Community: feminist.bloggers@brooklynmuseum

Did you see the article on Votes for Women in yesterday’s AMNewYork? Check out Linda Perney and Lauren Johnson’s take on the show and watch Curator Maura Reilly discuss some prominent objects from the exhibition in a short video clip!

Opening…

Sustaining Vision: A Tribute to Arlene Raven opens March 5th at the Harold B. Lemmerman Gallery of New Jersey City University. Eight female artists have collaborated to organize a multimedia exhibition in honor of the late feminist art historian and critic Arlene Raven. In 1973, along with Judy Chicago and Sheila de Bretteville, Raven co-founded the Feminist Studio Workshop at the Woman’s Building in Los Angeles. Later in the 1970’s, Raven also helped launch Chrysalis magazine, was a founder of the Women’s Caucus for Art, and initiated the Lesbian Art Project. An artists panel will be held on March 18th, 5:30-7 p.m.; the exhibition runs through April 16th.

(Photograph of Arlene Raven taken by F. Stop Fitzgerald. Courtesy: New Jersey City University, The Harold B. Lemmerman Gallery.)

Through the Looking Glass-Tattoos & Kimonos, paintings by Janice Urnstein Weissman, opens March 6th at Jenkins Johnson Gallery’s New York location. In her work, Weissman exploits a tension between the photo-realistic rendering of her subjects’ bodies and the mystical, other-worldly nature of her subjects’ tattoos. The resultant painting-within-a-painting effect is further elaborated when juxtaposed with another of Weissman’s key elements, highly patterned kimonos.

(Janice Urnstein Weissman, Tattoo VIII, 2002. Courtesy: Janice Urnstein Weissman.)

Now Open…

Elizabeth Dee Gallery hosts the debut of Adrian Piper’s most recent, on-going body of work entitled Everything. Piper is well-known for her early career as a first-generation conceptual artist who dealt with contemporary social and political issues of race, sex, and class. In this new series, Piper’s work centers specifically on the phrase “Everything will be taken away.” In addition to its obvious conceptual implications, the mantra is technically manifested in processes such as fading, scrubbing, and erasing.

(Adrian Piper, Everything #10. Courtesy: Creative Time, creativetime.org.)

A multimedia show of work made within the past few years, Nayland Blake: What the Whiskey Said, What the Sun is Saying at Matthew Marks Gallery, closes March 8th. Blake’s new small sculptures, made with found materials, represent a subtler, more abstracted version of the artist’s aesthetic. Blake’s drawings are sorrowful daily meditations that convey the alienation felt after the loss of a loved one.

(Nayland Blake, Untitled, 2007. Courtesy: Matthew Marks Gallery.)

A retrospective collection of work by legendary photographer Nan Goldin remains on view at Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma in Helsinki through April 13th.

(Nan Goldin, Greer and Robert on the bed, NYC 1982. Courtesy: Matthew Marks Gallery and Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma.)

La Durée at Listasafn Islands National Gallery of Iceland features work by Global Feminisms artist Emmanuelle Antille, as well as Gabríela Fridriksdottir and Gudny Rósa Ingimarsdóttir, through May 1st. These three artists engage with different mediums in their similar explorations of the ambiguities of space and time.

(Emmanuelle Antille, Julie and Arantxa I (from the series Angels Camp), 2002-2003. Courtesy: Galerie Akinci.)

(Anni Holm, Detail of NewWorking project, 2008. Courtesy of Museum of Contemporary Art.)

Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago is holding an event called Stitch ‘n’ Bitch every fourth Tuesday of the month from 5:30-8:00 pm. This event invites knitters to bring their needles and yarn to knit and exchange techniques and stories. The event welcomes needle workers of all levels to participate in this fresh adaptation of the traditional sewing circle. This is going to be a great opportunity to experience and reflect upon the history of female labor and its relationship to visual art and culture. And on Tuesday, February 26, guest artist Anni Holm brings her NewWorking project to share with participants.

(Meg Webster, Warped Floor, 2007. Courtesy of Paula Cooper Gallery.)

Meg Webster’s new works are on view from February 23 through March 22 at Paula Cooper Gallery. If “going green” is your motto for the year than this is a show that you shouldn’t miss. Shaping natural materials such as soil, salt, hay, and water into stark geometrics, Meg Webster’s art questions the fundamental relationship between nature and artifice.

(Diana Cooper , All Our Wandering, 2007, Courtesy of MOCA Cleveland.)

Overdrive, an exhibition of recent works by Diana Cooper is on view from February 23 through March 29 at Postmasters Gallery. Cooper’s creations are extremely labor-intensive; she uses doodling as a point of departure for artworks and recently her explorations have burst off the walls into complex sculptural installations. The center piece of the show is “All Our Wandering,” a multi-sectioned, blood-red structure of interlocking wooden shelves. Laminated onto the sculpture’s hollow interior are digital prints of Cooper’s earlier drawings which are then further drawn upon by the artist.

(Lea Barton, Promenade, 2008, Courtesy of the Artist.)

Denise Bibro Fine Art is showing a recent series of multi-media works by Lea Barton through March 6. Barton’s show, titled South, features collage and paint combined with photography and printmaking techniques to create richly layered works that explore the material and political history of the South, and dissect stereotypes of femininity in Antebellum and contemporary Southern culture. Through photographic self-portraits, Barton takes on multiple identities such as the virginal veiled bride, burlesque vixen, prom queen, and Miss America, supported by female ephemera like dressmaker’s patterns, and lace.

(Pilar Albarracin, Mortal Cadencia, 2008, Courtesy of the Artist.)

La maison rouge in Paris presents Mortal Cadencia, a series of recent installations and video work by Pilar Albarracin. The show run from February 22 through May 18. In her work, Pilar Albarracin questions the traditional hierarchy of genres by traversing diverse mediums such as video, performance, sculpture, photography, and installation. Many will remember her video, Prohibido el cante / Forbidden Singing (2000) featured in Global Feminisms, but if you missed it, you can find part of it on Pilar Albarracin’s page on the Feminist Art Base!

(Untitled Film Still (1977-1980/2008) Billboard at Sunset Blvd at the corner of Sunset Blvd and Olive St, West Hollywood. Courtesy of the Artist.)

To commemorate the historical feminist movement’s streetwise and urban activism, Los Angeles hosts Women in the City, an intriguing public art exhibition throughout February and March. The work of four seminal feminist artists will be presented in the urban and social geography of the city: Jenny Holzer, Barbara Kruger, Louise Lawler and Cindy Sherman will all be showing their work in various locations on billboards, video screens, storefronts, and a movie theater.

**Many special thanks to Angela Oh for helping to compile some of these picks!

Today’s New York Sun “chats” with Ghada Amer, who opens up to writer Alix Finkelstein about her background as an artist, her take on Abstract Expressionism, and our exhibition, Ghada Amer: Love Has No End. Check it out here.

Votes for Women received some attention from Time Out NY this week in a wonderful feature article titled, “The Ladies’ Room,” by Dan Avery. Run out and pick up a copy at your local news stand or bookstore today–it may be off the shelves tomorrow!