Carolee Schneemann

This month, Carolee Schneemann's Infinity Kisses II is on view, alongside projects curated by graduate students in the Hunter College Department of Art & Art History. Mounira Al Solh's video A Double Burger and Two Metamorphoses: a proposal for a Dutch cat, a Dutch dog, a Dutch donkey, a Dutch goat and finally, a Dutch camel will be on view and the institute will also host a performance by Sondra Perry on Saturday, May 16 at 12pm.

A cat is a camera, a choreogra- pher, an architect, and a rein- carnated psychoanalyst. Over the past six decades, cats have occupied a range of positions in Schneemann’s life and work. In Infinity Kisses II, a cat is a seducer, greeting the artist with deep kisses. She documented these intimate encounters with her cats Cluny and Vesper in hundreds of photographs, two of which are shown here at an overwhelming scale.

Schneemann’s pictures are visceral, even uncomfort- able to look at. They palpably image a feeling: the warmth of fur on flesh and the surpris- ing pleasure of finding oneself enfolded in another creature’s world. Denying a cloying sen- timentality, the images offer their vulnerable tenderness without apology.