Join Callie’s and a.p. on Wednesday, August 23rd at 7pm, for Barbie, Karen, and her Methods of Annihilation, a reading by resident Cara Benedetto followed by a conversation between Benedetto and the deputy director of Callie’s, Isabel Parkes.

Using Greta Gerwig’s recently-released film Barbie as a starting point, the talk will explore themes central to Benedetto’s practice, including mainstream depictions of love and desire, and internalizations of misogyny. It will also touch on the way Benedetto uses romantic comedy as a genre to explore and expose the relationship between politics and representation, particularly as it pertains to notions of white feminism in the United States. ⁠

Cara Benedetto was born in 1979 in Wausau, Wisconsin. Her practice spans printmaking, writing, performance, pedagogy, and video. Her current research examines the language of oppression, particularly patriarchal capitalism, in contemporary media. She is based in Richmond, where she holds the position of Associate Professor in Print Media at Virginia Commonwealth University. ⁠