Today from our partners at Art Practical, we bring you a review of Alien She, an exhibition that regards the impact of Riot Grrrl culture on contemporary art. Author Melissa Miller writes, “[The exhibition] presents Riot Grrrls with one voice, with a ‘we’re all in this together’ attitude. In reality, the movement was troubled by the same internal debates that other generations of feminists have experienced… In the end, however, an exhibition about the Riot Grrrl movement and its legacy remains a timely and important undertaking.” This article was originally published on January 13, 2015.

L.J. Roberts. We Couldn’t Get In. We Couldn’t Get Out., 2006–07; installation view, Alien She, 2014. Courtesy of Phocasso and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco.

Currently on view at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA), Alien She is a touring exhibition that examines the lasting impact of the Riot Grrrl punk-feminist movement on contemporary artists. The show’s title refers to that of a Bikini Kill song, with lyrics sung by Kathleen Hannah that begin, “She is me; I am her.”

This declaration of solidarity despite division could also be taken as a statement of intent as Alien She divides its focus across two temporally overlapping sections: an archival display of the cultural output of Riot Grrrls from around the world and a survey of seven artists—some contemporaneous with the movement—whose work is influenced by its politics, aesthetics, and representational and organizational strategies.

Read the full article here.