Transcending Boundaries

Living Moving Growing:

Maren Hassinger

BAMPFA

(Berkeley Art Museum)

Ongoing – November 29

Tree Duet Hassinger started her artistic experimentation in the early 1970s, in a Los Angeles junkyard where she came across bulks of industrial wire rope. She found that the material could be used sculpturally and as a fiber that could be manipulated to resemble plant life. This became a signature medium for her.

This exhibition is the most significant retrospective of Maren Hassinger to date. The show encompasses her work across sculpture, performance, video and installation, from the early 1970s to the present.

Hassinger's work addresses social and cultural issues through an awareness of interconnectedness, ephemerality and the relationships between humans and the natural world. She uses found objects, such as old newspapers, and synthetic material, including pink trash bags, to engage with the natural world. More recently, she has begun to overtly consider the intersections of the environment with discrimination and race. Through the decades, Hassinger’s oeuvre repeatedly emphasizes the importance of caring for the matters and objects we share and not focusing on those things that divide us.

     Living Moving Growing builds upon the understanding that collaboration and participation are crucial to Hassinger's practice. This installation, and the surrounding Special Events, foregrounds how her work in sculpture and performance transcends disciplinary boundaries and engages with the natural world.

     Hassinger has stated that her work "focuses on elements, or even problems — social and environmental — that we all share, and in which we all have a stake. … I want it to be a humane and humanistic statement about our future together." She describes the loss of nature as the most pressing issue of our time; a fundamental threat to one the thing that we all share: the Earth.

     This exhibition brings together archival documentation of performances and happenings, loans from significant museum collections across the United States, re-creations of ephemeral installations, and a series of performances and participatory workshops with the artist.

Special Events

Public Sculpture UC Botanical Garden – through November 29

The large-scale installation, Monument (Pyramid), will be on view at the UC Botanical Gardens through the run of the Hassinger exhibition. Her well-known Love (Pyramid) is part of The Met collection (although not currently on display). Monument is a remaking of the work as an outdoor sculpture, using redwood sticks from the UC Botanical Garden. The piece was collaboratively made with a group of BAMPFA staff and UC Botanical Garden volunteers.

L2R: Two Pyramids Monument & Love

‍ ‍Monument, a work for the 2020s, with its emphasis on nature and reclamation. Compare it to Love from 2008, with its hundreds of exuberant pink plastic bags that each contain a one-word "love" note, back in the days before there were trillionaires seeking ways off the planet.

Wrenching News – July 19; August 15; September 27; October 17 and November 5

     Participate in the creation of Wrenching News, an artwork featured in the exhibition. Berkeley-based artist Julia Goodman will guide participants through the process of twisting and knotting newspapers according to Hassinger's specifications. The resulting collaborative artwork will be added to the installation, and grow throughout the course of the exhibition.

Pink Trash at Crescent Lawn, UC Berkeley – September 20

     Maren Hassinger restages her iconic 1982 performance Pink Trash that explores the encounters between humans and nature set out in public space. In the original work, Hassinger gathered everyday litter in public parks, painted it baby pink, and scattered it back onto the grass to contrast with nature and challenge humanity’s impact on the environment. 

     Taking place on UC Berkeley’s Crescent Lawn, this performance marks the first iteration to include additional performers. Hassinger will be joined by six UC Berkeley students to perform the piece, highlighting the intergenerational obligations of our collective task to protect the natural world.

Steffani Jemison & Leslie Cuyjet on Maren Hassinger & Senga Nengudi – October 31 

Artist Steffani Jemison and choreographer Leslie Cuyjet perform a collaborative piece that reflects on the dynamic artistic relationship between Maren Hassinger and Senga Nengudi. Their piece will explore the intense intimacy and attunement involved in longstanding artistic collaborations and the powerful intergenerational legacy of these artists' collective works as members of Studio Z, an African-American avant-garde group working in LA and NYC.

Panel on Hassinger’s Moving Image Work – November 21 

     BAMPFA will present several of Maren Hassinger’s video works, from documentation of her early performance works to her later, more cinematic works. Following the screening, a panel will discuss Hassinger’s unique approach to the moving image throughout her career. The panel will include catalogue contributors Robyn Farrell and Kristin Juarez in conversation with Leigh Raiford, Professor of African American and African Diaspora Studies at UC Berkeley.

For more information on the Hassinger Exhibition and Special Events, click here.