Community: feminist.bloggers@brooklynmuseum

(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!