User:Kellychen927/Nye Ffarrabas

Nye Ffarrabas (formerly Bici Forbes and Bici Hendricks), is an American artist and poet known for her contributions to the first generation of Fluxus. participated in Judson Gallery shows at Judson Memorial Church in 1966-1968.

Nye Ffarrabas contributed to Women's Work, a magazine edited by Alison Knowles and Annea Lockwood, featuring text-based and instructional performance scores by twenty-five women artists from the Fluxus movement.

In 1965, she founded the publishing company, the Black Thumb Press. In 1964, a compilation of Nye Ffarrabas and Geoffrey Hendricks' journals were published in a series called The Friday Book of White Noise.

Notable Exhibitions
Ffarrabas' first solo exhibition at Judson Gallery was Word Work in December 1966 for six weeks. Word Work featured found objects, moving message displays, and interactive booth sculptures with instuctions. Ffarrabas' unbound book Language Box, Punctuation Poems, and Egg Time Events was on display with several ice pieces: Ice Jigsaw Puzzle, Ice Candles, and Defrost the American Flag,  a crumpled American flag embedded into an ice disk lying on a bed of pebbles.

Dinner Service is a piece involving a table set and rainbow fabric with Ford hubcaps for plates, empty Coca-Cola bottles, windshield-wiping paper towel. A hammer, screwdriver, and pliers are at each place setting. A neon sign flashed the letters "U" and "S" in the full term "Über Alles". Dinner Service was performed at the Happening and Fluxus Retrospective in Cologne (1971) and an American flag was used in place of the rainbow fabric.

In October 1967, Judson Gallery presented Twelve Evenings of Manipulations. Ffarrabas presented ice works in the piece "Deteriorations: Bici Hendricks on Ice".

Ordeals (August 1967) was a production for the International Congress on religion, Architecture, and Visual Arts. Ffarrabas' account of Ordeals includes the "evocation of many real-life horrific and humiliating situations" when confronted by individuals and groups with power and authority. Viewers entered the front doors of the church and were met with a process of shuffling through and signing papers. Then, they traveled up stairs where the participants were kissed, and they were each given a paper cup with red mashed potatoes to eat. In groups of twelve, participants were met with a sequence of encounters with intimidating encounters with police, crawling, and being photographed on a wooden cross while being verbally embarrassed. Ffarrbas' word work was displayed along with an excerpt from Through the Looking Glass.

Terminal Reading (1969) was the first one three readings of Ffarrabas' unfinished novel. The second was performed at the Arts Lab in London (1970) and the third was performed at the Billy Apple Gallery on 23rd Street (1971).