3.
Making Space: Women Artists and Postwar Abstraction at MoMA
María Freire (Uruguayan, 1917–2015). Untitled.
Making Space shines a spotlight on the stunning achievements of women artists between the end of World War II (1945) and the start of the Feminist movement (around 1968). In the postwar era, societal shifts made it possible for larger numbers of women to work professionally as artists, yet their work was often dismissed in the male dominated art world, and few support networks existed for them. Abstraction dominated artistic practice during these years, as many artists working in the aftermath of World War II sought an international language that might transcend national and regional narratives—and for women artists, additionally, those relating to gender.
Drawn entirely from the Museum’s collection, the exhibition features more than 100 paintings, sculptures, photographs, drawings, prints, textiles, and ceramics by some 50 artists.
Opens April 15, 2017 at MoMA.
4.
Geta Bratescu, The Studio: A Tireless, Ongoing Space at Camden Arts Centre
Geta Brătescu, Lady Oliver in her travelling costume (Doamna Oliver în costum de călătorie), 1980 – 2012.
Romanian artist Geta Brătescu’s (b.1926) vivid practice has comprised performance, textiles, collage, print-making, installation and film. Living and working in Bucharest throughout Ceauşescu’s totalitarian regime, Brătescu embraced the studio as an autonomous space, free from economic or political influences.
Concerned with identity and dematerialisation, Brătescu conjures questions of ethics and femininity through her longstanding curiosity in mythical and literary figures, including Aesop, Faust, Beckett and Medea. These concepts have underlain much of her work through experiments in material rearrangements, charting the movement of her hands, the disappearance or concealment of her own image, and performing to the camera through her photographic series and films. Her exhibition will focus on this lifelong approach to the studio as a performative, contemplative and critical space to reflect on one’s own position in the world.
Opens April 7, 2017 at the Camden Arts Centre.
5.
We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965–85 at the Brooklyn Museum
Jay Van Ray
Focusing on the work of black women artists, We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965–85 examines the political, social, cultural, and aesthetic priorities of women of color during the emergence of second-wave feminism. It is the first exhibition to highlight the voices and experiences of women of color—distinct from the primarily white, middle-class mainstream feminist movement—in order to reorient conversations around race, feminism, political action, art production, and art history in this significant historical period.
Presenting a diverse group of artists and activists who lived and worked at the intersections of avant-garde art worlds, radical political movements, and profound social change, the exhibition features a wide array of work, including conceptual, performance, film, and video art, as well as photography, painting, sculpture, and printmaking.
Opens April 21, 2017 at the Brooklyn Museum.
