ICA's "Dress Codes': Where Guys Are Dolls

Boys will be girls, and girls will be boys at least for the next few months at the Institute for Contemporary Art.

The current show "Dress Codes" assembles a sumptuous variety of artists and ideas to provide a provocative forum on the constructions of gender and the implications of cross-dressing and transvestitism. In conjunction with the exhibition, the ICA is also sponsoring panel discussions. a series of performance places and a series of films and videos. As if this weren't enough, even the gift shop has been complete cross-dressed into a chic boutique which allows and encourages any brave soul with sufficient curiosity to don the garb of the opposite gender.

"Dress Codes" examines the cultural codes which produce gender distinctions, and in doing so, demands a revaluation of the presumed stability of gender. The exhibition also deals effectively with the concomitant issues of sexuality and sexual orientation within the gender binarism these artists seek to resist, blur and break.

The exhibition--curated by Bruce Ferguson, Lia Gangitano, and Matthew Teitelbaum--mounts a formidable attack against essentialist arguments for the make female distinctions, and opens up artistic inquiry into broader considerations on social constructions. "Dress Codes" brilliantly harnesses many of the recent developments in feminism, gay and lesbian studies, cultural studies and gender studies into a cohesive body of work. Unlike many recent exhibitions or contemporary art, this one clearly illuminates the interconnectedness within the diversity of critical thought.

Lyle Ashton Harris's multi-media installation, "The Secret Life of a Snow Queen, blueprint race and sexuality. As a Black gay man, Harris attempts to understand sexuality within the matrix of race and homoerotic relations between men. He attempts to inscribe his own sexuality upon the lines of racial difference.

Of great importance, his work reconsiders the racial implications of Robert Mapplethorpe, gay make pornography, and the art world. He asks questions in a variety of forms, which include such topics as identity, friendship, creativity, relationships, and genders. Harris's secret life--his closet. He invites the viewer into this no longer secretive life, and in so doing, demands a close look at the complex interactions which construct an individual.

The works of Yasumasa Morimura, Nan Goldin (who is also included in this year's Biennial Exhibition at the Whitney), and Hunter Reynolds are also particularly engaging.

The ICA's talent at linking together the related strands which run through the ongoing dialogues between art, politics, and theory is especially striking when contrasted to the Biennial of the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, which runs simultaneously with "Dress Codes" The Whitney Biennial showcases the most important art of the last two years. The 1993 Biennial asks many of the same questions as "Dress Codes" and points to many of the same issues, but the interconnectedness of these questions and issues gets lost in the many divergent strands of contemporary critical art.

Many of the artists featured in New York--representing an impressive array of backgrounds, creativities and subjectivities--critically approach contemporary issues with great finesse, versatility, intelligence and creativity. However, because of the sheer number of voice represented, these artists are unnecessarily driven into a type of solipsism. The Whitney exhibition, though interesting in parts, stumbles over its own inability to map put the relevant and crucial lines between various forms of critical discourse.

"Dress Codes" at the ICA, on the other hand, succeeds because it achieves a polyphony of voices centered on a recurrent theme. The organizers of the Biennial have attempted a similar approach, though ultimately, as a whole, they have created a cacophony of the latest theory and criticism. The Biennial is best taken in pieces and left as such.

Most interesting, however, in both of these shows is the relationship between politics and art, a subject of much debate these days. The full-fledged critique on aesthetics has already been achieved, and art has been stripped to the bare bones of social constructions. This new understanding of art has brought about a theoretical overload, of which the Biennial's exhibition appears symptomatic.

It is reassuring to know that many artists are indicating a renewed interest in aesthetics. To protect these artists from the potentially dangerous "outing" of their closeted aesthetic interest, they shall remain anonymous in this review. However, I suspect a tidal change. A critical reevaluation of the politicization of art during the last 10 years will inevitably be mounted (perhaps in the name of aesthetic) and will likely be led by these closet aesthetes who presently hide behind dense theory. It would be an unwise critic who predicts the future of art, but if one thing is certain art--like any other discipline--eventually will reflect back upon its most basic assumptions.