductive Health Services, issued the day before their first meeting, giving States more ability to legislate restrictions on access to abortion care, provided plenty of fodder for conversation. United in their convictions against the decision, the Serpents decided to start with the issue right in front of them. Responding to the Webster decision, then, was not one that was labored over: it was, as Turner notes, “spontaneous…and unplanned.”[iii]

The Serpents’ ranks grew from this small generation, as did their praxis. Calling it “pestering,” they combatted misogyny and the patriarchy through curatorial work, performances, lectures, letters to the press, a zine (MadWoman), and guerrilla media tactics around Chicago. Among other things, the Serpents struck at "palatable misogyny" – modes of benevolent sexism such as chivalry and paternalism that pervade women’s lives. In addition to wheat-pasting posters, the Serpents intervened in public spaces through stickering. The stickers, meant to respond to and critique contemporary cultural messages quickly, were placed on advertisements, anti-abortion signage, lampposts, and elsewhere on the streets – reminding passersby that the Serpents were not only there but watching. This chapter considers how the collective utilized their work as a weapon of social critique and contemplates the problems of forging solidarities around divisive issues such as abortion access.

The Serpents’ feminist activism has been overshadowed by the legacies of the Guerilla Girls, the anonymous art activist group that formed in New York in 1985. In a mode of quasi-historical revisionism, the Serpents’ work shows up in the Guerrilla Girls’ 1995 publication Confessions of the Guerrilla Girls as part of a section titled “Spreading Jungle Fever,” intimating that the Guerrillas were the first to engage in this practice. This lapse likely speaks to the pernicious art world conception of Chicago as a secondary cultural center. Serpent participant Mary Ellen Crouteau channels this sentiment: “I made a presentation about our work at a women’s art history conference at Barnard College [in 1997]. A woman said to me, ‘The problem is you weren’t in New York. If you had done this in New York instead of Chicago, you would have had an impact.’ I just laughed, and that was that.”[iv] Turner, however, rejects this question of influence altogether, instead arguing that such ideas were ripe and “in the air.”[v]  Crouteau, draws out differences between the two groups. She notes that “…[the Guerrilla Girls] focus on sexism in the art world whereas we use art as a weapon against sexism in general. I think both approaches are valid, both have to be done. We attack a much larger problem. I think what we do is complimentary, not redundant. Our images are about giving women a sense that their anger is righteous, and their reaction is perfectly responsible, and that together we can build a glorious army of resistance.”[vi]

In comparing the Serpents to the Guerrilla Girls, critics and scholars have likewise recognized their differences. Writing for the New Art Examiner, in April 1991, Bill Staments notes how the Serpents aimed to “inoculate misogyny’s victims with venom and humor by engaging in a defensive psychological warfare.” He also distinguishes the Serpents as “Far more ambitious than the Guerrilla Girls,” since rather than “anonymously expose sexism in the art world,” they “espouse propaganda to erase sexism in the rest of the world.”[vii] Critic Mira Schor similarly contrasts the Serpents’ “raw, sexual representational imagery and language,” particularly their Fuck a Fetus poster, with the Guerrilla Girls’ “coolly provocative ironies and statistics.”[viii]

Indeed, the rough-and-tumble aesthetics, crude graphics, and raw anger used by the Serpents differ significantly from the Guerrilla Girls’ cool appropriations of graphic design. Their activism is something more akin to punk and analogous to groups formed, in some part, in response to the media-driven, counter-feminist backlash that Susan Faludi articulated in her 1991 Backlash: The Undeclared War against American Women.[ix] Among these organizations was WHAM! (Women’s Health and Action Mobilization), formed around the time of the Webster decision, which intervened in reproductive rights conflict by providing escorts to abortion clinics and direct-action tactics, including draping the Statue of Liberty with a protest banner. In 1989, WHAM also teamed up with ACT UP for an action at Saint Patrick's Cathedral in New York to protest the church’s position on homosexuality, safe-sex education, the use of condoms, and abortion access. Another analog to the Serpents is the work of fierce pussy, a collective of queer women artists formed in New York City in 1991, who brought lesbian identity and visibility directly into the streets. Their low-tech and low-budget tactics, sourcing office supplies from their day jobs, old typewriters, and found photographs responded to the urgency of the moment and created a variety of projects, including wheat pasting posters and renaming New York City streets after prominent lesbian heroines.

The Serpents utilized art in a similar mode of bellicose cultural discourse. Reflecting in 1995 on their strategy and her larger artistic practice, Mary Ellen Croteau observes: “What I’m doing is reversing the visual assault that women experience every day – in advertising, film, whatever. Because you can talk and talk, and even find men who agree with you, but until they feel it, men are not going to get it.”[x] Their rejection of nuance and refusal to mitigate their anger contributed to much of the ire and criticism that was pointed toward the work of the Serpents. This turn to rage as a strategy also suggests why solidarities with them were less likely than with groups such as the Guerilla Girls. Like many women who dared to show their unmitigated fury, the Serpents were cast as irrational, shrill, and a perversion of societal norms. These critiques were often leveled by women. They embody an internalized misogyny that rears its head as respectability politics masquerading as art criticism, as is exemplified in this letter to the editor in a 1990 issue of Chicago Artists News:

Why have an art exhibit when all you want to do is rattle your rage? The rage you feel will not go away by such means. It only breeds more rage. I think SisterSerpents wants to make society suffer because they have suffered misfortune, not because they happen to be female, which is their convenient scapegoat. No one wants to see you bite off penises. Give your art the energy you waste on rage.[xi]

Such criticisms, however, did nothing to dull the Serpents’ bite. Their manifesto embodies this blunt praxis:

SisterSerpents is fierce and uncompromising, refusing to plead or gently persuade. We recognize and confront the misogyny that exists deep within society. We will sever our connection with men who do not care to recognize our oppression because we realize that this is a survival mechanism. SisterSerpents has no modesty. We will bombard the world with images that will disturb and inspire, and we claim our right to this very public speech even if no one dares respond. Our art is merely and marvelously our weapon.[xii]

This uncompromising approach is especially apparent in one of their early actions. With the Webster decision still fresh in their minds, the Serpents confronted what they considered to be the absurdity of fetus worship by Illinois’ Pro-Life Action League in what would become one of their most infamous posters.[xiii] Much smaller than its oversized reputation belies, the 18” x 23” poster centers on a soft-focus photograph of a nine-week, five-day-old fetal specimen in its placental sac from the Museum of Science and Industry Chicago.[xiv] The top of the poster reads, “For all you folks who consider a fetus more valuable than a woman.” Text continues around the fetal specimen, exhorting viewers to have a fetus replace a woman within typical misogynist gendered roles for women, including: “Have a fetus cook for you” and “Fuck a fetus.” Naomi Cohn and Turner talk about the genesis of this poster:

Cohn: I do remember the Fuck a Fetus and the fetus exhibit as very powerful, and that clearly came straight from, ‘Oh, fetuses have been elevated above women in status.’

Turner: Just instantly [we started thinking about] all [the] folks that consider a fetus more valuable than a woman and what [to] do with it. It was very spontaneous, very instantaneous…[This] was not against abortion rights. It was not against abortion curtailment. It was against the denigration of women in comparison to a [fetus]… That the women were valued so much less…So that was the premise of it. We didn't sit down and discuss a premise of it. We never had those kinds of conversations. People just understood and we all agreed. There wasn't a need to convince anybody, amongst us.[xv]

The “Fuck a fetus” poster, as it came to be known, found its way onto walls all over Chicago, mailed to collaborators to be posted in other cities, and shared with comrades nationally and internationally. A copy ended up in the hands of Lou Acierno, director of the New York City-based collective ABC No Rio, and he decided immediately that he wanted to do an exhibition of the Serpents’ work. Reflecting on the poster, Acierno appreciated its extreme presentation, noting that many liberals have anxiety about being too extreme and that the poster became a provocation.[xvi] Writing about responses to it in 1990, John Stevenson similarly notes that even within feminist circles, there was a sense that the poster was a bridge too far: “Some feminists feel the poster targets the fetus itself, or at least takes right-to-lifers too much on their own terms, seemingly validating their professed concern for the unborn.” But he quickly pointed back to the Serpents’ purpose: “For its creators, such criticisms miss the poster’s mocking humor.”[xvii] Ann Kuta, the associate director of the Chicago chapter of the National Organization of Women had a more accepting perspective, pointing out that “[f]rankly, they’re a lot less confrontational than the pro-life people who stand outside of clinics. Anyone who wants to be offended should stand outside an abortion clinic on a Saturday morning.”[xviii]

The poster even made its way into a centerfold for the May 1990 issue of Industrial Worker, placed there by the Ann Arbor Industrial Workers of the World Collective. The response to the poster by the International Workers of the World (IWW) readership was swift and mostly negative. A series of letters to the editor in the subsequent July issue show that the Serpents’ ironic appropriation of anti-abortion rhetoric was misunderstood. Such responses call into question the feminist and pro-choice intentionality of the work, alluding to difficulties around building feminist solidarities within the labor movement. While abortion rights are workers’ rights and the IWW was one of the first unions to take seriously the struggle for women’s liberation, even enshrining it in their constitution in 1905, such responses speak to the struggles and limitations of coalition building around abortion care.[xix] In an attempt to respond to the criticism and to let their readers in on the joke, the July issue of Industrial Worker also included excerpts from Arlene Raven’s  positive review of the ABC No Rio iteration of the Serpents’ exhibition Rattle Your Rage.[xx] Not entirely successful, the editors tried again in the October 1990 issue with a long letter entitled “Sister Serpent is All of Us,” in which they called on Co-Workers to examine their own misogyny and think instead about building solidarity:

Brother and sister Co-Workers, please open your minds and your hearts to this unconscious misogyny. We are all shaped by a culture that is classist, racist, sexist, and homophobic. We have no role models except ourselves. Aren’t biological mothers, unpaid workers? Sexism, like classism and racism and ageism is a workers’ issue.[xxi]

But it was not just workers who responded negatively to the Serpents’ “Fuck a fetus” poster. Parts of the art world were likewise unenthused by the Serpents’ curatorial praxis.

The Serpents’ first exhibition was a small affair: A window installation at the Guild Complex in Chicago in August 1989. It included men’s heads collaged onto Kentucky Fried Chicken buckets, boxes, and bags, interspersed with other rubbish. Its chaotic piling of collaged detritus resonates with Dada’s exhibitions, but perhaps even more so with Arman, who mounted the 1960 exhibition Le plein (Full Up) at Galerie Iris Clert in Paris. Arman’s exhibition, an installation-assemblage that filled the gallery space with rubbish, was so full of garbage that it could only be viewed from the gallery’s storefront window. The Serpents’ window display embraced a similar aesthetic of glut. Yet, while Arman’s exhibition focused on the production, consumption, and destruction of the manufactured world, the Serpents combine a critique of consumerist culture with one of masculinity.

The Berlin Dadaists and the Novembergruppe, including the “extraordinary posters, mostly by John Heartfield,” were also driving influences for the activism of the Serpents. Like the projects of the Serpents, the Novembergruppe organized exhibitions, film screenings, and other events, as well as published books and magazines. Yet, their intention was not to form an exhibition society as such, but rather to function as activists as much as artists. They aimed, in short, to influence and demand participation by artists in all activities. Turner reflects on this approach, noting how “They worked together on their ideas and their concepts, but they worked individually as artists. And they were very influential with each other. They worked publicly in terms of doing magazines and street art and this sort of thing. And I was so inspired by them I really wanted to have a modern-day version of that.”[xxii] While the Serpents were influenced by the Novembergruppe’s political organizing and broad inclusion of media and practice, they took more direct artistic influence from the Berlin Dadaists. More so than its existence in other cities, Berlin Dada was undergirded by a political and artistic opposition to the status quo, something that the Serpents strove to embody. The Serpents also looked to Dada for inspiration in their curatorial practice. On April 12, 1918, the Berlin Dadaists, in a manner that would be mimicked by the Serpents some seventy years later, staged an evening of lectures, poetry readings, and performances at the Berlin Sezession, during a retrospective exhibition honoring the 60th birthday of Lovis Corinth. Contemporary newspaper reviews describe the evening as “tumultuous, indeed nearly riotous both onstage and off…A treat of violence hung in the air.”[xxiii] Paintings and drawings were combined with Dada posters, photomontages, and assemblages, including Heartfield’s scandalous collaboration with Rudolf Schlichter: Preußischer Erzengel (Prussian Archangel) – a uniformed dummy with a pig’s head – curatorial choices that resonate with the work of the Serpents’ praxis, decades later, including their exhibition Rattle Your Rage.

Rattle Your Rage was held in a rented space at Chicago Filmmakers and then traveled to ABC No Rio in New York. Intentionally angry, threatening, and jolting, the exhibition included work by thirty-two artists from around the country. In proposing the show to the Chicago Filmmakers, the Serpents outlined their purpose: “Our aim is to raise our voices in rage, using visual art as our interpreter. We hope to represent work that is complex as well as angry, powerful at the same time as expressing oppression. We aim to shock, disarm, and stimulate our audience. We expect the art to be quite radical and controversial.”[xxiv] The exhibition, in other words, was designed to provoke. This provocation was clear from the moment viewers entered the space and were confronted with what came to be known as the “fetus wall.” The Serpents built this wall around their “Fuck a fetus” poster. Turner remembers that they needed to fill the large space at Filmmakers and decided to begin the exhibition with their now-notorious poster. They replicated the poster as wallpaper on the exhibition’s entry wall, combining it with another iteration of the poster complete with rubber snakes and additional photos taken by Snake2, modified by the Serpents, to depict fetuses with Hitler mustaches, smoking, and wearing nose rings.

Rattle Your Rage’s intentional centering on women’s fury and the inclusion of the “Fuck a Fetus” poster drew a variety of responses, including the ire of the Christian organization American Family Association, which sent letters to members of the US Congress and published flyers decrying the NEA for supporting the exhibition. However, the NEA did not fund the exhibition. The Serpents rented a gallery space from Chicago Filmmakers, who received funding from the NEA Media Arts category “for exhibitions of independent film and video, and provision of access to film editing equipment.” The NEA grant, in other words, did not extend to independent entities renting the space.[xxv] Still, the indignation was carried on by the Heritage Foundation, which wrote letters to politicians and issued press releases. The misrepresentation of the NEA’s role in funding the Serpents even made it to George F. Will’s column The Last Word in Newsweek.[xxvi] Reflecting on the NEA affair, Cohn chuckled: “It is still just so charming to me. It was just less than ten women saying what they thought, and it was so threatening. I mean I still get such joy out of that.”[xxvii]

The criticism did not stop with the written word. During Rattle Your Rage, a vandal smashed the front window of the Gallery. As a result, Chicago Filmmakers asked the Serpents to hang tarpaulins over their “fetus wall” for the remainder of the exhibition. To retain their access to the gallery space, the Serpents acquiesced to this act of self-censorship. In addition, Chicago Filmmakers put up a notice disclaiming any “direct involvement or curatorial input of anyone affiliated with Chicago Filmmakers.”[xxviii] The iteration of Rattle Your Rage at ABC No Rio was also not without its problems. Turner reflects on an example of censorship in the New York City space: “During our show run, there was a theater piece scheduled, a one-man performance about porn addiction, written and performed by an ‘ex’ porn addict. When he saw this exhibit up in his performance space he was incensed. He said he could not possibly perform with this work on the walls.”[xxix] One of the works with which the performer took umbrage was Lisa Broderick’s Pro Choice. In her work, Broderick turned to a visual image commonly used in the 1970s in the push towards Roe v. Wade: a photograph of a bloodied, naked woman dead from an illegal abortion. Below the image, she appended a text that warns, “Women die when abortion is illegal.”

In response to this offense, ABC No Rio requested that the Serpents cover up the entire exhibition in brown paper during the times when the performance was taking place so that, as Turner reflects, “he wouldn't have to see any of these offending images, and particularly, not that one, which I recall had to come down during his performances, because it was so disturbing to him it bored a hole right through the brown paper.” Here Turner reflects on the difficulty of forging solidarity around abortion access, even within alternative art spaces known for taking stances often categorized as “punk” and “radical.” Turner continues: “So, maybe six times, Mary Ellen and I would cover everything up, take the offending item down, and then, the next day, take all the paper off and rehang the poster!”[xxx]

Their next exhibition was both a birthday celebration and a hope for a future eradication of the patriarchy which included a lavish dinner called “The First Supper” and a carnival-like atmosphere including a dart game, photobooth, and a used boyfriend auction. Ginny Holbert, writing about the exhibition for the Chicago Sun-Times noted its “scrappy and crude nature” which in her mind “bears little resemblance to a mainstream art exhibit. But the Serpents’ collage technique is perfect for tackling the sexist images of pop culture. The result is a feminist tract that is funky, funny, and easily accessible.”[xxxi] The exhibition, continuing the Serpents’ engagement with and criticism of ‘palatable misogyny’ brought to the fore a celebration of feminist kinship and solidarity and simultaneously continued a curatorial praxis of rage to break down the prevailing frameworks of misogyny that pervaded their daily lives.

As I make revisions in early June 2022, in what is likely the waning days of the Roe era, I am struck again by the importance of the gritty, messy rage of the SisterSerpents. Their voice, less polished and uncompromising, is a valuable one to add to the righteous cacophony of revolt against the rollback of bodily autonomy of uterus-bearing people. These moments, attempting to undermine peoples’ choices of when to bear children, warrant acrimonious, unmitigated anger as one mode of solidarity-building around abortion access. When anger is focused in this way, as Audre Lorde notes, “it can become a powerful source of energy serving progress and change.”[xxxii] Lorde saw anger as something useful and generative, and when it is focused in this way, it can be deliberately disruptive to the status quo. Building on the work of Lorde and others, Sarah Ahmed echoes this, too, in her exhortations that anger is “is not simply defined in relationship to a past, but as opening up the future.”[xxxiii] It is world-building; it provides a means by which those engaged in solidarity building can hear the anger of others who have experienced suffering as a mode of critique of naturalized norms, opening up possibilities for better, more equitable futures.

The activist tactics, including rage, used by this Chicago-based feminist collective deserves an excavation of their story. Their work – in galleries and on the streets – engaged in an aggressive campaign to bring attention to the pervasive cultures of misogyny and patriarchy that still poison our environment today (the sundry ways that toxic, fragile, white masculinity and privilege still crush women and gender non-conforming folks today are innumerable). Bringing both ‘love and fangs’ to their work (how they signed off in communications between members of the group), they captured the anger and frustration of women’s lives, using ‘pestering’ to get in the viewer’s face and make them engage, whether they wanted to or not. Utilizing tactics that are often praised when men use them, but are disparaged when women do so, they were uncompromising and unapologetic, despite the issues their praxis may have caused in forging solidarity. And I thank them for it.

NOTES

[i] This project is dedicated to Mary Ellen Croteau, a fierce SisterSerpent who “died as she lived, with dignity and on her own terms” on February 16, 2019. Rest in Power + Peace, Mary Ellen.

I wholeheartedly express my appreciation to SisterSerpents Naomi Cohn, Mary Ellen Croteau, and Jeramy Turnerfor their generosity in sharing their experiences and wisdom with me through interviews and emails.

Appreciation to the staff at the following archives for lending their research expertise in this project: ABC No Rio Archive; AIC Ryerson and Burnham Libraries; Chicago Artist Files, Harold Washington Library Center, Chicago Public Library; Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago Library; SAIC Flaxman Special Collections; and the Women and Leadership Archives, Loyola University of Chicago.

Gratitude to my fellow participants in the 2018 NEA/Newberry Summer Institute on Art and Public Culture in Chicago, audience members in the Augustana College Women + Gender Studies Tea Talks series, the 2018 Feminist Art History Conference at American University attendees, Rachel Alpha Johnston Hurst for editing and the contributors to Representing Abortion, my colleagues at Binghamton University, and Erina Duganne, Susan Richmond and all the participants in The Feminist Art Project’s 2022 day of panels on “Feminist Solidarities and Kinships” for their feedback and engagement with this work.

Also, a quick note on the anonymity of the SisterSerpents’ collective: I will refer by name to the SisterSerpents who have acknowledged that they were part of the collective and given their permission to be directly referenced. Other Serpents discussed who have not given permission to reveal their identities will be referred to as Snake1, Snake2, Snake3, etc.

[ii] Suzanne Mesing, “SisterSerpents Strike Abortion Foes,” New Directions for Women, February 1991, Box 4 – Exhibition Files 1991, School of the Art Institute of Chicago Flaxman Special Collections, Randolph Street Gallery Papers (Flaxman), Box 4 – Exhibition Files 1991.

[iii] Author phone interview with Jeramy Turner and Naomi Cohn. 24 May 2019.

[iv] Duguid, Where the Future Came From | Soberscove Press, 53.

[v] Author phone interview.

[vi] “Mary Ellen Croteau, SisterSerpent” interview by T.J. Demos, Mad Rhino, Spring 1993, pp.80-83. Women and Leadership Archives, Loyola University of Chicago. Box 1, Folder 21: Newspaper Clippings, 1993-94.

[vii] Quoted from SisterSerpents, n.d. Visiting Artist Program, University of Colorado at Boulder, 1993

[viii] Mira Schor, “Girls will be Girls” Art Forum, September 1990. SisterSerpents, 1991 1989, Box 1, Folder 11, Women and Leadership Archives, Loyola University of Chicago.

[ix] Susan Faludi, Backlash: The Undeclared War against American Women (New York: Crown, 1991).

[x] Interview by Robin Barcus, “Good Girl or Bad?: SisterSerpents’ Own Mary Ellen Croteau on genital mutilation, pickled penises, and everything in between”, f Newsmagazine, 14 February 1995. MCA archives – SisterSerpents Artists File

[xi] Maxine Spider, “Spider Bites Serpents,” Chicago Artists’ News, May 1990, p. 15. SisterSerpents (P-35304), Art Institute of Chicago, Ryerson and Burnham Libraries.

[xii] “SisterSerpents Proclaims,” undated. Women and Leadership Archives, Loyola University of Chicago, Box 1, Folder 1: Administrative.

[xiii] For a discussion of the relationship between the SisterSerpents’ engagement with anti-abortionists use of fetal imagery in their campaigns, see Claire Kovacs “Rattling Your Rage: Anger, Provocation, and the SisterSerpents.” In Representing Abortion, ed, Rachel Hurst, Routledge, pp. 142-155.

[xiv] Like many institutions, the Museum of Science and Industry Chicago holds a prenatal specimen collection. The 24 human embryonic and fetal specimens range in development from 28 days to 38 weeks.

[xv] Author phone interview.

[xvi] Quoted from Joyce Hanson, “Art with a Bite: SisterSerpents vs. Sexism,” New City, March 15, 1990, Pamphlet: SisterSerpents (P-35304)., Art Institute of Chicago, Ryerson and Burnham Libraries.

[xvii] John Stevenson, “Group Efforts: Women Who Hate Men Who Have Penises,” Chicago Reader, March 15, 1990.

[xviii] Quoted from Hanson, “Art with a Bite: SisterSerpents vs. Sexism.”

[xix] “IWW Constitution.” https://www.iww.org/resources/constitution/

[xx] “Sister Serpent Speaks,” Industrial Worker, July 1990. SisterSerpents (P-35304), Art Institute of Chicago, Ryerson and Burnham Libraries. Original review: Arlene Raven, “ABC No Lady.” Village Voice, June 19, 1990.

[xxi] “Sister Serpent Is All of Us,” Industrial Worker, October 1990, Box 1, Folder 11, Women and Leadership Archives, Loyola University of Chicago, SisterSerpents Papers.

[xxii] Author phone interview.

[xxiii] Brigid Doherty, “Berlin,” in Dada: Zurich, Berlin, Hannover, Cologne, New York, Paris, ed. Leah Dickerman (Washington D.C.: National Gallery of Art/Distributed Art Publishers, 2005), 88.

[xxiv] SisterSerpents, n.d., Box 1, Folder 1, Women and Leadership Archives, Loyola University of Chicago., Proposal for SisterSerpents “Rattle Your Rage” Art Exhibition and film screening. SisterSerpents, 1991 1989, Box 1, Folder 11, Women and Leadership Archives, Loyola University of Chicago.

[xxv] National Endowment for the Arts, “Annual Report,” 1989.

[xxvi] George F. Will, “The Last Word: Washington’s Works of Art,” Newsweek, January 10, 1994, Box 1, Folder 21, Women and Leadership Archives, Loyola University of Chicago, SisterSerpents Papers.

[xxvii] Author phone interview.

[xxviii] John Stevenson, “SisterSerpents’ Hiss and Hers,” In These Times, April 4, 1990, Box 1, Folder 11, Women and Leadership Archives, Loyola University of Chicago, SisterSerpents Papers.

[xxix] Author phone interview.

[xxx] Author phone interview.

[xxxi] SisterSerpents, 1991, Box 1, Folder 19, Women and Leadership Archives, Loyola University of Chicago. Ginny Holbert, “Radical feminist artists’ show is funky, scrappy and crude” Chicago Sun-Times, July 20, 1990.

The SisterSerpents went on to host three more exhibitions: Snakefest ’91: Art Against Dickheads, held at Artemesia Gallery in 1991; Piss on Patriarchy, Piss on Passivity, held at a pop-up space on Division Street; and their final curated exhibition, Home Improvements: Demolishing Domesticity, at Woman Made in 1994. More scholarship on these exhibitions will be forthcoming as I do more research.

[xxxii] Audre Lorde, “The Uses of Anger: Women Responding to Racism,” in Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches by Audre Lorde, 2nd ed. New York: Ten Speed (2007), p. 127.

[xxxiii] Sarah Ahmed, The Cultural Politics of Emotion, 2nd ed. New York: Routledge (2014), p. 175.

Creative Commons + Additional Work

Hiss on Passivity, Hiss on Patriarchy: The Curatorial Praxis of the SisterSerpents © 2024 by Claire L. Kovacs is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

An additional essay on the SisterSerpents can be found here:
Claire L. Kovacs. “Rattling Your Rage: Anger, Provocation, and the SisterSerpents.” In Representing Abortion (2021), ed, Rachel Hurst, Routledge, pp. 142-155.