previousBlood, Guts, and Anarchy
The Work of Kathy Acker
28.02.2026 — 28.02.2027The Work of Kathy Acker
Blood, Guts, and Anarchy
The Work of Kathy Acker
28.02.2026 — 28.02.2027The Work of Kathy Acker
Kathy Acker, San Francisco 1991 — Photo: Kathy Brew
Blood, Guts, and Anarchy
The Work of Kathy Acker
The work of the American avant-garde writer Kathy Acker was radical, experimental, and progressive. This year-long exhibition shows how Acker created a new, feminist literary language. She was ahead of her time in addressing topics such as gender and identity, opposed patriarchy and capitalism, and engaged with philosophical questions about meaning and insatiable desire. At the same time, her raw work, full of sex and violence, is unmistakably the product of another era. How does Acker’s feminism resonate in 2026?
As a post-punk critical thinker, Acker was celebrated, vilified, and because of the explicit sexuality in her writing, often misunderstood. In the Netherlands she performed at literary festivals such as One World Poetry and Crossing Border. In Canada, New Zealand, and West Germany her work was censored. Acker was not interested in ‘literary sentences’ of celebrated American authors. Instead, she chose to plunder and deconstruct the male-dominated literary canon. Plagiarism and transgression were her most important tools. By writing from bodily experience, she undermined the idea of the author as an inspired genius. Gender is fluid in her work; identity ambiguous.
Blood, Guts, and Anarchy: The Work of Kathy Acker is a compact overview of Acker’s work, presented in the ‘corner offices’ of the former American embassy. The exhibition addresses her roots in the raw New York underground of the 1970s and avant-garde performance art, and explores the body as a theme of her work, her use of cut-up techniques, and her political ideas. It is the first presentation of Kathy Acker’s work in the Netherlands.
Kathy Acker (1947–1997) was an American avant-garde writer and critical thinker. She divided her time between New York, London, and San Francisco and wrote thirteen novels, many essays and poems, two plays, and a film script. She first gained recognition with ‘The Childlike Life of the Black Tarantula by the Black Tarantula’ (1973), a work in six parts that she sent out as mail art. In the 1980s, the publication of ‘Blood and Guts in High School’ (1984) made her a post-punk celebrity. She aligned herself with postmodern thinkers and further developed her interest in deconstruction in ‘In Memoriam to Identity’ (1990). Her final novel was ‘Pussy, King of the Pirates’ (1996).
The exhibition is curated by historian, writer, artist and curator Leonor Jonker. In her work, she explores cultural memory, counterculture, and material history.
The Work of Kathy Acker
Exhibition
28.02.2026 — 28.02.2027
Opening
8.02.2026, 19:00 hrs.
Location
West Den Haag in the former American Embassy, Lange Voorhout 102, The Hague
The work of the American avant-garde writer Kathy Acker was radical, experimental, and progressive. This year-long exhibition shows how Acker created a new, feminist literary language. She was ahead of her time in addressing topics such as gender and identity, opposed patriarchy and capitalism, and engaged with philosophical questions about meaning and insatiable desire. At the same time, her raw work, full of sex and violence, is unmistakably the product of another era. How does Acker’s feminism resonate in 2026?
As a post-punk critical thinker, Acker was celebrated, vilified, and because of the explicit sexuality in her writing, often misunderstood. In the Netherlands she performed at literary festivals such as One World Poetry and Crossing Border. In Canada, New Zealand, and West Germany her work was censored. Acker was not interested in ‘literary sentences’ of celebrated American authors. Instead, she chose to plunder and deconstruct the male-dominated literary canon. Plagiarism and transgression were her most important tools. By writing from bodily experience, she undermined the idea of the author as an inspired genius. Gender is fluid in her work; identity ambiguous.
Blood, Guts, and Anarchy: The Work of Kathy Acker is a compact overview of Acker’s work, presented in the ‘corner offices’ of the former American embassy. The exhibition addresses her roots in the raw New York underground of the 1970s and avant-garde performance art, and explores the body as a theme of her work, her use of cut-up techniques, and her political ideas. It is the first presentation of Kathy Acker’s work in the Netherlands.
Kathy Acker (1947–1997) was an American avant-garde writer and critical thinker. She divided her time between New York, London, and San Francisco and wrote thirteen novels, many essays and poems, two plays, and a film script. She first gained recognition with ‘The Childlike Life of the Black Tarantula by the Black Tarantula’ (1973), a work in six parts that she sent out as mail art. In the 1980s, the publication of ‘Blood and Guts in High School’ (1984) made her a post-punk celebrity. She aligned herself with postmodern thinkers and further developed her interest in deconstruction in ‘In Memoriam to Identity’ (1990). Her final novel was ‘Pussy, King of the Pirates’ (1996).
The exhibition is curated by historian, writer, artist and curator Leonor Jonker. In her work, she explores cultural memory, counterculture, and material history.