Barbara Ess, “Someone To Watch Over Me”

A fixture of the 1980s Downtown scene, Barbara Ess performed in a number of bands aligned with a post-punk movement known as No Wave—among them, the proto-Riot Grrl ensemble, Y Pants. She also founded and edited Just Another Asshole, a mixed-media endeavor that published seven issues in as many different formats, including zine, record album, tabloid newspaper, magazine, exhibition catalog and paperback. Throughout her variegated career, Ess also pursued an art practice focused mainly on pinhole camera photography, whose blurred, ghostly qualities served her dark sensibility well. This show offers new works, including enigmatic images based on surveillance footage gathered from various online watch communities.