Exhibitions: Global Feminisms Remix

Miwa Yanagi (Japanese, b. 1967). Yuka, from the My Grandmothers series, 2000. Chromogenic print on Plexiglas, mounted on aluminum. Collection of Linda Pace, San Antonio, Texas. © Miwa Yanagi. Photograph courtesy of the artist

August 3, 2007–February 3, 2008

This exhibition of forty recent works was selected from Global Feminisms, the international survey of contemporary art that inaugurated the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art. Like its widely praised predecessor, this new presentation seeks to offer an alternative that moves beyond the Western brand of feminism. Many of the artists are from countries that seldom figure in the discourse about contemporary art, such as Guatemala, Kenya, Pakistan, Thailand, Korea, and India. Their works, in a wide range of media, deal with racial and gender identity, politics, and oppression.

In her video White House, for example, Afghan artist Lida Abdul shows herself whitewashing a building in bombed-out Kabul. Similarly, in her performance videotape Who Can Erase the Footprints, made in memory of murdered Guatemalan women, Regina José Galindo leaves a trail of bloody footprints from the Guatemalan Court of Constitutionality to the country's National Palace. Japanese artist Ryoko Suzuki contributes a mural-sized installation of three photographs in which her face is bound by pig intestines and she is bullied into mute, anonymous submission. Australian artist Tracey Moffatt's Love is a twenty-one-minute video montage of brief clips from Hollywood films showing women in encounters with men ranging from the classic kiss to brutal confrontations.

Among the other artists represented are Ghada Amer (Egypt), Arahmaiani (Indonesia), Pilar Albarracín (Spain), Pipilotti Rist (Switzerland), and Adriana Varejão (Brazil).

The specific works have been chosen by Co-Curators Maura Reilly, Curator of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, and Linda Nochlin, Lila Acheson Wallace Professor of Modern Art at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University.