Molly Surazhsky's 'I ♥ American Boys' Puts the Patriarchy to Shame
Visit the exhibit until February 11.
Artist Molly Surazhsky is currently displaying her solo exhibition, Miss Americhka at the Lowell Ryan Projects gallery, with one specific work you need to have to witness: I ♥ American Boys.
Highlighting the “unrealistic roles women in the former Soviet Union were expected to perform,” Surazhsky literally places the f-ckery of the patriarchy, front and center. Specifically in Western culture, women are expected to not only cook, clean and make a house a home, while also embodying the essence of the sexiest, most ethereal being to walk this Earth. If not, they’re forced to deal with the consequences of a patriarchy that was never kind to any type of woman to begin with.
In her piece I ♥ American Boys, the artist dons red lingerie in the center of America’s tackiest moments and men — and their vices. The textile-based piece is surrounded by a “fringe of cotton thread in the style of traditional scarves worn by Slavic Babushkas.” Tapping into the “tacky” side of the “hyper-materialistic aesthetic,” was intentional and references the “introduction of the free market and capitalism throughout the former Soviet Union.” As if the theme of unrealistic expectations created by those who will never measure up is not clear enough, Surazhsky sips a glass of “Sovetskoye Shampanskoye, a cheap, but beloved Soviet factory-produced ‘champagne’.”
Born in New York as a child of Ukrainian immigrants, Surazhsky ”inherited a post-Soviet cynicism and humor.” Through this Surazhsky continues her “ongoing studies of the corporatization of working-class lives,” and critique of both the U.S. and the former U.S.S.R., also known as the Soviet Union. Tapping multiple mediums and elements such as “sculpture, sound, photography, textile design, and handmade garments,” Surazhsky playfully forces the viewer to face the burgeoning “themes of hypocrisy, propaganda, class, healthcare, and survival,” in our cultures.
View Miss Americhka, Surazhsky’s solo exhibition at the Lowell Ryan gallery until February 11.
Molly Surazhsky
Molly Surazhsky
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