This week, a number of arts openings and events discuss the portrayal of sex in society, focusing on how individuals make decisions about sex amid larger societal norms and expectations. Ashim Ahluwalia's "Miss Lovely" (2012) premiers at the South Asian International Film Festival on Oct. 24 and tells the story of two brothers who make porn and horror movies in 1980s Bombay. The brothers' movies all vulgar in their own way nonetheless play into viewers' appetites for the material. Outside of this plot, however, is a fairly traditional tale of individuals working hard and striving for professional success.
A new play, "The Austerity of Hope," opening in New York this week also discusses the interplay between individual and societal expectations for sexual conduct, chronicling the interactions of a group of gay friends in Queens after President Barack Obama's election in 2008. While the group is initially caught up in the positive atmosphere of the election, they learn to temper their hopes for social and economic change. Their excitement simmers when the promised societal changes fail to take form, but they find comfort in their personal relationships.
More abstractly, German artist Rosemarie Trockel's latest show at the New Museum, which opens Oct. 24, mixes low and high art forms and includes artwork about the commercialization of sexual desire. Trockel's signature works are her "knit paintings," into which she weaves brand images like the Playboy logo and Soviet hammers and sickles. In the show, titled "Rosemarie Trockel: A Cosmos," the artist reappropriates strongly charged images, moving them out of their sexual or political context until they take on a completely purified, distinct form in her art.
