Martha Wilson Sourcebook: 40 Years of Reconsidering Performance, Feminism, Alternative Spaces

Martha Wilson's career encapsulates the contestations of feminist and socially engaged art. In her work and throughout her life, Wilson has explored how identity and positioning are not merely given, self-defined or projected, but also negotiated. The complex nature of her work encompasses conceptually-based performances, videos and photo-text compositions since the early 1970s. Martha Wilson Sourcebook is a collection of primary research materials consisting of rare archival documents and excerpts of landmark publications that influenced Wilson, such as Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex, Erving Goffman's The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life and Susan Sontag's On Photography. This unique selection of materials documents Wilson's actions and work, reveals her interest in fellow artists such as Vito Acconci, Carolee Scheemann, Nancy Spero and Lynda Benglis and includes in its entirety Lucy Lippard's exhibition catalogue for C. 7,500, the groundbreaking 1973 exhibition of women Conceptual artists, which first declared the significance of Wilson's work.