Amara Antilla’s project focuses on the influential journal Heresies: A Feminist Publication on Art and Politics. Emerging from downtown Manhattan, Heresies and the collective that gave rise to it were focal points for discussions of identity, representation, and intersectional feminisms as these ideas emerged and evolved from the 1970s through the early 1990s. An important platform for and record of Second-wave feminism, Heresies has been criticized, and sometimes dismissed, for the predominantly white contributor list of its the early issues in particular. It does, however, contain some of the period’s most incisive critiques of the Feminist Art Movement, providing a basis for progressive approaches to consensus-building and consciousness-raising practices from race, class, and gender-oriented perspectives.

Heresies was collectively edited and organized by a rotating editorial board and engaged hundreds of artists nationally and internationally through an open call format. Antilla’s research considers the role that the journal played in establishing solidarity across various disciplines and ideas. Selected print issues, such as Third World Women (1979); Racism is the Issue (1982); and Latina (1992) focused on the intersection of gender and race. Others explored architecture, craft, and time-based media in issues such as Women’s Traditional Arts: The Politics of Aesthetics (1978) and Film/Video/Media (1983). Antilla’s research will involve conducting a series of interviews with associated artists and activists, working with institutional and personal archives, and convening an advisory committee, and will culminate in an exhibition.