Surrealist Study Group (SSG) hosted by dama in the PRS Library

Surrealist Study Group (SSG) is a collective, research-led initiative dedicated to centering the work of women artists and writers historically associated with Surrealism. Through shared study and discussion, the group creates space for critical engagement with practices that have challenged normative structures of gender, sexuality, authorship, and power.

SSG examines how the poetics and politics of feminist and queer surrealist practices resonate with contemporary debates around gender identity, desire, spirituality, subjectivity, otherness, anthropocentrism, and ecological responsibility. Each gathering focuses on a selected text, artwork, film, or archival fragment, such as a short story, journal entry, or visual work, inviting collective reflection, dialogue, and exchange.

While Surrealism has often positioned itself as a marginal or oppositional movement, its canon has historically been shaped by male authors who idealised women as muses or conduits to the unconscious rather than recognising them as autonomous creators. Within this framework, women were frequently sacralised, objectified, and instrumentalised, their labour rendered invisible or symbolic. In contrast, feminist and queer surrealist practitioners used the movement’s radical strategies to articulate lived experiences of alienation, embodiment, desire, and resistance, disrupting both social norms and the movement’s own hierarchies.

The work of early women surrealists continues to speak powerfully to present conditions, revealing how many structures of exclusion, control, and gendered expectation remain unresolved. By foregrounding these practices, SSG situates historical works in dialogue with current feminist and queer cultural production, recognising them as vital contributors to ongoing artistic, political, and social conversations.

The study group engages with the work of artists and writers including Claude Cahun, Leonora Carrington, Anaïs Nin, Maya Deren, Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons, Suzanne Césaire, Agnes Denes, Leonor Fini, Bona de Mandiargues, Suzanne Cesaire, Joyce Mansour, Dorothea Tanning, Betye Saar, Clarice Lispector, Gertrude Abercrombie, Remedios Varo, Mona Hatoum and many others. Their radical approaches to form, authorship, and imagination provide critical tools for rethinking gender, creativity, and cultural value in the 21st century, in alignment with PRS’s commitment to supporting diverse voices and sustainable creative communities.

About your host:

dama (Amanda Maciel Antunes) was born in Brazil in a mixed-heritage family of Portuguese and Guarani ancestry and is now based in Los Angeles. A self-taught, transdisciplinary artist, occult librarian, and curator, her work draws from mythological, historical, and esoteric lineages to unsettle dominant narratives and reimagine the role of women in cultural memory. Working through language and durational performance as portals into contested histories and transformative myth-worlds, she cultivates an experimental feminist and queer practice grounded in surrealist methodologies. She is the founder of the Surrealist Study Group at the Philosophical Research Society. Her first book, Second Birth (HEXENTEXTE, 2023), traces her creative lineage to Anaïs Nin, weaving memory, motherhood, migration, and feminist imagination into a story of becoming. Recent exhibitions include Galeria Vermelho, 18th Street Arts Center, Oregon Contemporary, Brand Library, and her first museum solo at Craft Contemporary in Los Angeles (2025). In 2026, she will join the cohort at the Center for Deep Listening founded by Pauline Oliveros, expanding her ongoing investigations into sound, embodiment, and collective attention.

This is an in-person meet up only.

Suggested donation: $10 or RSVP and donate at the door!

Ticket limit: 40

Please email events@prs.org or phone 323-663-2167 with any questions.

ACCESSIBILITY

PRS wants all guests to be able to enjoy our events safely and comfortably. If you require any accessibility accommodation, please reach out to events@prs.org before showtime and we will be happy to assist you. 

REFUND POLICIES

All sales are final. There are no refunds or exchanges for PRS events, except in the event of a medical emergency, including but not limited to a positive COVID-19 test.

In the event that PRS is forced to cancel an event entirely, tickets will be refunded or vouchers offered for a rescheduled event.

PARKING

Parking is available in both front lot (entry from Los Feliz Blvd. when heading east) and back lot (entry from first alley way, off Griffith Park Blvd. from intersection with Los Feliz Blvd.), as well as ample street parking on Griffith Park Blvd.

PRS EVENT POLICIES

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* Events are subject to change without notice, including guest speakers and/or performers.

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