Event
Suzanne Lacy: Between the Door and the Street
The first solo exhibition in Scotland by pioneering American artist Suzanne Lacy captures her life-long commitment to the critical issues confronting women today and calls for the necessity of continued community organising and political activism
Friday 28 February 2025 - Saturday 12 April 2025
Cooper Gallery
Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design,
13 Perth Road,
Dundee,
DD1 4HT
Preview
27 February, 5.30–8.30pm
Exhibition viewing and refreshments, free, all welcome
Exhibition opening times
28 February – 12 April 2025
Monday – Saturday, 12–5pm
Cooper Gallery is proud to present Between the Door and the Street the first solo exhibition in Scotland by the highly esteemed American artist Suzanne Lacy.
Celebrated internationally since the 1970s as a pioneer in socially engaged and public performance art, Lacy’s wide-ranging practice instigates discussions on and brings attention to urgent social concerns including aging, gender equity, immigration, labour rights, poverty, racism, and violence against women. Whilst being steeped in ground-up practices of community organising and political activism, Lacy’s works are also utterly enthused with the poetic sensibility of the avant-garde.
Encompassing Lacy’s critical politics and the formal hybridity characteristic of her projects, Cooper Gallery hosts a unique exhibition of material drawn from her highly lauded 2013 project for Creative Time and the Brooklyn Museum in New York City; Between the Door and the Street. Featuring a selection of texts, archival material and a three-channel video installation, Cooper Gallery captures Lacy’s and those she worked with, absolute sense of urgency to tackle how the politics of women’s bodies enter into the realms of public discourse and governmental policy.
Developing out of six months of conversations between Lacy, 400 women and a few men from activist groups in New York City, Between the Door and the Street culminated in a one-day performative public action that took place on 64 stoops in a Brooklyn neighbourhood. Witnessed by over 2500 people who entered the closed-off street, the performance audience became a ‘listening voyeur’ to unscripted conversations among groups of women, identified by yellow pashmina scarves, seated on the steps and porches of individual homes. Choreographed by activist inspired and group generated questions on gender, race, ethnicity and class, the conversations weaved together multiple intergenerational narratives that grappled with the politics of immigration, labour, poverty, all of which have significant impacts on women’s lives.
In 2025, twelve years since Between the Door and the Street happened one Saturday on a street in Brooklyn so much has and hasn’t changed for women around the world. Faced with growing authoritarianism and a profoundly illiberal backlash to decades of progressive change, Lacy’s life-long commitment to the critical issues confronting women today provides a vital clarion call to the necessity of continued community organizing and political activism.
But Between the Door and the Street isn’t simply ‘politics’; for Cooper Gallery Lacy’s work illuminates the subtle conversational poetics that is intimately present in the struggle for women’s freedom from oppression and violence.
Events
Suzanne Lacy: Between the Door and the Street | Preview
Thursday 27 February 2025, 5.30–8.30pm
Exhibition preview and drinks reception (In-person)
Suzanne Lacy in-conversation with Sophia Yadong Hao
Thursday 27 March 2025, 6.30–8.00pm
(Online)
Who Does Art Make Visible?
Thursday 3 April 2025, 6.30–8.00pm
Panel Discussion (In-person)
Artist's Biography
Suzanne Lacy is renowned as a pioneer in socially engaged and public performance art. Her installations, videos, and performances deal with sexual violence, rural and urban poverty, incarceration, labour and aging. Lacy’s large-scale projects span the globe, including England, Colombia, Ecuador, Spain, Ireland and the U.S.
In 2019 she had a career retrospective at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and at Yerba Buena Art Center. Her work has been reviewed in major periodicals and books and she exhibits in museums across the world. Also known for her writing, Lacy edited Mapping the Terrain: New Genre Public Art and authored Leaving Art: Writings on Performance, Politics, and Publics, 1974-2007. She is a professor at the Roski School of Art and Design at the University of Southern California and a resident artist at 18th Street Arts Centre.
Access
Cooper Gallery is located to the right side of the DJCAD buildings on Perth Road. The entrance is via double doors which face onto a car park.
The gallery is on two floors. Ground floor has ramped access. First floor is accessible by an internal lift and six steps with a handrail. Wheelchair access is via a stairclimber. Please email in advance if you require lift or stairclimber access.
First floor is also accessible via 24 steps. Two flights of 12 steps with handrails are separated by a landing.
Exhibition video is captioned in English. Audio will be played aloud via speakers. Seating is provided and/or additional seating available, please ask an invigilator.
For all enquiries please email: [email protected]
Toilets
The ground floor has a wheelchair accessible toilet. The toilet is gender neutral.
Interpretation
Large print versions of the exhibition information handout are available, please ask our Guides. If you require alternative formats for material in exhibitions please email or ask our Guides.
Press Coverage
Image credits
Top image:
Suzanne Lacy, Between the Door and the Street, 2013 (video still)
Courtesy Suzanne Lacy
Suzanne Lacy, Between the Door and the Street, 2013/2025
Exhibition views
Photography by Sally Jubb
Funding support
The exhibition is supported by Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design with funding from the DoJ Centenary Trust and Creative Scotland
Cooper Gallery
[email protected]