‘Come in, We’re HOME’: the welcome message painted in red serif letters onto the door glass immediately proposed an alternative relationship to the Dia Art Foundation exhibition galleries in New York’s Soho district. Pointing to a hospitable – if incongruous – set of associations, the sign indicated that over the threshold the usual white cube fare would be in short supply. Sure enough, despite responding to an invitation extended by a prestigious institution known for its programme of solo exhibitions by white male artists, reports and visual documentation suggest that Martha Rosler’s project If You Lived Here… felt more akin to an occupation or, perhaps more appropriately, a squat. Packing in an unholy array of activities over the first half of 1989, including three sequential exhibitions, four‘Open Forums’ and street- based interventions, it addressed issues relating to urban space with gentrification, housing and homelessness positioned as central themes.
If You Lived Here… captured many of the salient features associated with contemporaneity in artistic practice. Conceived as a discursive documentary project, it encompassed a negotiation of conceptions of ‘community’ as well as an overt concern with capitalist economic relations while deploying collaborative production methodologies that engaged with social activism…