A frame from one of many animated GIFs made by Tony Halmos for tonight’s Sheroes #10 (Grace Jones)
I am no stranger to celebrity obsession. I can kid myself into thinking that I’m above the fads of pop culture because I don’t read Us Weekly, while simultaneously keeping tabs on the number of times I’ve gotten Nancy Sinatra to reply to me on Twitter (it’s three and counting, in case you were wondering).
Ultimately, I am not cool. I cannot pretend to be aloof or disinterested, whether it’s seeing a band I like or when my favourite songs come on the radio. So when I wandered into the the Beaver one Thursday night to check out this monthly multimedia art party called Sheroes, I expected to stick out as awkwardly as I tend to at parties that could be deemed “hip.” Enter stage right, curator and salonniere Rea McNamara in a poufy-sleeved pink dress and artificial-looking blonde wig, an homage to Shero-of-the-month Dolly Parton that seemed to scream “welcome home.” A flat rendition of Carly Simon during “Dolly-oke” earned me a Dolly Parton trading card. Pokemon fans, eat your heart out.
Each installment of Sheroes focuses on a different iconic female entertainer, featuring art and video installations, performances, music, and an online supplement. It’s an unabashed celebration of women both present and past, constantly looking to expand the roster of names in the “league of legendary ladies.”
“DON’T EXPECT: #14yearoldbeatlesfans” warns the Facebook event page for Sheroes #5, dedicated to Yoko Ono. This is the only reference on the page to the Beatles, a group whose name so frequently follows Ono’s in discussions that one could turn it into a drinking game. Instead, the event billed itself as “A Happening Remix Tribute to the Witch,” promising performances inspired by the subject’s own artistic projects. It shouldn’t seem like a radical notion that when one brings up Yoko Ono they actually want to talk about, well, Yoko Ono. Yet the caricature based on her reputation so often overshadows her other work that referring to her as an artist and musician can make the average Joe (or Paul) go cross-eyed. It’s fitting, then, that Sheroes aims to “do herstory right.”
While all the Sheroes featured are iconic, some, like Tina Turner (Shero #3) or Madonna (Shero #4), are already so immersed in the pop cultural lexicon that their names alone serve as sufficient invitation to show up rocking glitter eyeshadow and expecting drunken lip-synching. Others, like Yoko Ono, are hidden so far beneath a veneer of misconceptions or static images that Sheroes simultaneously challenges the cultural expectations aligned with these women — expectations often built around the relationships they’ve had with the men in their lives. The promotional material for Shero #8, Marianne Faithfull, features an image of the singer-songwriter in her older years, rather than the wide-eyed twentysomething mod princess of the ‘60s. “DON’T EXPECT: #MickJagger,” the invite almost needlessly proclaims. This party is not about the dudes. McNamara explains: “In the beginning, the criteria was definitely women I admired (Joni Mitchell) and women I thought to be misunderstood (Chaka Khan). But when the series emerged as a collaborative process involving a number of different local and international artists, it changed.”
Sure enough, Sheroes has evolved to be as much about the participants as it is about the celebrated women. Its tenth installment, taking place this Thursday at the Beaver, is dedicated to “gendah bendah” Grace Jones. The bill for the evening includes dub poetry by Lillian Allen and a voguing performance by the House of Monroe, two acts acquiring as much buzz amongst the RSVP-ing guests as the idea of Jones herself. “There have been many works that have drawn more from that than the actual Shero,” says McNamara. “So you have a work like local theatre artist Sean O’Neill‘s “Madonnabes” video installation for Sheroes #4, where he basically edited found YouTube footage of Madonna stans attempting her popular dance routines.”
The concept of Sheroes is in line with the web communities that define themselves by their fandoms; throw a rock on Tumblr and you’ll hit a dozen blogs dedicated to dissecting the minutiae of pop culture, from TV-inspired fanfiction to artwork based on song lyrics. Call them niche, even geeky, but the sheer number of such communities proves that there is market for turning obsession into expression. Sheroes turns fandom into a party, a glitzed-up version of Comic Con that’s more stiletto than Star Wars.
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Anna Fitzpatrick is the web editor at WORN Fashion Journal. Follow her on Twitter at @bananafitz.
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