![\"Mary](\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/Mary-Kelly_Portrait.jpg\")
Mary Kelly, Photo by\u00a0Aasa Lunden, 2010<\/p>\n Mary Kelly, Photo by\u00a0Aasa Lunden, 2010<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a warm Friday in May and American artist Mary Kelly is standing in London\u2019s Pippy Houldsworth gallery ready to discuss art, feminism and political activism. Originally born in Iowa in 1941, she came to London in 1968 to study conceptual art at St. Martins when the city was rocked by student riots. Activist-artist Mary Kelly explains why the student uprisings of 1968 are still resonant in today\u2019s political landscape<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":31132,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[11856,139],"tags":[2786,39,4324,4325,4326,4227,4327],"class_list":["post-31130","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sleek-art","category-art","tag-activist","tag-artist","tag-mary-kelly","tag-politics","tag-post-partum","tag-print-feature","tag-wwii"],"acf":{"main_category":null,"legacy":"1","exclude_from_ads":null,"hero_title":null,"subtitle":null,"hero":null,"teasers":null,"facebook_image":null,"related_articles":null,"next_article":null,"sleek_card_focus":null,"content":null},"yoast_head":"\n
\n\u201cAnybody who was alive and able to think during that period was an activist,\u201d she says. \u201cAs artists, we thought, \u2018How do we bring together what we\u2019re doing, to have other kinds of social aspirations?\u2019 And for us, that had to involve a different kind of content.\u201d
\nFor Kelly, \u2018content\u2019 designates feminism. She rose to fame with her installation \u201cPost Partum Document\u201d, first exhibited at the ICA in 1976, in which she documented the first years of her son\u2019s life. \u201cI recognised that there was so little out there that had anything to do with the main thing in a woman\u2019s life, which was taking care of children,\u201d she recalls. \u201cThere was absolutely no representation and that needed to be addressed.\u201d
\nDespite having 40 years of experience as an artist and activist, Kelly remains committed to the principles that spurred her 20s \u2013 a fact she relates to her concept of \u2018political primal scene\u2019, the idea that an individual\u2019s first encounter with political struggle creates the basis of their political thinking ever after. For her\u00a0generation, that encounter was WWII.
\n\u201cOur parents never spoke about it,\u201d she says. \u201cTherefore we thought the war was a testament to the failure of political struggle, and that our struggle was going to be the one that changed everything.\u201d
\nToday, she believes that the legacy of 1968 functions as our political primary scene, arguing that as we decipher \u201cthe many political trajectories of that period,\u201d we enable a reading of the political contemporary, which may explain why political activism is inextricably linked to her practice as an artist. \u201cMy work is a moment of reflection on what has happened,\u201d she says.
\nRecently, her scope has broadened to include acts of political violence, such as 2014\u2019s \u201cDicere\u201d, which depicts the satellite transmission of a drone target, and 2008\u2019s \u201cMy Games\u201d, in which Kelly imagines letters sent from mothers to the American civil rights activists who were murdered by the Ku Klux Klan in 1964.
\nAs in her earlier pieces, she uses narrative to connect past and present while providing space for neglected voices. \u201cIt\u2019s not the same as making a campaign film,\u201d she says. \u201cA work of art can\u2019t be engaged in that way but you can make that interaction a medium.\u201d
\nToday, Kelly is cautious to predict a primal scene for the 21st century: the importance of 9\/11 was \u201cperhaps\u00a0overblown\u201d though with the current situation in the Middle East it could prove to be significant. Such theorising is interesting, but has her engagement with art and politics over the last four decades furnished her with the solution for the world\u2019s problems?
\n\u201cUnless we have a project, or a vision, capital will continue to tell us what to do,\u201d she concludes. \u201cYou need a vision. You need a project.\u201d
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\nThis feature is taken from Sleek issue #47, which can be purchased on our online shop<\/a> today<\/strong> \n\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"