What Ecofeminist Artists Learned from Indigenous Cultures

Holland Cotter masks up on the Lower East Side and SoHo; Jillian Steinhauer discovers eco-feminist art taking root in Chelsea.

by Louis Bury, Art in America

Designed to facilitate such cross-era and cross-genre comparisons, “ecofeminism(s)” feels a bit like a family reunion—not so small as to be insular, but not so large as to be overwhelming. One great pleasure is seeing lesser-known works situated in kindred context. Bilge Friedlaender’s cluster of nine ochre linen-paper tubes, Cedar Forest (1989), for example, chimes with Damon’s textured cast of a dry riverbed, The Memory of Clean Water (1985), and encapsulates the exhibition’s mood of gritty tenderness. Helène Aylon, who recently died from COVID-19, was better known than Friedlaender but still under-recognized. Her performance The Earth Ambulance (1982)—in which a group of women used an ambulance to “rescue” soil from Strategic Air Command nuclear military bases, then stowed it in pillowcases (“another kind of sack”) and took it along to peace demonstrations—is an iconic fusion of ecological and geopolitical art.