If you ask someone to name five artists, they will likely name prominent male artists, but how many
If you ask someone to name five artists, they will likely name prominent male artists, but how many people can list five women artists? Throughout March’s Women’s History Month, we will be joining institutions around the world to answer this very question posed by the National Museum of Women in the Arts (NWMA). We will be featuring a woman artist every day this month, and highlighting artists in our current exhibition Half the Picture: A Feminist Look at the Collection which explores a wide range of art-making, focusing on enduring political subjects—encompassing gender, race, and class—that remain relevant today. The show is on view until March 31, 2019.Together we hope to draw attention to the gender and race imbalance in the art world, inspire conversation and awareness, and hopefully add a few more women to everyone’s lists.Ellen Lesperance uses painting and knitting to create complex works that are largely inspired by women weavers of the Bauhaus, the Pattern and Decoration Movement, and body-based feminist artists of the 1970s and 1980s. Lesperance first creates gouache paintings on paper, which serve as patterns to recreate historic knit garments, which she locates within archival images and video documentation of women involved in Direct Action feminist protest. The physical labor she expends to create her knitted pieces intrinsically makes a statement about the demands of women’s labor.Posted by Chiara MannarinoEllen Lesperance (American, born 1971). Cardigan Worn by One Woman of the Boeing Five, Tried for Entering the Boeing Nuclear Missile Plant on September 27th, 1983, Sentenced to Fifteen Days in the King County Jail for Defending Life on Earth, 2011. Wool sweater hand knit by the artist, and gouache and graphite on tea stained paper. Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art. Purchase gift of Jill and Jay Bernstein, 2012.18a-c. -- source link
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