The Clichettes at the McMaster Museum of Art, Hamilton
By Stephanie Vegh
On more than one occasion, The Clichettes (aka artists Louise Garfield, Janice Hladki, and Johanna Householder) performed as aliens in drag as humans, adopting an otherworldly outsider’s lens while inhabiting identities shaped by the hyperfeminine pop songs they’d lip-sync. As flamboyant aliens who attempt – but hilariously fail – to pass in their restrictive gendered roles, they speak a truth fundamental to their collective body of cabaret-style performances: “It’s exhausting to be a girl.”
The Clichettes: Lips, Wigs, and Politics, 2024, installation view (photo: Laura Findlay)
The Clichettes: Lips, Wigs and, Politics, curated by Ivana Dizdar and currently on display at the McMaster Museum of Art, presents the legacy of their performances and plays created between 1978 and 1993 through an immersive spectacle of costumed mannequins elevated on stages amid an array of props, video footage, and soulful music that rightly overwhelms on first contact. The costumes in particular are stunning. Those crafted for the sea-themed showgirl aliens of She-Devils of Niagara are unexpectedly opulent artifacts adorned with plastic fish and lobster claws, oyster shells, and bedazzled sand buckets. These costumes conjure DIY magic from cheap materials with exquisite handmade care. While duly named in extensive artwork labels, designer Shawn Kerwin and maker Charlotte Dean warrant greater recognition than this exhibition’s framing allows.
The Clichettes: Lips, Wigs, and Politics, 2024, installation view (photo: Laura Findlay)
The videos projected on the gallery walls and playing on various built-in screens display the full physicality of The Clichettes’ true legacy: hyperbolic performances from both extremes of the gender spectrum that reveal the inherent ridiculousness of these binary categories of being. A forceful strength lends gusto to their gyrations through girl-group standards of the 1960s, while a sly shimmy undercuts the male affectations of hip thrusts and football snaps that accompany their lip syncing to Walk Like a Man.
Costumes and sets become blurred in Up Against the Wallpaper, a play commemorating the sale of Toronto’s last “affordable” home, which has only sharpened in relevance over the decades since 1988 when the most affordable house in Toronto was $450,000. When not portraying ruthless real estate agents, The Clichettes become furnishings and fixtures that bicker among themselves as the foundations of safe and reliable housing slip away from beneath our feet.
The Clichettes: Lips, Wigs, and Politics, 2024, installation view (photo: Laura Findlay)
An adjoining gallery of archival materials illuminates the preparation and reception of these performances and personae – the “before” captured in costume sketches and song lists, the “after” in a staggering volume of media coverage. The glow of multiple cover stories in Toronto’s alternative weeklies and enthusiastic reviews from further afield attest to the widespread popularity that The Clichettes parlayed into advocacy and benefit shows for a variety of progressive social causes.
The piercing, prescient satire and the passion for mutual aid at the community level is heartening, even as that heart aches for the gender and class anxieties that continue to haunt us in the present day. The enduring, razor-sharp relevance of The Clichettes’ late-twentieth century performance art is its own dire reminder that art alone cannot change this world. Instead, this retrospective is a much-needed refresher in the restorative power of holding up a mirror to that which is forever broken and finding a way to laugh at the absurdity of it all.
The Clichettes: Lips, Wigs, and Politics continues until November 22.
McMaster Museum of Art: https://museum.mcmaster.ca/
The gallery is accessible.
Stephanie Vegh is a Hamilton-based artist, writer, and arts worker focused on communications and advocacy. Her drawings, installations, and book-based works investigate cyclical histories and human impacts on the natural world. She can be followed on Instagram @stephanievegh