Wendy Babcox has been very, very naughty.Some women make a career out of misbehaving, but Babcox makes an art of it.
Over the past few years, the attractive, athletic artist has started brawls in art galleries and nightclubs across the South and Midwest — even at the Village Voice's Sirenfest in New York City.
She began wrestling in 2001 as Jilted Jill, a pissed-off pugilist in a wedding gown. She was teaching art at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo at the time, and wrestling performances that blended highbrow art with lowbrow entertainment were starting to pop up in Detroit and other large cities.
Much of Babcox's work was concerned with transforming female stereotypes and mythic figures by making them act up in ways counter to expectations. "I'd been going to tourist attractions doing performances," she says. "I'd be a character, but I'd be bad at it — like I'd be a rude, loud fairy or a bad mermaid." Wrestling provided the perfect medium for her message. She organized an all-female troupe called KPOWW (Kalamazoo Precinct of Women Wrestlers) and offered students college credit for participating.
"We had a nun beating up an old lady, a beauty queen who didn't behave properly," says Babcox. "We created this carnivalesque atmosphere. It's entertainment; it's spectacle."
Wrestling artists earned credit by creating their own costumes and making posters, videos and web pages, as well as performing in the bouts.
When Babcox got a job last year teaching at the University of South Florida, it was inevitable she'd start a troupe here; wrestling is, after all, something of a Tampa tradition. Then there was the omen she found in her new studio located in an old gymnasium on campus: a whole stack of wrestling mats. "It's almost like they were calling out to me," she says with a mischievous grin.
The new troupe debuted in May at Industrial Carnival, a multimedia art event in Tampa, and in July they squared off at a Gainesville nightclub. Their next local throw-down is scheduled for Oct. 1 at Covivant gallery in Tampa.
Babcox currently wrestles as a mermaid called Weeki Wachee Wanda who's got a bad tooth. Her opponent, The Tooth Fairy, wants that tooth and is willing to pound the reluctant Wanda to a pulp to get it. Babcox also likes the idea of tackling more contemporary, topical female icons as well. "One girl wrestles as Bad Martha [Stewart]," she says. "She's holding up her magazine while this cop tries to take her down." And Babcox is thinking about doing a Teresa Heinz Kerry-Laura Bush Smackdown for the Covivant show.
She's careful to point out that the Florida troupe, though it includes some USF students, is not affiliated with the university. "It's not an art department project," she says, citing university concerns for liability. And it's true that things can get a little dicey, especially when the women wrestle in clubs as opposed to art venues. "People are drinking more," she says, and they respond differently to what she admits are elements of exhibitionism in the performance.
"But it's not T&A," she says. "It's more about redefining those roles, taking control of them and defying expectations." She uses a character called The Maneater as an example. "She was a big, beautiful girl, and she came out acting coy, sucking on a hot dog. But then she knuckled down and kicked ass." Among the other Florida wrestlers are a nun named Sister Mary Merciless, a cop called Kimmie Corrections, a cave woman known as Eva Lution and Miss Peach Pit Penelope, a Southern belle.
Moving to Tampa was something of a homecoming for Babcox, since she completed her MFA degree at the University of Florida in Gainesville. And the state seems peculiarly suited to her aesthetic, honed during a childhood spent in cheesy working-class seaside towns and dilapidated resorts in southern England. Her father bounced from job to job, town to town, managing pubs, clubs and trailer parks, and she grew up watching fading performers sliding into obscurity. One was Tommy Cooper, a once-legendary comedian and magician. "He'd do these card tricks, but he'd screw them up. It had a huge impact on my aesthetic," she says. "I'm drawn to the shabby act that doesn't really work very well, the old divas who are on their way out so they ramp up the costume a bit or the makeup — the nostalgia for something that used to be a spectacle but isn't any more. That has this magical property that transcends a place like Disney."
In another project, Babcox applied her trademark mischievous humor to reinterpret feminine archetypes exploited by Florida tourist attractions. Using photos of herself dressed as Tinkerbell (Disney), a snake charmer (Busch Gardens), a whale trainer (Sea World) and a mermaid, she billed herself in online chat rooms as a performer promising entertainment.
"There was no shortage of men who wanted to connect with these characters," she says. "It always started out 'show me yours and I'll show you mine.' The project became to turn that around, to engage them as performers and to get them to entertain me. ... In cyberspace ... the anonymity gives you license to do anything, like jerk off in front of a camera. I told them I wanted them to do something more interesting."
Some responded by writing poems, turning cartwheels and answering questions about their love lives. She made one man dust his office for her. "It was about setting parameters and seeing what would come out of them," she says. The physical art from the project was a series of screen captures with excerpts from the verbal exchange.
Babcox moved to Sulphur Springs recently and started exploring another kind of attraction: Lowry Park Zoo, which is so close to her house, she says, "I can hear the primates whooping it up." The zoo inspired a piece currently showing at Tampa Museum of Art's UnderCURRENT/OverVIEW exhibition. In this work, a split screen shows video images of an owl on one side, paired with sounds and changing images of running water, a predator, and a hand stroking feathers. It's less lighthearted than many of her other works, layered with associations of danger and pleasure. "It's not a piece you can figure out in one quick snap," she says. "It's not meant to be didactic."
She hasn't yet decided what she'll do for the upcoming faculty show at USF Contemporary Art Museum, but it may have something to do with baby elephants at the zoo. "I usually make bright, flashy things, but I'm feeling more political and contemplative," says Babcox. "With all the things going on in this country right now, how can you not tune in to that? It seems so urgent."
Wendy Babcox's wrestlers perform Oct. 1 at Covivant Gallery, 4906 N. Florida Ave., Tampa, 813-232-2383. Other works are on display through Sept. 19 at Tampa Museum of Art's UnderCURRENT/OverVIEW 7 show, 600 N. Ashley Drive, Tampa, 813-274-8130; and Oct. 29-Dec. 17 at USF Contemporary Art Museum's faculty show, 4202 E. Fowler Ave., CAM 101, Tampa, 813-974-4133.
