Mary Beth Edelson: Goddess Tribe (1974-75) and Artist Book, The Thunder Perfect Trickster (1978-1984)

These photographs of the “Goddess Tribe” at the gallery also include the individual pieces “Gloria Sun”, “Ishtar”, and “Passage”, although they were meant to be installed as a collective work first exhibited in 1975 at the Henri Gallery in Washington, D.C. Each sculptural painting references an ancient goddess, or a powerful female figure and the space creates an atmosphere of goddesses rising.As Edelson described this atmosphere: “When the tribe surrounded you their bonding and physical presence suggested communications: sounds, whispers and chants” (Edelson, Seven Cycles: Public Rituals, 20). The tactile surfaces of each figure include marks, scratches, and text such as the words “The new sun rising, your 5,000 years are up” near the base of “Gloria Sun” anticipating her forthcoming performance “Mourning Our Lost Herstory” and the installation “Your 5,000 Years Are Up!” of 1977.

Throughout her career Edelson created numerous artist books often unique and sometimes in parallel with other art projects, as script books or a collection of drawings, photographs, and texts related to an existing work. “The Thunder Perfect Trickster” (1978-84) book captures her old friend the “Trickster Muse,” a figure that allows her to imagine the unimaginable for women in the 1970s. She explains in Trickster speak: “Trickster makes it up as she goes along, and owns her own story(ies). Trashed myths re-made, remembering what never happened, crushed-codification re-purposed for new tricks, a pipeline drilled with holes, into a re-mix, re-mash, un-trivialized and still not seen, delivered up, and still not seen, indigestible sans context, unverifiable, strategically: eats backlash and shits it out, cross cultural crossed again, dream-time revisited, shoved off the tectonic plate, out of place, assertiveness training workshops, unrestrained by theory, in your face, up your nose, in your space, falling outside surreal, un-harmless, uneasy mark, uneasy on the eye, un-quiescent antics, tactically re-positioning building up again, shamelessly independent” (typed statement received from the artist, 3 April 2009). The Trickster Muse acts as a facilitator for Edelson, a risk-taking guardian and trouble maker who disregards all boundaries.