Call the Midlife

Artist Elinor Carucci’s recently removed uterus lays on a sterilized table, isolated and exposed. Seductive hues of red and pink contrast with the dull shades and creases of a blue cloth underneath, emphasizing the organ’s glossy vitality. It is impossible not to project meaning onto the excised uterus: it gleams with broken promises and untethered desires, emotional longings, a lifelong cycle of anxieties and fears, many of which revolve around a well-known finite destination. This is either the moment in which the body that held this uterus slips into decline, or the moment of its rebirth. Or perhaps a little bit of both. This documentation of Carucci’s hysterectomy, from her 2019 photo book Midlife, is one of many intimate moments captured over the course of seven years (along with black hair dye dripping on a glossy forehead, a nude embrace with her longtime partner, and abstract red paintings created with the artist’s own blood). Midlife digs into the complexities of womanhood, and, specifically, the excruciating process of grappling with an ill and aging body. The image of the artist’s uterus captures a precise moment in womanhood, a moment that brackets and separates all that came before its removal from what may come next. This bracketing, of a change that is culturally associated with an inevitable deterioration but paradoxically holds the promise of rejuvenation, also delineates a liminal space now being carved by a generation of women artists and scholars.And in that space, in which they find themselves suddenly fifty, fifty-five, or sixty years old, women claim visibility for their work, stories, and bodies with the same gusto that might have defined their work as emerging Gen Xers. During an online webinar held by the organization Artis in 2021, Carucci, scholar Tal Dekel, and curator Maya Benton discussed coming to terms with the end of reproduction and its cycles, and how aging could liberate women to experience more of the nuances of life at a growing distance from societal expectations. Free, perhaps, or burdened by a freedom bestowed upon them by a society that still seems to prefer to look elsewhere for its cultural protagonists—still turning an admiring look toward their male counterparts, defined as superstars by the financial value assigned to them in a highly stratified art market. But, they wondered, where do women in their middle age go? No longer ingenues, not yet elders, what do women in the art world do in this cycle of their lives and careers? In Midlife, Carucci chronicled a journey through motherhood, sickness, and joy—mixing candid photographs with staged scenes. Perhaps that deep introspection into the shifting faculties of the body is where this conversation can begin, which should take into account how Gen X artists and creatives challenge societal assumptions about women at a certain age, and how they subsequently also challenge the patriarchal—and mostly White—grip on the power structures of the Western art world.Traditionally, women in their fifties have not graced the forefront of pop culture. The forefront of iconic comfy mom jeans? Sure. As the lead in Amy Schumer’s 2015 sketch “Last F**kable Day”? Why not. At the top of the queue of presenters in leading museums, or as bestselling names in auctions? Not so much. Could Gen X women artists change this collective ghosting? Could they mark a space for a different relationship with oneself and the world, one that acknowledges their bodies and maturing physical presence, bringing it into the centers of art production? Could this be their legacy for Xennials, Millennials, and Gen Zers? Could they make a culture gesture toward a different direction, perhaps for the first time in modern history? In that sense, Gen Xers should be seen as an anchor for subsequent generations, not just as positive or negative role models, but as instigators of a possible transmutation of the mold that has shaped the fate of women, specifically, and other marginalized gender-based groups in arts and culture.In season one of the podcast Death of an Artist from 2022, curator Helen Molesworth described an art world founded upon silence—silence that allowed abuse, violence, and neglect to coincide with the great successes of modern and contemporary art. Silence compelled marginalized microcommunities into place, and maintained the hierarchical binaries that drove the financial gains and losses of the art world.1 Silence upheld an oppressive system of engagement, dividing and demarcating specific subject positions for rising stars and those destined to remain in their shadows. Molesworth describes how, with the rise of a younger generation of artists and curators, a shift in those binaries began to take shape: from an art world that admired the rational, geometric, mathematical, violent approach of famed minimalist artist Carl Andre, to an art world that is fascinated by the emotional mixture of dream and myth, of boundary pushing and the willfully collectively generative approach of his late wife, Ana Mendieta.2 Molesworth herself was accused of perpetuating a story of binaries (rich White male vs. Brown female immigrant) without really providing any new information. One could note Molesworth’s own tumultuous tenure as chief curator at Los Angeles’s Museum of Contemporary Art, which ended in 2018 when then-director Philippe Vergne fired her, citing “creative differences.” The two had clashed over issues of diversity and MOCA’s exhibition list, including a show by Andre and Mark Grotjahn that Molesworth opposed (an issue that also created problems with the museum’s board and donors). Vergne himself moved on in 2019.3Telling Mendieta’s story now is a significant choice, a choice that might have not materialized or could not be materialized a decade ago. Perhaps due to the impact of the #MeToo movement, as well as Black Lives Matter and the social upheavals brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic, more people are compelled to publicly tell such stories. The scales seem to slowly be shifting, as more women of Molesworth’s generation become leaders of art institutions, but also of philanthropic establishments, where they can dictate new giving priorities—a shift designed to make the disregarded finally heard. Is that enough to change our cultural perception at large? Is that enough to bring the complexities of women, female-bodied, and womxn experiences into the forefront? Is a moment of cultural transition imminent, and will it reach beyond the established halls of art?In 2016, the New York Times heralded a new age of survey exhibitions devoted to women, seen as “curatorial correctives.”4 Two years later, Maura Reilly, who was the first curator of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum, wrote about “curatorial activism”5 and the art professionals who were working across the world to address the marginalization, silencing, and underrepresentation of women and LGBTQ artists (or, more broadly, Other artists, as Reilly defines them6) in a Western-centric art world, calling art professionals to work together and face issues that were hushed and buried for so long. Incremental changes were also signaled by streaming services, which took on more personal projects by women directors, writers, and producers. One could note Julie Delpy’s 2021 Netflix series On the Verge, which focused on a group of friends in their mid-to-late forties. Delpy’s show perhaps could not have happened without Better Things (2016–22), the semi-autobiographical dramedy series by Pamela Adlon.These cultural moments—from photography-driven artist books through podcasts to popular television—might seem disparate but they should be considered side by side, as they point at the possibility to identify a new, much-needed, and much-overlooked space for women in their late forties, fifties, and sixties who insist on their central position at the heart of cultural production. As an Xennial, meaning a member of the microgeneration that followed Gen Xers, I admired those women while growing up and becoming an emerging and then mid-career curator, scholar, and writer (which is what I believe I am doing with all these words). I witness close Gen X friends and colleagues struggle with the “now-you-see-them-now-you-don’t” dynamic that women experience starting in their late forties, from which they are supposed to emerge as sensible, inspiring, nonthreatening seniors on the other side. I see them reach creative heights in their late fifties that are often overlooked or undervalued in a predatory art market. I see them driven, burning, and yes, unapologetically threatening well into their sixties.“Gen X women have absolutely no intention of heading into middle age quietly,” argued Amy Shoenthal in Forbes in 2021.7 Traditionally overlooked by commercial markets, this subgroup survived two recessions and ultimately accumulated spending power. As of 2018, there are forty million women over fifty in the United States, and they have $15 trillion to their collective, generational name.8 Their challenges are unique, notes Ada Calhoun, as they are often caregivers to both aging parents and young children, while simultaneously working outside the home and contending with a world ravaged by financial crises, as well as the COVID-19 pandemic and its repercussions, not to mention political strife. The pressures are felt on all sides of this life equation.9Perhaps that sense of drive and the realization that they are required to prove themselves much more than their male counterparts also impacts their behavior in a work environment. While valuing diversity and being the first generation that has moved toward boundary setting and work-life balance, Gen X women were dubbed by the internet as “toxic” in the workplace and beyond: They were seen as demanding too many work hours for not enough pay, having opted for a passive-aggressive management style, and, well, using Facebook and Twitter/X in a somewhat awkward, long-winded way.10 This generation of women mixed a tendency for hardworking self-sufficiency with a penchant toward DIY under a guise of male-identified behaviors. Theirs is the moment of anti-fashion, of blue-collar attire, of secondhand stores and a disgust toward the mere idea of “selling out.”Many of my female Gen X bosses, in the art, tech, and media worlds, tried to adopt approaches that would make them seem strong and powerful—they would yell, humiliate other staff members, and assert dominance in a caricature of “masculine” behavior. They would use the system (and HR departments) to instill fear and would try to appear as if they were the smartest person in the room. A friend told me a story about how, in her early twenties, she made a minor mistake with a deadline submission and was castigated by a rising star of an editor, who promised that she’d “never work in this town again.” My friend did work in that town again. It took nearly fifteen years for that editor to be called out in the media for abusive behavior toward subordinates, which forced her resignation from a top position. I share this anecdote because in the course of my career, I witnessed this abusive dynamic many, many times. Back when I was first promoted to a leadership role, I made a very conscious decision to behave very, very differently. Perhaps that is the contribution of my PTSD’d generation.Molesworth’s binary description of the artworld dynamic that privileges the White male superstar over the emerging female voice of color is a symptom of a worldview inevitably developed as a result of a need that characterizes Gen X’s understanding of one’s image: to define yourself by what you are not, and claim a place for what you might be. This is symptomatic of a generation that had to define its perception of presence in public spaces against the fate of Anita Hill’s testimony during the Clarence Thomas hearings in 1991, where her character was shredded and her experience in the world was disregarded completely, in favor of the status of a man on the road to prominence—a few short years before the Monica Lewinsky affair impacted the status of yet another powerful man.Xennials, the microgeneration that followed Gen Xers, is regarded by coachers and HR professionals as highly adaptive and uniquely able to work beyond binaries, as they are able to find new solutions with the help of abstract thinking. After all, as one coaching blog puts it, they had cassette tapes, CDs, and MP3 players while growing up (and we can add—record players! laser discs! mini disc! Discman! Betamax!).11 The transition from Gen X to Xennials also signifies the move toward networked thinking, meaning an experimental approach toward problem-solving, which considers the complex connections between nodes in the system as a path for solution. In other words, and broadly speaking, Xennials, because of their idiosyncratic relationships with technology, and because they also combine characteristics of both Gen X and Millennials, approach problem-solving and the transmission of knowledge as a complex, messy web whose results might be unexpected and unpredictable rather than hierarchically linear (knowledge being handed down from the top to the masses at the bottom).So, will Gen X leaders guide subsequent generations toward a new reality that claims space for unheard (or ignored) voices—specifically female-identified voices of a certain age? Will they be able to claim visibility for themselves? For the generations that came before them? Will we be able to follow them, or will we get there by leaving them behind? To quote Winona Ryder in 1994’s Reality Bites (directed by Ben Stiller)—another quintessential icon of the Gen X cultural time period—“the answer is…I don’t know!” In a sense, we might be taking them with us. They were the last generation to experience the world prior to the birth of digital natives. They were also the last ones whose generational definition was completely contingent upon geography. Gen Xers, in that respect, are a phenomenon of the English-speaking world, and, more accurately, of the US. But Xennials who see themselves as participants in a much larger world—where everyone can be reached no matter where they are, a world defined by constant movement—were already looking up to Gen Xers as preteens and teens, whether they were the pop culture icons we listened to (from Gwen Stefani to Courtney Love to Kathleen Hanna), saw on our screens (hello, Jennifer Aniston’s hair), or saw in experimental galleries and upscale museums (think Mickalene Thomas, Kara Walker, and Vanessa Beecroft). With their DIY convictions, individuality, worries around selling out, and the silence they felt the need to be complicit with, they gave the subsequent generation a blueprint to consider and then revise. Hanna and her generation of performers moved the aggressive, male-dominated mosh pit to the back of the room and sent girls to take over the front of the room, but it is up to us—those who are invited in—to figure out how to actually get there, what to do once there and how to claim and remain in the spotlight