Collaborations

Caitlin Rueter and Suzanne Strobe collaborated on a series of site-specific installation/performance/participatory events, and related works on paper, under the umbrella title A Feminist Tea Party between 2010 and 2013.

Initially provoked by the Tea Party protests, a movement once imagined to be a deplorable but fleeting phenomenon, A Feminist Tea Party recast the “tea party” as a playful, progressive, inquisitive and inclusive space, drawing on the concept of historical reenactment as a vehicle for political discourse.

Rueter and Stroebe revisited the consciousness-raising groups of the 1970s in the set of a mid-century tea party and invited co-hosts to lead discussion. Dressed in 1950s costume and greeting guests in their “parlor,” the artists drew on the iconographic heritage of contemporary representations of women—sex and service, the consumer and the consumed. They made site-specific installations at each venue, building a set that recast each space as a home and an open forum where essential and discomfiting issues could be discussed freely and with a sense of humor.

A Feminist Tea Party was exhibited at 18 museums, galleries, universities and alternative spaces across the United States and Canada, adapting its installation to fit each venue and its content to suit each audience.