PERFORMANCE ART REVIEW : ‘Denial’ Delivers Naked Truths From Karen Finley

NEW YORK — Karen Finley is back, back with a vengeance, her trademark anger in full force, blasting away at the usual targets and some not so usual. Hers is a wake-up call to America, a passionate plea--no, demand--for acceptance on the part, not only of her conservative foes, but of the “tofu-eating liberals” who are at least nominally her allies. “Hello, Mother, your son is dying,” she called out in her urgent, exaggerated stage voice as she began her new performance piece, “A Certain Level of Denial,” here earlier this week. “Hello, trendy East Villagers, your artist is dying . . . . Hello, society. No answer. Hello, America. No answer.”

She stepped out on the stage at Alice Tully Hall, one of mainstream culture’s major temples, nude save for low-heel black shoes and a hat of white feathers. Nudity is not new to Lincoln Center, but it is rare and this seemed like an act of quiet defiance. Defying all those who said that, in a previous outing, she had smeared chocolate pudding over her naked body, when actually she wore a bikini top and bottom then. Defying all those who thought her recent run-in with the National Endowment for the Arts might have curbed her appetite for controversy.

What Finley spelled out was an indictment of male domination, homophobia, indifference to AIDS and other injustices.

“Everything’s changing so fast,” she said. “This is the age of reverse.” She had thought young people would be in a position to care for their parents in old age, but it’s parents who must now care for dying children. Rodney G. King is beaten and the cops who did it go free. Driving along a Los Angeles street, she sees a dog run over by a car and the driver accuses the woman who owns the pet of not caring for it properly.

“I hate people who must blame the victim,” Finley said.

The victims in a Finley show are women who are not allowed control of their lives or their bodies, gays and lesbians who are not allowed to live in peace, people with AIDS who are not allowed to live at all.

One of the latter was fellow performer Ethyl Eichelberger, who slit his wrists rather than succumb gradually to AIDS. “He couldn’t die like Rock Hudson, but he could live like Sylvia Plath,” she said.

During her 85-minute monologue (unavailable for review during its recent presentation as a work-in-progress at L.A.’s Museum of Contemporary Art), Finley added and subtracted accessories like gloves or a necklace. At one point, she donned camouflage trousers, at another, a party dress. Slides of her paintings were flashed on a giant screen. Many bore slogans, like the portrait of a Madonna figure with the words: “The Virgin Mary is pro-choice.”

Despite the nudity and the vulnerability that it implies, Finley seemed more confident than she’s sometimes been in performance. Her staging was assured and her command of the material was complete.

If women need to find a rallying point, they might well use the words that set the packed hall cheering: “The Bush Administration wants women to return to a patriarchal society, but whether these male control-freaks like it or not, we’re going to feminize this planet.”