Breasts in the Press 2012

Description

Julia Cahill graduated from the BFA program at Carnegie Mellon University in the summer of 2012. I  was pleased to have a very young artist in the exhibition, as my experience from teaching is that feminist thinking is invigorating and empowering to you women as they discover its relevance to their own lives. Although I say to my students that I’m more concerned that they can articulate their own positions than that they say they are feminists, it is exciting to see that ‘aha!’ moment, a light turning on, that means they will always from that point forward understand things differently. Cahill had already passed that moment when I met her, and was acknowledging her indebtedness to artworks from the 1970s by American feminist artists. – Hilary Robinson, Curator

Artist Statement

This piece should be viewed as a humorous approach to a very serious subject. And in a way it is not just a piece of art, for me, if anything, that is secondary – I think it is firstly a political action, to not only make other people aware of things but to say “let’s think of something, let’s think of a way to change this.” As an artist a big thing is that you can ask questions, you don’t have to answer them, and I’m just posing questions like, “Is this really how we want to keep on viewing women’s breasts and how are we going to change that?” So it is leaving it up to the audience to say: “Oh, okay, here’s the questions – I can try to answer it.” I don’t want to give answers because I don’t really have many answers, only my own personal ones.