Pitriarchy Presents
Positive Space Tulsa
July 29-August 19, 2023
Google the name “Pitriarchy,” and you’ll get an instant question back: “Did you mean patriarchy?” Would I have rolled my eyes quite as hard at that had I not just spent an evening dancing in public to electronica songs with titles like “Panties in a Wad” and “Nipple Confusion,” immediately after seeing the Barbie movie? Possibly not. That search result is exactly the kind of dark joke the artists who shared those songs might delight in harnessing—the key word being “delight.”
Those artists—interdisciplinary provocateurs Loraine Wible (from France, by way of Cincinnati), Kyle Browne (from Boston), and the anonymous composer known as Pitriarchy (from Planet Pitriarchy; more on that later)—appeared in Tulsa in “Pitriarchy Presents,” a piece of collaborative performance art that brought equal parts feminist critique and joyful absurdity to a little room in the Pearl District (and to all my future research inquiries, apparently). During their recent week-long residency at Positive Space, a womxn-focused gallery led by Nicole Finley, they built a rollicking, incisive body of work that drew from their individual interests in power, cultural mythology, sculptural play, and subversive punk.
I overheard more than one guest saying they’d heard about art like this happening in other cities, but had hardly ever experienced it in Tulsa. True enough: while performance art does have a history here (notably via the late New Genre Festival, which once brought the likes of Emily Johnson, Kristina Wong, and Cloud Eye Control to the city), it’s been a minute since this kind of work was a regular presence, although organizations like OK#1, ArtHouse Tulsa, and the Tulsa Artist Fellowship have kept it in the mix.
This was the first residency hosted by Positive Space, whose goal was to create space for a truly open-ended exploration among the artists, resulting in a one-night-only performance and an ongoing exhibition of artifacts. (Pitriarchy and Wible have created together before, while Browne is a new collaborator.) The result was all the things you’d hope that kind of process would be: exciting, thought-provoking, and new.