Conversation with Martha Rosler, New York, 2003

Despite their awareness of New York's mainstream art scene, West Coast feminists, including Rosler, were more inclined towards political activism, often involving a broader community in movements like the antiwar protests. Rosler notes that while East Coast feminists were picketing museums for better representation, West Coast feminists were more involved in creating their own performances and exhibitions.

Recounting her move back to New York, Rosler describes her involvement in the exhibition If You Lived Here… (1989) at the Dia Art Foundation. Rosler was invited to create a show on activism. She chose to focus on causes and solutions to homelessness, organizing the exhibition in three parts: “Home Front,” “Homeless: The Street and Other Venues” and “City Visions and Revisions.” This approach allowed her to include various advocacy groups, artists, architects, and urban planners, ensuring the exhibition was reflective of real struggles and alternatives to housing inequality. She worked together with Dan Wiley, a student of art and urban planning, and a self-organized group called Homeward Bound Community Services. This group helped plan the exhibition and operated an office within the gallery. Additionally, Rosler worked with a group known as the Madhousers, who built huts to draw attention to the housing crisis. Rosler reflects on the enduring impact of this work, noting that it continues to serve as a model for similar initiatives worldwide, demonstrating the potential of art to engage with and address social issues. “So, I do think that one tries to make a certain piece with the language of the art world, and you try to move it out of its normal conservative aesthetic nonsense toward something a little more engaged.”

Rosler further links political activism with feminism: “I think that idea of a critical consciousness was an insight from the left. And it was so basic to feminism, not bourgeois feminism, which was about grabbing power in mainstream institutions, but rather how to have social power without trying to turn into the men who were running things.”