CamLab
My blogs
| Introduction | CamLab’s feminist and collective practice models a horizontal and intimate relationship, which they believe is necessary in a culture that tends to devalue compassion, communal concerns, the mental health of women, and radical care. As artists, the duo looks for embodied and innovative ways to understand and address contemporary problems, in particular the persistence of both the patriarchy and of rape culture, the latter defined by the Feminist Campus organization as a complex set of beliefs that create an environment in which sexual violence is prevalent and normalized. CamLab has given artist lectures at the following schools and museums: UCLA Department of Art; USC Department of Art; California State University, Long Beach; University of Texas, El Paso; Armory Center for the Arts; California Institute of the Arts; Queensland University of Technology (Brisbane); Institute of Modern Art (Brisbane); Co-Prosperity Sphere (Chicago). |
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| Interests | With extensive experience in creating public and pedagogical engagements for up to 400 people at once, CamLab is the thirteen-year collaborative art practice of Anna Mayer and Jemima Wyman. The duo’s sculptural, video-based, and social practice work has been exhibited internationally, as well as extensively in their hometown of Los Angeles at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), the Hammer Museum, The Armory Center for the Arts, and Occidental College’s Weingart Galleries. CamLab has co-taught classes of its own design at California State University, Los Angeles, Art Center College of Design, Ox-Bow School of Art, and Occidental College. |
| Favorite Movies | After working with the Woman’s Building Board, we wrote the following: Connecting to the rich feminist art legacy in Los Angeles has been a part of CamLab's eleven-year collaboration since the beginning. Our early video works were influenced by the intensely performative and DIY spirit of Womanhouse, and we continually look to the ethics of Suzanne Lacy's durational social practice as we develop our own relational, socially engaged projects. Most of all we appreciate the rich web of female friendship woven at LA feminist centers like the Woman's Building. By engaging with its Archive through the Fellowship, we got to see abundant evidence of the many relationships underpinning the artistic and activist work that took place at the Woman's Building. As longtime collaborators ourselves, we know how important friendship can be to a "working" relationship. However, the psycho-dynamics of friendship between women are often untold and undervalued in the historical record. So we have really appreciated getting to glimpse the way the women of the Woman's Building were intertwined. The knowledge produced through becoming friends exemplifies and even transcends the idea that "the personal is political." We are honored to work in a lineage that celebrates this. |