Kate Gilmore’s ‘Beat’: A Performance that Channels the Anger All Women Should Feel

THE DAILY PIC (#1723): Three young women stand or sit or squat on red sheet-metal cubes something like three feet tall. Dressed in red sweatsuits and classic construction boots, every few seconds they stamp and slap and punch out their anger at the status quo, making the entire gallery echo. This is what I encountered this past Sunday when I was lucky enough to catch Kate Gilmore’s Stomp, performed weekends in the late afternoons at the gallery called On Stellar Rays in New York. (Click here to watch my clip from the performance; the paintings of natural predation on the walls behind the Gilmore Girls are by Karen Heagle.)

Gilmore’s piece felt like a perfect distillation of where a new, Fifth Wave feminism needs to be heading in these oppressive and dangerous times: back to the shit-kicking anger of First Wave suffragettes. It’s about time for high heels to give way to Kodiaks. (Photo by Kirsten Kilponen, courtesy the artist and On Stellar Rays)

For a full survey of past Daily Pics visit blakegopnik.com/archive.