Posts from the “Women” Category

Lilli Waters: Others Dream

Posted on December 12, 2018

From Where We Came

Utero © Lilli Waters

“At dusk and dawn, the edge of slumber and first light, these figures awaken out of the darkness and live in the hours when others dream,” LilIi Waters writes in the artist statement for her disquieting series, Others Dream, which features women amid an otherworldly landscape that is equal parts foreboding and curious.

Photographed across Western Australia, the images from Others Dream offer a mystical, mythical portrait of the primordial essence of life that begins in utero before being launched upon the earth. They offer themselves as wordless poems, silent revealing secrets to us, offering a moment of meditation where we can escape the artifice that civilization demands and return to something infinitely simpler albeit impossible to fully comprehend.

Here Waters shares her journey, revealing the path that brought her to the creation of this body of work, offering insight on the effortless synergy of life and art.

Read the Full Story at Feature Shoot

The Road Before. © Lilli Waters

Categories: Art, Feature Shoot, Photography, Women

EVA.C Introduces “Kane”

Posted on December 12, 2018

From “Kane” by Emma Capps and Anna Howard

Anna Howard first discovered a single series of amateur S&M photographs made during the 1970s through an American porn dealer while doing research for 77 Broadway Market, the shop she owns with Conor Donlon.

“What spoke to me was the ambiguous power play, and how easily I found myself empathising with each of the different women,” Howard reveals. “They proposed a real visual riddle too; I couldn’t place them – the floral dresses, rope play, in a setting that looks like an air raid shelter.”

Howard showed the photographs, which bore the mysterious name “Kane,” to Emma Capps, her colleague at Donlon Books. “We’d talked for ages about doing some kind of project together, and when we came across this collection of photographs, it suddenly felt like: Oh, this is it,” Capps says.

Read the Full Story at AnOther Man

From “Kane” by Emma Capps and Anna Howard

Categories: 1970s, AnOther Man, Photography, Women

7 Black Artists You Should Know

Posted on December 7, 2018

NEW YORK, NY – MAY 02: DJ Juliana performs onstage at the Gucci Bloom Fragrance Launch at MoMA PS.1 on May 2, 2017 in New York City. (Photo by Craig Barritt/Getty Images for Gucci)

Throughout history, great works of art have been ascribed to the hand of “Anonymous,” their names erased and authorship denied. Virginia Woolf famously said, “I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.” Fortunately, we are now at a time to write and publish our histories, firmly inscribed. With Art Basel in Miami Beach heating up this weekend, here are seven black artists on our radar out here changing the game.

Read the Full Story at Broadly

Nina Chanel Abney. Photo by J. Caldwell

Categories: Art, Broadly, Music, Painting, Photography, Women

Judy Chicago: Atmospheres

Posted on November 19, 2018

Smoke Holes #2, 1969, 2018. Courtesy Nina Johnson and the artist

Fifty years ago, Judy Chicago set the world aflame, unleashing Atmospheres into the air we breathe and igniting a passion for pyrotechnics that continues to this very day. Yesterday, Miami gallery Nina Johnson opened an exhibition of never-before-seen photo prints documenting this prescient series of landscape installations and performances made staged between 1968–1974, concurrent to Chicago’s major survey, A Reckoning at The Institute of Contemporary Art.

“It is not unusual for it to take decades for people to understand my work,” Chicago explains. It is not at all surprising, considering the ways in which Atmospheres bridges the divides between the timeless and the temporal by making art an action, rather than an object, to behold – as the ultimate expression of the sacred feminine principles of Mother Earth.

Atmospheres first found expression on the streets of Pasadena, California, where Chicago lived and worked, several years after graduating with an MFA from UCLA. “Using a colour system I had developed for emotive purposes, I did a series of dimensional domes, in which the colour was trapped inside the transparent shapes,” Chicago recalls.

Then, working with other artists, she built a large colour wheel to cover klieg lights and lined the street with billowing fog machines. “When the fog began to fill the street, the colour wheels turned, and I saw the entrapped colour inside my domes liberated in the air. I thought to myself, ‘’I am going to use coloured smokes’, not realising that I was getting ready to liberate myself from the constraints of minimalism – and patriarchy.”

Read the Full Story at Dazed

Immolation, 1972; from Women and Smoke, 2018. Courtesy Nina Johnson and the artist

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, Art, Dazed, Exhibitions, Photography, Women

Diana Markosian: Quince – Coming of Age in Cuba

Posted on October 23, 2018

Diana Markosian Girls stand outside their friend’s quinceañera venue as they wait for their big entrance © Diana Markosian | Magnum Photos

Diana Markosian Teens gather in the courtyard of a church as they prepare for their friend’s quinceañera festivities © Diana Markosian | Magnum Photos

After being awarded the 2018 Elliot Erwitt Fellowship Grant to travel to Cuba for one month, Diana Markosian set forth to explore the exquisite moment of transformation, as a girl becomes a woman in society, and the way this experience informs the feminine identity. The ensuing project, Quince, which is made up of portraits and imagery from locally made magazines, will be shown at Paris Photo, in the Grand Palais, from November 8-11.

“A lot of my work is about the past and memory. It is less about going somewhere and more about finding my way into that country and my understanding of what that country represents for me,” the Armenian-American artist explains.

Born in Moscow in 1989, Markosian’s early years were shaped by living through the total collapse of the Soviet Union. She discovered an immediate and intimate parallel between her childhood experiences and the lives of those she encountered during her visit, “The 90s in Cuba was a time that is referred to as the ‘special period’ — a moment when the country, which was dependent on the Soviet Union, was in total economic collapse. It’s something I experienced first hand living in Moscow and Yerevan as a child.”

In sharing these stories, Markosian felt a connection to the lives of those she met in Cuba, and realized the story she was searching for could be found deeper in the countryside. She began traveling outside of Havana, going from town to town, until she arrived in Matanzas, famed as the birthplace of the Afro-Cuban music and dance traditions of danzón and rumba.

Here, she met a few girls and their parents, who struck up a conversation by showing Markosian a photobook that was made for their daughter’s quinceañera, a Latin American tradition celebrating a girl’s 15th birthday. As Markosian leafed through the book, she became intrigued.

Read the Full Story at Magnum Photos

Diana Markosian A girl rides around her neighbourhood in a pink 1950s convertible as her community gathers to celebrate her 15th birthday © Diana Markosian | Magnum Photos

Categories: Art, Latin America, Magnum Photos, Photography, Women

Sara Bennett: Life After Life in Prison – The Bedroom Project

Posted on October 17, 2018

SHARON, 57, back in supportive housing seven years after her release. Corona, NY (2017) Sentence: 20 years to life Served: 20 years/ Released: May 2010 “My body tells me, I was in prison, but my mind tells me that I never spent a day there. I have this sense of freedom and a strong sense of feeling liberated. I am so in touch with my womanhood, of being a mom and a grandmother, a friend and a partner, a spiritual sister. I’m in touch with all that . . . my room is a place of peace and a sanctuary to come home to every day. I love turning the key in my door.”

American photographer Sara Bennett knows the legal system from a vantage point few have. Working as a public defender specializing in cases with battered women and the wrongly convicted, Bennett has developed a profound understanding of the impact that prison has on innocent and vulnerable lives.

The experience of prison resonates long after release for many who are consigned to spend years inside the system. Over the past five years, Bennett has begun documenting the lives of former inmates in the project Life After Life in Prison. Here we see women making their way back into the world, adapting to the challenges of life after having lost it all.

With a humanist eye and a sensitivity to detail, Bennett shares stories rarely told anywhere: the struggles of the dispossessed and marginalized who carry the weight of redemption on their own shoulders. It is only when they are able to retreat into their own private worlds that they may lay down their burdens for a moment.

It is here that The Bedroom Project centers itself, deep within the most intimate space of one’s domicile. Here, Bennett creates a series of portraits that reveal each of these women within the sanctity of their private lives. In each photograph, there is a sense of relationship between subject and space, in the way they dress, decorate, arrange, and pose for the portrait. A sense of consistency begins to reveal itself, a sense that we may know and be known through the way we live.

Read the Full Story at Feature Shoot

TRACY, 51, in her own apartment three-and-a-half years after her release. Jamaica, NY (2017) Sentence: 22 years to life Served: 24 years Released: February 2014 “I imagined coming home, living in a one- or two-bedroom apartment, where one was a master and an extra room for guests. Here I have that. I call this room my “doll house,” my safe haven. I feel at peace. I’ve finally unpacked. I spend a lot of time in here. I take pride in everything. I put more into this room than into the kitchen. I know I need to eat, but my room is my nutrition.” © Sara Bennett

Top of dresser. © Sara Bennett

Categories: Art, Feature Shoot, Photography, Women

Lina Iris Viktor: A Haven. A Hell. A Dream Deferred

Posted on October 15, 2018

Seventh (2018) © Lina Iris Viktor, Courtesy the Artist and Mariane Ibrahim Gallery

When British-Liberian artist Lina Iris Viktor enrolled in college in the United States, she was confronted with the subject of race and identity in a manner she had never considered prior to coming to America. “I realised what it meant to be Black in the US, and experienced the cultural realities that came with it,” Viktor tells AnOther.

Charged with the desire to examine her roots and explore her heritage, Viktor discovered an inextricable link in Pan-African history that has become the very heart of the new exhibition, Lina Iris Viktor: A Haven. A Hell. A Dream Deferred, now on view at the New Orleans Museum of Art.

Here, Viktor looks back to the founding of Liberia, Africa’s first and oldest modern republic. Established in 1822 by the American Colonization Society, Liberia was originally imagined as a conduit for the resettlement of free-born and formerly enslaved Black Americans in the early days of the abolitionist movement.

Artists and writers of the era seized the figure of the “Libyan Sibyl,” a prophetess from classical antiquity who foretold of tragedy, and recast her in the image of activist and freed slave Sojourner Truth – a symbol Viktor embraces throughout this series of glorious large-scale self-portraits exquisitely gilded with 24-carat gold. Here, Viktor shares her journey across time and space, reclaiming the lost narratives that demand to be told.

Read the Full Story at AnOther Online

Eleventh (2018) © Lina Iris Viktor, Courtesy the Artist and Mariane Ibrahim Gallery

Categories: Africa, AnOther, Art, Exhibitions, Painting, Women

Frances F. Denny: Major Arcana – Witches in America

Posted on October 8, 2018

When visual artist Frances F. Denny began to research her family lineage five years ago, she came across a shocking discovery: her eighth great-grandmother, Mary Bliss Parsons was accused of witchcraft while living in Northampton, MA, in 1674.

“I was researching my ancestry for my first book, Let Virtue Be Your Guide, and found a document my father had made outlining his side of our family tree,” Denny tells Broadly.

One historic account noted that Parsons, who came from a “good family” and had a large brood of children, was accused of practicing witchcraft by a woman who wanted to have children but was unable to get pregnant. Although Parsons was acquitted of the charges and lived into her 80s, her reputation never recovered.

Less then two decades after Parsons stood trial in Boston, the practice of bearing false witness rose to a fevered pitch during the Salem Witch Trials of 1692 – 1693. Over 200 people were accused; fourteen women and five men were found guilty and hanged under the auspice of Chief Justice Samuel Sewall – who in a twist of fate, Denny learned was her tenth great-grandfather.

Read the Full Story at Broadly

Categories: Art, Exhibitions, Photography, Women

Jenny Holzer on the Power of the Word in Art

Posted on September 7, 2018

In the beginning was the word, and the word was art – though rarely do we conflate the two. Image and text are largely considered distinct forms that have rendered their application as distinct disciplines. Invariably, though, artists traverse boundaries to question, examine, provoke, entertain, exalt or otherwise engage with new ideas.

The word in art, as art, is a realm all its own, one inhabited by the few who dare to delve into its depths. Visual Language, a bi-coastal group exhibition presented by Subliminal Projects, Los Angeles, and FACTION Art Projects, New York, celebrates the power of the word in art. Here, artists including Jenny Holzer, Guerrilla Girls, Betty Tomkins, Ed Ruscha, DFace and Shepard Fairey present their own take on the word, using it for a wide array of expression, be it political, ironic, poetic, typographic, abstract or conceptual.

Jenny Holzer is perhaps the most renowned and respected contemporary artist to use words as her métier. Hailing from Gallipolis, Ohio, Holzer arrived in New York City in 1976 at the age of 26, becoming an active member of Colab, the downtown artist collective that included Kiki Smith, Tom Otterness, James Nares, Jane Dickson and John Ahearn, among others. Holzer gained early recognition with Truisms (1977–79), a series of epigrams she penned, printed and wheat-pasted as anonymous broadsheets on walls around Manhattan. Her gift for aphorisms was impeccable as she brought together poetry and pithy witticisms with a populist punch, making them available to the general public at a time when graffiti and street art was making its presence felt.

Read the Full Story at AnOther Online

Categories: 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, AnOther, Art, Exhibitions, Women

Alanna Airitam, Endia Beal & Medina Dugger: How Do You See Me?

Posted on September 6, 2018

Queen Mary. Copyright Alanna Airitam

In the new exhibition at Catherine Edelman Gallery, three artists present a series of vivid colour portraits of black men and women from around the world. The show then asks: How do you see me?

It’s a simple, yet highly effective question that cuts to the quick. Not who, but how, is the issue at hand. Where does perception start? Photographers Alanna Airitam, Endia Beal, and Medina Dugger each explore this idea from their own, distinctive vantage point.

“When I was at Yale in my MFA program, one of the critics was LaToya Ruby Frazier,” Endia Beal remembers. “She said to me, ‘Endia, the history of photography for black women is still being written and you need to ask yourself, ‘What are you adding to the history? What are you doing to tell the stories of black women and photography within the larger context of fine art and photojournalism?’’

Read the Full Story at Huck Online

Teal Suku Sinero. Copyright Medina Dugger

Categories: Art, Exhibitions, Photography, Women

Lucy Sparrow: Sparrow Mart

Posted on August 3, 2018

Photo courtesy of The Standard.

Growing up under the gray skies of post-recession Britain, Lucy Sparrow was mesmerized by the Technicolor splendors of Los Angeles. She was obsessed with the power of bright colors, catchy logos, and familiar forms. These days, Sparrow’s art installations take a cue from Hollywood’s glossy imitation of reality, but with a twist that infuses the ordinary bits of life with wonder.

What Sparrow is best-known for is building a series of corner stores, pharmacies, and even a sex shop where all the merchandise is meticulously crafted out of felt. She recognized the charm of recasting commonplace items in an unexpected material, and tapped into the persistent cultural identity that comes from consumption (cue Barbara Kruger’s I shop therefore I am ).

Last summer, Sparrow opened a felt bodega in New York City selling plush produce, junk food, and even felt condoms. The installation, 8 ‘Till Late, drew so many visitors that it closed in under a month—a full week early—because the shop sold out. (Everything in the store was for sale, with prices starting at just $1.)

On the heels of that incredible success, Sparrow just opened her fifth fully-felted installation, Sparrow Mart in Downtown Los Angeles, modeled on the city’s ubiquitous convenience stores. It’s four times larger than the New York show and took a year to create, and it’s stocked with more than 31,000 items, all of which are for sale.

I caught up with her as she was putting the finishing touches on Sparrow Mart in LA to chat about her fondness for felt and why she’s obsessed with supermarkets.

Read the Full Story at VICE Online

Photo courtesy of The Standard.

Photo courtesy of The Standard.

Categories: Art, Exhibitions, Vice, Women