'Taking Space: Contemporary Women Artists and the Politics of Scale' on View at Montclair Art Museum
Siona Benjamin, Lilith in the New World, 2023, Close up of 13 x 30 ft. banner mural. Photo by Rachel Fawn Alban.
How do women artists take up space and scale in their work? That’s the primary question asked in the new exhibition, “Taking Space: Contemporary Women Artists and the Politics of Scale,” at the Montclair Art Museum (MAM) on view through Jan 7, 2024. Inspired by a 2021 show at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA), the exhibition offers twenty-three works in a range of media including paintings, sculptures, paper, photographs, and more. Among them are ten alluring artworks from PAFA alongside thirteen foundational works from the Montclair Art Museum’s collection of American women artists. The exhibiting artists represent a range of ages and diverse cultures in their work, demonstrating how to take up space with stories of their identities and cultural heritages.
“I was thinking about how taking up space can be intertwined with themes of identity and self-determination,” explains MAM Chief Curator, Gail Stavitsky during our phone interview. “Also, the history of women in art and to what degree they've been historically overlooked or have had fewer opportunities.”
A centerpiece of the exhibit is Kara Walker’s monumental cut-paper silhouette installation “Virginia’s Lynch Mob” (1998), a part of the MAM collection on view for the first time since 2018. “We don't get to show it on a regular basis. We have rotating presentations of our permanent collection, and this show provided the perfect opportunity to feature that work alongside major large scale works from the Pennsylvania Academy,” said Stavitsky.
Kara Walker, Virginia’s Lynch Mob, 1998, Cut paper and adhesive wall installation Installation dimensions variable; approx. 112 x 444 in. Photo by Rachel Fawn Alban.
At 40 feet long, a viewer must stand against the opposite wall to be able to take it all in, but to investigate the life-size figures it is best to look very closely. Made of black cut paper silhouettes, it is unclear if the mob is on its way to a lynching or returning from one that has already occurred, representing the horrors of slavery and racial violence in the United States. The figures are so stunningly beautiful and precisely cut that it is unsettling to consider that you’re admiring the beauty of something so violent and horrific, which perhaps is the point.
“What you're seeing is an exhibition copy. The museum has the original and two exhibition copies. If another museum wants to borrow it from us, they'd use the other exhibition copy,” explains Stavitsky. “It's installed on the wall with an archival adhesive, kind of like a wax, that's on the back of the paper. We work with a professional, specialized installer. He has installed so many of Kara Walker’s cut silhouette pieces at many institutions.”
Mickalene Thomas, Din Avec la Main Dans le Miroir, 2008, Mixed media collage, 120 x 96 inches. Photo by Rachel Fawn Alban.
One of the large scale works borrowed from PAFA, “Din Avec la Main Dans le Miroir” by Mickalene Thomas is a dazzling, larger-than-life portrait comprised of elaborate patterns and sparkling rhinestones. Born in Camden, Thomas is a queer Black female artist who weaves references to art history with pop culture to celebrate African American female beauty and power. In this piece, the composition and patchwork of elements are reminiscent of Henri Matisse (1869–1954), “Purple Robe and Anemones.”
Barbra Kruger, who was born in Newark, is known for her work investigating power and control, capitalism, and gender through found photographs layered with text.
In this piece, the enlarged image of a woman’s face is cropped to occupy the entire frame and layered with the evocative phrase, “Seeing Through You.” The exhibition text offers insight into how this can be read politically: “Is she seeing or being seen? Is the viewer seeing and being seen through at the same time? The act of seeing is imbued with power, and Kruger’s ultimate goal is to intercept the stereotypes, codes, and conventions by which power is arbitrarily imposed.”
Eiko Fan, Life Is a Cycle. 1993, Wood, 89 ¼ x 52 x 56 ½ in. Photo by Rachel Fawn Alban
Born in Japan, Eiko Fan is a Philadelphia-based sculptor and performance artist who has been working with a chainsaw to carve wood for over fifty years. In this remarkable wooden sculpture, “Life Is a Cycle,” Fan explores her relationship with her mother and generations of women over time through a depiction of a large scale wooden figure.
While some artists literally take up gallery space with expansive, large-scale works, others explore what it means to physically take up space as women in the male-dominated art world. Alice Neel’s portrait of the artist Isabel Bishop is presented as a dignified elderly woman who is also an artist, with lively eyes and arthritic but powerful hands. Neel centers the figure to prominently occupy the space of the canvas. Next to Neel’s portrait, Carrie Mae Weems’ “Framed by Modernism” is a portrait of herself as a nude model with the painter Robert Colesscott, examining the imbalanced power relationship between artist and model, especially models who were women of color.
Mequitta Ahuja’s large scale painting, “A Real Allegory of Her Studio” explores what it means to be a painter. In it, an open sketchbook is to her left, in which she has been working out perspective. To the right is a piece of paper that depicts a silhouette, referencing an ancient Roman origin myth for painting as invented when a woman traced the shadow of her lover on the wall. “She actually studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of Art, and I believe this is a self-portrait,” Stavitsky tells us. This references one of the early forms of painting by tracing the outline of a shadow. So that painting is like a miniature history of art and of women in art, centering this young woman artist of color.”
Mequitta Ahuja, A Real Allegory of Her Studio, 2015, Oil on canvas, 80 x 96 in. Photo by Rachel Fawn Alban.
Complimenting the “Taking Space” exhibition is a new mural installation in MAM's Laurie Art Stairway, “Lilith in the New World,” by Indian-American-Jewish artist, Siona Benjamin. Based in Montclair since 2002, Benjamin was raised in Mumbai as a member of the Bene Israel Community, one of India’s three historic Jewish communities. Benjamin’s works often center blue female figures, representing the concept of otherness, issues of immigration, and of women of color. Measuring 13 feet high x 30 feet wide and created digitally, this printed banner mural centralizes Lilith, the first wife of Adam in Judaic mythology. Lilith is at the composition's center, praying for salvation "from their wrath,” an allusion to her outsider status as a potential target of war, persecution, and societal injustice - particularly resonant in this time of global wars.
While this exhibition is ongoing through January 7, 2024, there will be a complementary talk with artists Siona Benjamin, Eiko Fan, and Clarity Haynes, moderated by Brittany Webb, Curator of 20th Century Art at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts taking place on November 16, 2023.
Montclair | Ongoing thru Jan 7, 2024
LINKS
Taking Space Exhibition
Nov 16, 2023 Talk with Featured Artists
