There
are many kinds of power, used and unused, acknowledged or otherwise. The
erotic is a resource within each of us that lies in a deeply female and
spiritual plane, firmly rooted in the power of our unexpressed or unrecognized
feeling. In order to perpetuate itself, every oppression must corrupt or
distort those various sources of power within the culture of the oppressed
that can provide energy for change. For women, this has meant a suppression
of the erotic as a considered source of power and information within our
lives.1
—Audre Lorde
Lili Lakich's work is a visual and material response to just this erotic power—the electricity, the giant industrial neon image which cannot be subverted by a culture which shares its substance, its "nature." Lakich's medium and some individual images are indistinguishable from commerical neon signs. She works as a commerical designer for some of the same Los Angeles glitter industries which are the reference in her fine-arts sculpture, she bonds herself as both participant and dissenter in both worlds. While her artworks have been widely publicized in Los Angeles' popular magazines as well as in art exhibitions, she has also participated in lesbian/feminist group exhibitions, from Womanspace's Lesbian Week in 1973 to GALAS (Great American Lesbian Art Show) at the Woman's Building in 1980. While working in neon for the past fifteen years, she also founded and still directs MONA, the Museum of Neon Art. During At Home, MONA will exhibit Ladies of the Night, images of women in neon. Ladies of the Night embodies the same kind of duality as Lakich's At Home installation: a "lady of the night" can be the image of a woman inof women in neon. Ladies of the Night embodies the same kind of duality as Lakich's At Home installation:
a "lady of the night" can be the image of a woman inneon illuminating the night darkness, or, like the prostitute to which this title also alludes, she and her profession can be a function of the darkness of the night—as indeed she herself is entirely functional as a sexual commodity. Lesbianism is discussed in this essay and appears in the exhibition in the bedroom, the room in which lesbians are traditionally trapped by a homophobic culture. But, traditionally, lesbianism has also been a part of the darkness, invisible in daylight but materializing with the fading of "natural" light. This neon, this sparking ignition of electricity enlightens the side street of the urban landscape and brings an impossibly complex and compelling issue home to rest. Gertrude Stein fancied a metaphor for moving toward the light while remaining at home:
Helen Furr and Georgina Skeene lived toether then. Georgine Skeene liked travelling. Helen Furr did not care about travelling, she liked to stay in one place and be gay there. They were together then and travelled to another place and stayed there and were gay there.
—Arlene Raven, Curator, At Home, Long Beach Museum of Art, 1983
1. Audre Lorde, :The Erotic
as Power," Chrysalis, No. 9 (1979).
2. For a detailed account of lesbian art activity in Los Angeles since 1972,
see my essay, "Los Angeles Lesbian Arts," in Cuture
in Contention, forthcoming
from the Real Comet Press, Seattle, Washington, in the
fall of 1983.
3. Gertrude Stein, "Miss Furr and Miss Skeene,: from Geography and
Plays (1922), reprinted in Vanity Fair (July
1923), and in Selected Writings of Gertrude
Stein, ed. Carl Van Vechten with an essay by F.W. Dupree
(Vntage, 1962), p.563.