Clairvoyance (For Those In The Desert)

The performance artist Joanna Frueh has emerged over the past twenty-five years as a wildly original voice in feminist art. Frueh's uninhibited performances are celebrations of beauty, sensuality, eroticism, and pleasure, and Clairvoyance (For Those In The Desert), featuring eighteen of her essential performance texts, is a celebration of this remarkable artist and her work. Arranged chronologically, from "The Concupiscent Critic" (1979) through "Ambrosia" (2004), the pieces reveal Frueh's evolution as an artist and intellectual over the course of her career. Many of these texts have never before been published; others have not been easily available until now. This richly illustrated book includes sixteen colour photographs; images from Joanna in the Desert, a 2006 collaboration between Frueh and the photographer Jill O'Bryan; and several photographs of Frueh performing. Frueh's performances are unabashedly autobiographical, as likely to reflect her scholarship as a feminist art historian as her love affairs or childhood memories. For Frueh, eros and self-love are part of a revolutionary feminist strategy; her work exemplifies the physicality and embrace of pleasure that she finds wanting in contemporary feminist theory. Scholarly and rigorous yet playful in tone, her performances are joyful, filled with eroticism, flowers, sexy costumes, and beautiful colours, textures, and scents. Recurring themes include the idea of transformation - a continual reaching for clarity of thought and feeling, as well as her passionate attachment to the desert landscape. In an afterword as lyrical and breathless as her performance pieces, Frueh explores her identification with the desert and its influence on her art. Clairvoyance (For Those In The Desert) includes a detailed chronology of Frueh's performances.