Screening: Moyra Davey

Les Goddesses presents Moyra Davey in her apartment, listening to a recording of her essay, “The Wet and the Dry,” on headphones, and reciting its words as she hears them. Her narration concerns the lives of eighteenth-century feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, her two daughters—one of whom is Mary Shelley—and their stepsister. Davey interweaves episodes from their untamed youth with recollections of her own sisters and a series of photographs she took of them in the early 1980s. The video began, Davey recently wrote, “as an inquiry into the validity of storytelling, specifically: telling one’s own story, and the ambivalence surrounding this drive.” What begins as an artful commingling of literary history and autobiography becomes a rigorous exercise in self-scrutiny, re-examining, as Davey puts it, “the vicissitudes of photography, as I’ve practiced it over the last thirty years.” Davey’s photographs related to her research on Wollstonecraft and her family are on view in the second-floor galleries.

SCREENING TIMES
April 11, 12, and 14
12, 2, and 4 pm
April 13
2, 4, and 7 pm
April 15
12 and 2 pm

PROGRAM
Les Goddesses, 2011
HD video, color, sound; 61 min.
Collection of the artist; courtesy Murray Guy, New York

Screenings are free with Museum admission. Admittance is on a first-come, first-seated basis until capacity is reached. Late admittance is strongly discouraged, so please arrive early.