‘The Visibility of Women’s Ageing and Agency in Suzanne Lacy’s The Crystal Quilt (1987) and Silver Action (2013)’, Ageing Women in Literature and Visual Culture: Reflections, Refractions and Reimaginings, eds. Margaret O’Neill, Michaela Schrage-Frueh, Cathy McGlynn, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. (original) (raw)
The Visibility of Women’s Ageing and Agency in Suzanne Lacy’s The Crystal Quilt (1987) and Silver Action (2013)
Kate Antosik-Parsons
For nearly half a century, American visual artist Suzanne Lacy (b.1945) has employed a diverse range of media in her artistic practice, including video, installation, photography and performance. Lacy defines her work as “new genre public art,” that is, work created in the public realm that is activist in nature, incorporating traditional and non-traditional media alike to address overtly political and social issues relevant to people’s lives. Arguably, her most striking works have been the large scale socially engaged, participatory art projects informed by feminism. A key concern in this body of work has been the potential of provocative conversations to activate wider awareness around pressing social, economic and political issues and how these, in turn, intersect with women’s everyday lives. In particular, activism and gender politics feature strongly throughout her work.
This chapter examines two major participatory works, The Crystal Quilt (1987) and the more recent Silver Action (2013), as they relate to
- K. Antosik-Parsons PhD ( ⊠\boxtimes )
Humanities Institute, University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland
e-mail: kate.antosikparsons@ucd.ie ↩︎
women’s ageing and agency. Each is unique and distinctive in its aims, framing, location and execution; for example, The Crystal Quilt was held on Mother’s Day in a busy shopping centre in Minnesota, while Silver Action was staged within the museum setting at the Tate Modern, London. However, though separated by a quarter of a century, there is clearly a relationship between these two works, as both engaged approximately 400 women from different racial, class and social backgrounds over the age of 60 in structured conversations. Lacy’s approach draws together oral and recorded histories, consciousness-raising discussions, women’s community activism and participation, and individual experiences of ageing. Each utilised broadcast media and technologies, analogue and digital, relevant to the era in which they were created, adding to the nuanced layering of the works. This chapter considers The Crystal Quilt and Silver Action in terms of the visibility of women’s ageing and agency and it analyses the possibilities that cultural representations of ageing women hold with regards to the production of knowledge and potential for social change.
Visual representations and media narratives of older age and ageing are often constituted, in part, by ageism; that is, the negative or positive stereotypes, or discrimination or preferential treatment of older people based on their chronological age (Iversen et al. 2009, 4). Although ageism is “most vicious toward the most vulnerable,” it also affects younger people, “on how they anticipate their own life course and judge the value of older people” (Gillette 2015, 22). Linn Sandberg identifies two competing discourses of older age, one that characterises old age in terms of decline and the other which focuses on successful ageing. Successful ageing discourses are framed in terms of autonomy, activity and productivity, while decline discourses focus on frailty, illness, reliance on relatives and elder abuse (Sandberg 2013, 13). Successful ageing infers a level of choice; that older people can choose a healthy lifestyle, or to remain in control of their mental faculties, but this proves problematic because these assumptions often do not account for the structural supports necessary to enable this outcome (cf. O’Neil and Haydon 2015, 3). Although the commonly circulated stereotypes may be both positive and negative, it is typically the negative ones that prevail. These include poor health, declining mental ability, the perception that older people are more conservative, unhappy, lonely and undervalued (cf. Lyons 2009, 21).
These problematic representations often shape the public’s perceptions of older age and contribute to the discrimination faced by older people.
However, there are specific gendered challenges that older women experience. A woman’s social worth is often based on traditional patriarchal, heteronormative ideals of youth, beauty and the ability to bear children. There is a widespread view that “old age for women starts earlier than for men and lasts for many more years” and this perception is “socially defined, constructed, maintained and legitimised” (Victor 2004, 136). Furthermore, the societal expectation that older women must continue to conform to essentialist ideals of womanhood means that those who do not are often devalued. Sally Chivers asserts that for women “being old is an intimate but very public experience” (2003, 11). Ageing is also a highly embodied experience because the physical changes women encounter lead to perceptions of older women as physically vulnerable, asexual and defeminised, rendering them invisible and, simultaneously, hypervisible (cf. Woodward 2006, 163). Martha Holstein reflects: “I think it is safe to say that we are very aware of how we are changing and how these changes are rarely socially valued” (2015,39)(2015,39). Women who manifest the physical changes of age more profoundly are more likely to be considered helpless and passive, leading them to be viewed as “cognitively incompetent” (Schafer and Shippee 2010, 92). These narratives of ageing and stereotypes of older women frame the analysis of The Crystal Quilt and Silver Action throughout this chapter.
The Crystal Quilt
The Crystal Quilt (1987) was staged on Mother’s Day at the Crystal Court, also known as the IDS Center, a seven-storey shopping centre designed by architect Philip Johnson in downtown Minneapolis. A diverse group of 430 women aged 60 and over, dressed in black, entered the performance space, designated by a giant carpet on the ground floor of the centre, and sat at square card tables covered with black fabric. They folded back the fabric to reveal the red and yellow tablecloths beneath. The women performed choreographed arm and hand movements against the backdrop of a recorded soundscape, composed by Susan Stone, that featured women drawn from throughout the State of Minnesota conversing about their experiences of ageing and reflecting
Fig. 18.1 Suzanne Lacy, The Crystal Quilt, 1985-1987. © Suzanne Lacy
on fears and memories. Their discussion was framed by questions such as “What are the positive things about being old?” and “Is being older what you expected?” (Dopson 2012). The viewers, members of the public who happened across the performance either by intent or chance, observed the performance from several floors above as it unfolded below, the women’s bodily gestures appearing like changing stitches on a gigantic quilt (Fig. 18.1). 1{ }^{1}
- 1{ }^{1} A precursor to The Crystal Quilt was the earlier, Whisper, the Waves, the Wind (19831984). Lacy staged conversations between women aged 65 and over on the beach in La Jolla, California. The 154 women sat at tables covered with white cloths and engaged in conversations around different aspects of their lives. Audiences observed the tableaux from the cliffs above, listening to a recorded soundtrack, before descending to the beach below to experience the space. ↩︎
In advance of the actual staging of the work, Lacy carried out a two-and-a-half-year research phase that built up a network of individuals from different communities and enlisted the assistance of 500 volunteers, 20 staff members and a team of 15 collaborating artists 2{ }^{2} (cf. Garoian 1999, 27). The research into the politics of ageing was gathered under the Whisper Minnesota project that incorporated different educational aspects, community building functions and artistic outputs with older women from different socio-economic backgrounds in community leadership roles across Minnesota (cf. Basting 1996, 59). As this was a live performance, the remaining traces that document the work’s existence include video documentation, photographs, as well as written accounts by those who witnessed the performance. A time-lapse video filmed at a vantage point above the ground floor captured the set-up, performance and cessation of the work. This gave an understanding as to the sheer scale and the coordination of the work, as well as visualising the “lifecycle” of the work as it evolved over the space of several minutes. The concept of the evolution of the artwork, from research phase through to its completion, is intriguing to think about in terms of its relationship to ageing because it suggests that process is at the heart of Lacy’s investigations into women and ageing. Furthermore, it is crucial to consider the politics of ageing as it relates to the cultural context of this work. The political climate of the United States in the 1980s was characterised by the conservative economic and fiscal policies driven by President Ronald Reagan. The Republican party aimed to increase defence spending as it sought to cut federal assistance programs for older people, such as Social Security and Medicare (cf. Novak 2015, 450). Organisations like the Gray Panthers, an advocacy group founded in the early 1970s by Maggie Kuhn after she was forced to retire at age 65 , resisted these cuts. The Gray Panthers pressed for political action on specific economic and social issues that directly affected older people. They campaigned against the mandatory retirement age and the increasing privatisation of healthcare. They sought affordable housing and aimed to increase awareness of the negative stereotyping of older people. Lacy’s work offered a timely and significant consideration of older women and ageing, particularly
- 2{ }^{2} Participating artists include Nancy Dennis, Sharon Anderson, Phyllis Jane Rose, Phyllis Salzberg and Judy Kepes. Miriam Shapiro designed the quilt, while the scarves that were handed to participants as the work concluded were designed by Julie A., and PBS live broadcast produced by Emily Goldberg. ↩︎
as women’s projected life expectancy was nearly eight years longer than men’s, meaning that these issues most likely had a substantial impact on women’s lives over a greater period of time (CDC 2010).
The aural portion of the performance was powerfully significant in terms of rendering visible older women’s private lives because it specifically addressed aspects of ageing related to illness, medical expenses, the women’s perceptions of the impact their age might have on their children and, inevitably, death. Furthermore, the women considered their own perceptions of age and what they would like people to ask them about their lives. Perhaps most subversive was when they reflected on more hidden aspects such as their sexuality and how they took ownership of their sexual desires. These fragments of dialogue were intercut with different sounds that set the tone for the work: loon cries; Native American songs; the clanging of church bells and thunder claps. The Common Loon or Gavia Immer, the official state bird of Minnesota, has been dated back to approximately 60 million years, making it one of the oldest living bird species. The use of the loon cries, coupled with the sounds of thunder claps, evoked the wildness of the State of Minnesota. The inclusion of Native American songs highlighted that ageing might be valued differently across diverse cultural backgrounds, particularly as First Nations elders are respected for their knowledge and wisdom. This structure of the sounds focused viewers on specific aspects of the performance by giving time for reflection and audibly signalling a change in conversation. The performance ended with participant Meridel LeSeur (1900-1996), a writer and social activist, exclaiming: “I say I’m not aging, I’m ripening” (Brown 1995, 9).
Until the late 1990s, academic feminism ignored women’s ageing because “the threat of dependency, whether by economic vulnerability or physical frailty, veils the later years in fear and shame, in turn commonly regulating older women into an isolated silence” (Basting 1998, 118). The Crystal Quilt aimed to counter this silencing by challenging the stereotypes of older women as frail and passive. The unusual audience perspective evoked the social isolation experienced by women as they age, but it bridged this distance by emphasising their personal reminiscences. This play on perspective is interesting in terms of its hierarchal structure: the viewer initially adopted the elevated position; however, nearing the conclusion of the performance, the audience was
invited to join the women below. Those who engaged directly with the participants presented them with colourful scarves and this shifted the dynamic created by the elevated perspective. In doing so, it signalled an acknowledgement of the metaphorical distance between participant and viewer.
Visually, the design of the quilt was compelling. It featured a simplified pattern of geometric shapes; diamonds and triangles of bold primary colours, red and yellow, set on a black background. There was a strong graphic aesthetic and its bold compositional elements were reminiscent of modernist compositions, particularly those of Dutch painter Piet Mondrian (1872-1944). However, the most striking aspect was that this was a quilt in progress, a living quilt, stitched together by the life stories of the women who gathered together. This drew powerful parallels with historical quilting bees, where a group of women gathered to create a quilt collectively. These were considered especially important social spaces for rural women in the nineteenth century (Bronner 2015, 1024). There was an heirloom quality to The Crystal Quilt, as crystal was traditionally a precious wedding gift, which, like fine china, might be handed down from generation to generation. 3{ }^{3} A quilt held important value, especially as its creation historically marked the birth of a child, celebration of marriage, or a symbol of friendship. And yet, it is relevant that grassroots activism is also associated with quilting, specifically the Freedom Quilting Bee, the Black women’s quilting cooperative established in 1965 in Alabama. It enabled Black women to financially support their families and organise for civil rights (cf. Callahan 2005, 3). Furthermore, as Kirsty Robertson contends, “across lines of age, class and race, quilting has been interpreted by many scholars, writers and quilters as emancipatory, creating important opportunities and spaces for women and the marginalized” (2014,201)(2014,201). Although the activist element of the women of The Crystal Quilt is not overtly apparent, it is certainly present, as many of those who participated in this work were known for leadership within their respective communities. These
- 3{ }^{3} The Crystal Quilt also drew a connection to Judy Chicago’s seminal work, The Dinner Party (1979), as both were feminist installations that elevated craft to the level of fine art and addressed women’s legacies. ↩︎
women included Avis Foley, a human rights activist who was a founding member of the Minnesota Political Congress of Black Women, and Bea Swanson, an Ojibway from Minnesota’s White Earth reservation, who founded a “grandmother’s circle” to support grandmothers raising young children in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metro area 4{ }^{4} (McNally 2009, 305). Furthermore, the visual aesthetic of The Crystal Quilt evoked community building and collaboration in the moments of interconnection between the women when they gently touched hands as they spread out their fingers in different positions. These simple yet knowing gestures communicated support and solidarity. The women of The Crystal Quilt spoke of the significance of hands, as a symbol of hard work, as an intergenerational connection between mothers and daughters and powerfully, as one woman explained, “an indication of how much I have learned.” In the composition of this work, Lacy deftly bound together the historical connotations of crystal and quilting with the sound installation and live broadcast on public access television. When these elements were juxtaposed with the varying representations of ageing women, it indicated that the work operated at a complex level to generate ideas on the politics of ageing in the late 1980s.
Silver Action
Silver Action (2013) was a five-hour long participatory event in which over 400 women from all over the United Kingdom, aged 60 and older, gathered to discuss their histories of activism. They were seated in groups of four at tables covered with yellow cloths, reminiscent of The Crystal Quilt, while their conversations were witnessed by live audiences in situ. The event was documented by 20 social media volunteers who live-tweeted using the hashtag #silveraction. Throughout the course of their discussions, the women self-selected who among their table went to a separate area where stenographers with laptops recorded and projected their stories and reflections onto the concrete walls of the performance space. In another spatially related area, three kitchen-table-style discussions engaged twenty-four older women, while at a fourth table women
- 4{ }^{4} Other women in the performance included Margaret Pederson, Edna Schwartz, Muriel Vaughn, a former Irish Catholic nun; Agnes Reick, a white woman raised in a rural area outside of Eau Claire, Wisconsin; and Etta Furlow, an African-American woman whose careers included nursing, factory work and community activism. ↩︎
Fig. 18.2 Suzanne Lacy, Silver Action, 2013. As part of BMW Tate Live, Tate Modern. Photo: © Gabrielle Fonseca Johnson for Tate Photography, 2013
of mixed ages held an intergenerational conversation. Throughout the duration of the event, their discussions were shaped by specific questions such as: “What is different for you now, with age?; What can older women contribute?; What are the challenges we face?”; “Describe something that you witnessed, experienced or read, that might have propelled you to action or activism?” Staging Silver Action in the industrial space of the Tanks at the Tate Modern, housed in the former Bankside Power Station located on the Thames river, brought the work into a museum setting, with its connotations of institutional value, yet also evoked the power generated within the former plant. The association with the processing of raw power directly related to the women’s activism, suggesting that even as these activists grow older, there remains both the potential and capability to harness their energy and passion for their specific political and social causes (Fig. 18.2).
With Silver Action, there were several ways to access and experience the work and this relates specifically to the means through which knowledge in the work was transmitted. Oral history became written history
as it was projected onto the wall of the Tanks. As the live audience circulated through the space, they overheard conversations and read the transcribed histories. Their movement through the space allowed for an active engagement with the women’s personal histories, because they were actively listening, as opposed to passive engaging, as one often does when gazing at a traditional work of art. The social media element built another layer into the transmission from oral to written histories, as the information was filtered and projected through the lens of the person receiving the information. It was then sent out in real time for those experiencing the artwork remotely and served to disseminate the work to larger audiences. Interestingly, the volunteers were not allowed to engage the women in conversation; their specific remit was quite simply to bear witness by listening and documenting the conversations. The social media team also shared pictures before the work began, and, like the documentations that remain of The Crystal Quilt, this sharing of information recorded the set up and, in turn, provided the audience with the insight that the meaning of the work was not generated upon completion but that the process of engagement was responsible for making meaning. The tweets tagged #silveraction were compiled on Storify, a social media platform that allows people to create collections of social media posts. This enabled those who experienced the work in person to return to it via the internet, while those who were not actually present might still access a myriad of different perspectives and information as it unfolded during Silver Action.
Silver Action brought together a diverse cross-section of women who participated in, and some of whom remain currently active in, different activist movements. Among the women present were anti-nuclear campaigner Stella Hardiman; Sue Mullan, who worked for the National Council for Civil Liberties during the miner’s strike; Ann Rossiter, an Irish woman who, after suffering a botched back-street abortion in the 1960s, became a powerful voice for abortion rights; Paula Kaniuk, a staunch supporter of the Silentnight strike in Lancashire; and Maggie Smith, a founder of the Housewives Register, which led campaigns on many important familial and children’s issues (cf. Owen 2013). Pragna Patel and other members of the Southall Black Sisters, a group of Asian women with a long history of fighting racism and organising for human rights, were also participants in the work. One volunteer noted, "Age range at my table is 61 to 75 years, now discussing big differences even
between those ages" (Gilheany 2013). In highlighting that these women were on the edges of different generations, it was made clear that they were by no means a homogenous group. This demonstrates that the issues they campaigned for were as diverse as the participants themselves. However, collectivity was also present in Silver Action, as there was the possibility for shared participation in specific activism. Additionally, as several social media volunteers commented, collectivity was also physically manifested; the women’s voices created a murmur or hum as their stories filled up the space. Another commentator noted, “The silences here are so powerful.” This differs from the types of sounds the audience heard in The Crystal Quilt, for in Silver Action when one distanced themselves from the tables of women, it was not possible to discern individual voices unless the viewer actively turned to read the visibly projected wall stories.
The title of the work, Silver Action, calls to mind quicksilver, the liquid metal mercury used in older thermometers; it references movement and rapid change, perhaps alluding to the ability to gauge a temperature or climate for something. This appears contrary to the common cultural perception that people slow down, mentally and physically as they age. The title also implies cherished silverware, an heirloom often associated with age. Though it can acquire a tarnished patina, with careful polishing it remains unchanged by time. It is telling that Lacy chose the word “silver” as opposed to “grey”; although both are associated with the colour one’s hair turns with age, grey can be perceived as dull while silver holds a more sprightly or lively connotation. The second half of the title, action, recalls the importance of the term “action” within the context of the performance art genre, particularly from the 1960s and 1970s when it was adopted by feminists, where the focus on an action or series of actions was a disruptive strategy that challenged static definitions of art. Therefore, Silver Action, rooted in the histories of women’s activism, rendered visible older women’s agency by subverting dominant narratives about ageing women as passive and helpless. It undercut patriarchal stereotypes that insisted older women’s social value be measured by physical appearance. Instead, Silver Action revalued these older women for their lasting contributions to improve the lives of women across a diverse number of communities as they individually and collectively demanded a more just and equitable society.
The Visibility of Ageing and Agency
The visibility of older women’s ageing and their agency in Lacy’s works is closely aligned with the emphasis that the artist places on the subjectivity of the participant. By focusing on the women’s own experiences and the discussion points that enabled them to reflect on their own lives, the individual subjectivity of each ageing woman can be equated with agency. Julia Twigg and Wendy Martin assert that cultural production holds the potential to filter and refigure how the process of ageing and the later years are understood, embodied and performed (cf. 2014, 3). They argue that autobiography and narrative can work to recover “the individuality of older lives” by demonstrating that the depth and breadth of older people’s experiences, “contrary to the stereotype, are more and not less diverse than the young” (2014,3)(2014,3). This was evident in The Crystal Quilt when a woman desired to express her accomplishments, stating: “I would like persons, young and old, to ask me what I feel my contribution to society is.” Meanwhile, another reflected, “I suffer a lot from nobody listening to me,” and she explained that to ignore the untapped potential of the wisdom acquired by older women is “a great cultural loss.” Similarly, in Silver Action, one observer commented, “You never know what people might have achieved in their life #silveraction #dontjudgeabookbyitscover” (Gilheany 2013). In focusing on the subjectivity of the older woman as an individual, The Crystal Quilt and Silver Action bridge the perceived divide between women’s private and public lives, illustrating the relationship between the two. Yet, it is precisely because Lacy works with large numbers of participants that the multitude of individual voices can emerge. This is not to say that works like The Crystal Quilt and Silver Action permanently transform the lives of these older women. Even Lacy herself cautions: “An artwork is not as effective as a treaty or a law or a budget change […] I don’t think a single artwork transforms society. But what an artwork does is create a cultural milieu within which things will be understood differently” (qtd. in Barnett 2013). In Lacy’s work, older women were given a platform for their voices to be heard because the emphasis on subjectivity enabled them to highlight the similarities and, perhaps most importantly, the differences between them.
In terms of the visibility of ageing and agency, while The Crystal Quilt touched upon the narratives of presumed decline women experience as they age, Silver Action engaged with narratives of women’s successful
ageing. These narratives draw upon the idea that “individual lifestyle and consumption choices” drive the individual to age positively (O’Neil and Haydon 2015, 3). The unspoken assumption of this narrative is that those who do not choose well are presumed to have failed to have managed their ageing. In addressing women’s involvement in activism, Silver Action points to collective organising and public actions as key to improving the lives of marginalised men, women and children. This counters the problematic notion of ageing as solely reliant on the individual, because feminist activism forges connections between diverse groups of people and seeks to expose seemingly invisible inequalities. This relationship to feminist activism acknowledges the complexities of structural inequalities that exist, enabling some women to be perceived as ageing in a positive manner, while others do not.
Furthermore, it can be argued that Silver Action built upon several of the themes that emerged from the conversations in The Crystal Quilt, particularly that older women feel their contributions to society are invisible and their acquired wealth of knowledge remains untapped. In Silver Action this was manifested in terms of intergenerational feminism. Kathleen Woodward argues that “ageism is entrenched in feminism itself”; that it should come as no surprise that “as women we have ourselves internalized our culture’s prejudices against aging and old age” (1999, xi). This is particularly evident when feminist movements are conceptualised in terms of waves, for example, when differentiating between second-wave and third-wave feminisms or between feminisms and “post” feminisms, there has been a desire to define oneself against the work of the previous generations. Furthermore, Age UK director Michelle Mitchell argues that the invisibility of older women within feminism is due, in part, to:
the historic preoccupation of feminism with the first forty years of the female life cycle, [which] is perhaps based on a belief that once the social structures tied up with maternity and employment have been passed, inequality is diffused in a post-labour world. But, as we have seen, rather than being dissipated, the inequalities of gender are focused and extended in later life. (2013,56)(2013,56)
Silver Action insistently returned to this point, as the women discussed the ways in which they remain involved in their activism. One woman questioned, "Do younger women really value all the sacrifices that 3rd
wave activists have made? Probably not" (Gilheany 2013). However, Catherine Long noted, “As a helper on that day, the recurrent refrain I heard from older women was ‘we still have so much to give,’ and from younger women, ‘we want to hear and learn from you’” (2013, 33). As this observation demonstrates, older women are not simply static repositories of acquired knowledge; they can continue to make positive contributions to society and the younger generation values this input.
In the present moment, The Crystal Quilt and Silver Action take on different, and perhaps more critical, meanings when considered against the backdrop of the current political climate amid several years of harsh austerity measures that have pushed ageing populations into precarious positions. Indeed, what relevance might Silver Action now hold given the United Kingdom’s impending withdrawal from the European Union? In June 2016, the countries that collectively form the United Kingdom voted to withdraw their membership of the EU. “Brexit,” a portmanteau of British Exit, won the referendum with 51.9%51.9 \% of the votes cast in favour of leaving the EU. Post-voting polls show that approximately 60%60 \% of voters age 65 and over voted to leave the EU, closely followed by voters 55 and over who voted 57%57 \% to leave (Hennessy 2016). The ageist rhetoric that was frequently repeated in the wake of the global economic crisis (2008) again re-emerged in force after Brexit result, and reinforced the idea that the baby boomer population, which is the large, now ageing population born in the aftermath of the Second World War, has little or no regard for the future of younger generations (cf. Segal 2013, 116-117). However, Elaine Showalter argues: “While the popular image of political commitment among the old is a move to the right, many people ‘sustain their radical outlook to the very end,’ continuing to campaign for peace, women’s liberation, socialism, and progressive change, and finding that politics still gives ‘meaning to their lives’” (2013, 26). During the kitchen table discussion, a woman reminisced, “We were all struggling with how do we make these links around different forms of inequality and between subservience and domination,” while another contributed, “the whole intersectional approach to feminism and to political struggles here developed earlier than in other places in Europe […] and it was also very connected to anti-colonialism.”
These reflections are remarkably relevant in a contemporary context. As the different types of intersectional feminist activism embarked upon by the women of Silver Action arguably demonstrates, the agency, knowledge
and, indeed, experiences of ageing women can be used strategically to combat the rise of gendered, xenophobic, racially motivated hate crimes. By enabling women to mutually reflect on their participation in different areas of activism, Silver Action acknowledges, reaffirms and, importantly, revalues their contributions to the social movements that shaped the face of British society over the last 50 years. The potential for contemporary community organisations and activist movements to mobilise the agency of their older counterparts and allies holds enormous possibilities.
To conclude, The Crystal Quilt and Silver Action are separate yet related large-scale works that provoke careful consideration of the politics of ageing. It is relevant to the examination of older women and ageing in the context of this chapter to mention that Lacy herself is of the baby boomer generation. This allows for the distinct possibility that the artist’s own perceptions of older age, as well as the challenges ageing women face, have changed in the time between the creation of The Crystal Quilt and Silver Action. In relation to her interest in ageing in the 1980s, Lacy remarked:
It grew to take on social and political ramifications - older women’s cultural invisibility, the potential loss of dignity and respect we face as we age, and the resources that this society shuts off in its flight from death. These are all important aspects of the performance, but as the work progressed I’ve delved deeper into my own experience, and fear, of approaching death. (2010,154)(2010,154)
Lacy’s work is structured on an aesthetic that advocates rendering visible the political, economic and social conditions that impact deeply on women’s lives. In exploring the subject of ageing and the experiences of older women, these works directly challenge viewers to confront their own fears and misconceptions about ageing and reveal the need to approach ageing from multiple points of analyses, accounting for gender, sexuality, race, class and abilities. Throughout these works are woven individual and collective stories of ageing, agency and visibility. Older women are given opportunities to reflect on their own lives as well as to find solidarity and strength in the voices of others. It is most telling that in the artworks examined, a woman from each work expressed, nearly word for word, “I hope for as long as I live, I will retain my curiosity” (Gilheany 2013). The desire of many older women to continue to mentally challenge themselves, to maintain involvement in their communities, and
to remain visible, suggests that these women seek to actively subvert the stereotypes of the ageing woman as frail and burdensome. This is strongly brought into focus when a woman from Silver Action declared, “We tried to do it all. We did it all! We all had tremendous energy. I think we still have tremendous energy now […] I’m still very active. I’m still fighting” (Gilheany 2013).
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