Photographs 
8 March 2024
Photographs 
103

Hannah Wilke 1940–1993

S.O.S. Starification Object Series

1974
gelatin silver print image: 6¾ h × 4⅝ w in (17 × 12 cm) sheet: 7 h × 5 w in (18 × 13 cm)
estimate: $15,000–25,000
follow artist
own a similar item?
free evaluation

Inscribed to verso ‘DG’.
provenance: Ronald Feldman Gallery, New York | Phillips, New York, Photographs, 12 October 2022, Lot 198 | Private Collection
literature: Hannah Wilke: A Retrospective, Wilke and Goddard, ppg. 28-31 elles@centrepompidou: Artistes femmes dans les collections du Musée national d'art moderne, Morineau, ppg. 66-67 The Amazing Decade: Women and Performance Art in America, 1970-1980, Roth, ed., ppg. 146-147 Hannah Wilke 1940-1993, Kreuzer, pg. 144 Hannah Wilke, 1940-1993, Neue Gesellschaft für bildende Kunst exhibition catalog, ppg. 23, 38-41, 69, 81, 85-86 and 95-97 Hannah Wilke, Princenthal, pg. 48

This work will ship from Lambertville, New Jersey.

print

Baby, You’re A Star

Hannah Wilke’s ‘Starification Object Series’

Created between 1974 and 1982, Hannah Wilke’s infamous S.O.S. Starification Object Series is a widely recognized, seminal work often associated with feminism’s second wave. Assuming classic pin-up poses, Wilke simultaneously presents herself as an “object” for the male gaze and disrupts this presentation with chewed gum, molded in the shape of vulvas and stuck to her face and body. In 1975, she offered S.O.S. Starification Object Series as a public performance in which visitors were asked to chew gum and return it to a topless Wilke, who sculpted each piece before attaching it to herself. For Wilke, the gum represented the disposability of women and the work’s title, “starification,” gestures towards the duplicitous nature of women's celebrity and the violence of objectification.

I become my art, my art becomes me...My heart is hard to handle, my art is too.

Hannah Wilke

103