Ginger Brooks Takahashi’s collaborative project-based practice is an extension of feminist spaces and queer inquiry, akin to Riot Grrrl’s methods of building community and nurturing alternative forms of information distribution. Projet MOBILIVRE-BOOKMOBILE project involved transforming an Airstream trailer into a traveling exhibit of artist books and zines. Over the course of six years, the Bookmobile collective visited numerous (often remote) sites in the United States and Canada, including community centers, libraries and universities. Their motive was to bring artist publications to a wider audience and to demystify bookmaking by holding workshops. The project is represented with a map of its tour routes and creative and political influences drawn by Brooks Takahashi for both this exhibition and a newly released publication on the Bookmobile’s history. The collaborative art journal LTTR highlighted and celebrated radical feminist and genderqueer artists and work, with the aim of building a “context for a culture of critical thinkers.” Since the mid-1990s, Brooks Takahashi has made music and performed with friends, starting with her college bands, playing at cooperatives, punk houses and Riot Grrrl conventions, to the internationally known queer dance music act MEN. Brooks Takahashi produced two new sculptures for Alien She: Feminist Body Pillow, a pile of stuffed T-shirts from the artist’s collection, hand-printed by her and various co-conspirators with utopian symbols, new proverbs, and sardonic declarations, and There is a group, if not an alliance, walking there too, whether or not they are seen, consisting of driftwood and worn work boots. The title of the latter comes from a text by the philosopher Judith Butler. Brooks Takahashi lives in North Braddock, Pennsylvania.
Sat October 5th Open 11 AM–5 PM