Lucy Skaer's 'The Siege' at Chisenhale Gallery Explores Art-Making as Battle Strategy

Lucy Skaer's exhibition 'The Siege' at London's Chisenhale Gallery in 2008 constructs a metaphorical battle scene through contrasting artistic methods. A breezeblock wall divides the gallery, with large-scale drawings on the outside referencing Hokusai's 'The Great Wave' and Leonardo da Vinci's 'The Deluge', rendered in meticulous, labor-intensive pencil work that appears futile. Inside, 26 coal-dust recasts of Constantin Brancusi's 'Bird in Space' lie inert, alongside antique tables carved into printing plates and a gold '0' shape, all produced through industrial or mechanical processes. The exhibition draws parallels to Frances Stark's analysis of gendered art-making, where drawing represents a domestic, feminine mode opposed to masculine, architectural production. Skaer's earlier film 'Flash in the Metropolitan', made with Rosalind Nashashibi, similarly sieges museum artifacts by flashing a torch in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, echoing themes from Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen's 'Riddles of the Sphinx' and Simone de Beauvoir's writings on marginalization. The show questions cultural ownership and permeability, staging oppositions through art-historical references to Paul Nash and others, with Skaer orchestrating the entire ensemble to claim authority over the referenced works and their production methods.