Meet the Clichettes — the feminist punk pioneers of Canadian performance art

CBC Arts journalist and local Hamiltonian Chris Hampton recently reviewed M(M)A exhibition The Clichettes: Lips, Wigs, and Politics.

In describing The Clichettes, Hampton writes, “Trained dancers who used comedy to do politics, the Clichettes emerged during a groundswell of performance-inclined interdisciplinaries who helped define the Toronto scene of the 1980s. Their contemporaries included General Idea, Vera Frenkel, the Hummer Sisters, Tanya Mars, Carole Condé and Karl Beveridge, Elizabeth Chitty, David Buchan, Andrew James Paterson and Margaret Dragu. Theirs was a significant chapter in Canadian art that, in many ways, is still being written. Now, the trio of Householder, Garfield and Hladki are finally getting their curtain call.”

He goes on to describe the experience of visiting the exhibition at the M(M)A, “In the gallery space, visitors will find many of the Clichettes’ most memorable costumes installed on stage-like platforms with built-in video monitors showing excerpts from their major works. The garments were resurrected from the artists’ own closets, basements and storage units, then carefully restored, Dizdar says, preserving the makeup stains and rough mends from quick changes between numbers. Beneath the gallery lights — and with the nearby video screens showing them in action — the costumes glow like the relics of pop idols from some lost wing of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.”