Suzanne Lacy’s Three Weeks in May: the intersection of performance art and sexual violence in 1970s Southern California
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2025-08-13
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en
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Suzanne Lacy’s 1977 performance Three Weeks in May was a turning point for the direction
feminist performance art would take. It was foundational to Lacy’s own artistic practice, new genre
public art, and incited large-scale anti-rape activism. This thesis investigates the factors leading to
Lacy’s development of Three Weeks in May: her education, her relation to fellow feminist artists, and
the piece’s situatedness in Southern California, which proved to be crucial to its success.
The organization of this thesis is as follows: first, Lacy’s academic pursuits are discussed,
concluding with her time at the California Institute of the Arts, where she studied under Judy Chicago
and Allan Kaprow. The performance Ablutions, from 1972, illustrates Lacy’s coming-of-age as artist.
The second chapter consists of a thorough analysis of Lacy’s performance Three Weeks in May and
introduces her artistic practice, new genre public art, of which Three Weeks in May was the cradle. In
the third and final chapter, a broader examination of Southern California’s (feminist) artistic climate is
provided, which ultimately leads to answering the research question of how the 1970s Southern
Californian art scene was vital for Suzanne Lacy’s Three Weeks in May in challenging the boundaries
of feminist performance art, social activism and sexual violence.
The conclusion as presented in this thesis is that California’s socio-historical context as
America’s “frontier” permeated its artistic climate. Southern California, due to being less
institutionalized than, for instance, New York, allowed artists more latitude. This gave Judy Chicago
the opportunity to establish a feminist art education program, first in Fresno and later in Los Angeles,
which in turn was foundational for the collaborative processes the feminist artists in the 1970s utilized.
Suzanne Lacy’s art is a product of the possibilities that California presented to her. With Three Weeks
in May, she aimed to address the lack of visibility for issues regarding sexual violence at the time—in
a way, “giving back” to the local community which gave her so much.
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