National Women's Caucus for Art
CALL for ART-
from the Center: NOW!
| Host: | National WCA |
| Location: | Woman Made Gallery |
Chicago, IL |
The exhibition 'From the Center now' will be juried by feminist author and art historian Lucy Lippard. The exhibition's theme is a play on words taking in account Lippard's groundbreaking volume of feminist art criticism "From the Center."
The exhibition's aim is to revisit the themes and concerns of Lippard’s book in order to illustrate both where women’s art has been as well as what it looks like in the first decade of the 21st Century. In the 70’s Lippard noted that some feminist artist had chosen a fundamentally sexual or erotic imagery a response to women being objectified in art historically. Others celebrated the female experience where birth, motherhood, rape, maintenance, household imagery, windows, menstruation, autobiography, family background and portraits of friends figured prominently. Some created more politically charged work with posterlike content. Others utilized materials and colors traditionally denigrated as “ feminine,” or in a more symbolic or abstract parallel to their experiences, images of veiling, confinement, enclosure, pressures, barriers, constrictions, as well as of growth, unwinding unfolding and sensuous surfaces were common. Still others dealt with organic life images and some started with the self as subject, moving from the inside outward. All of this work exchanges stylistic derivation for the other work that was happening at that time creating insight into a potential female culture.
Has this female culture been fully realized in 2010? What does our art look like now? How has it changed? How has it remained the same? Where do we go from here. " From the Center Now will show how women's art has shifted, progressed–or remained the same—since the seventies.
Special attention will be given to the work of women artists from the Midwest region, the host region - giving an added dimension to the term '“from the center.'”
