"A Room of Her Own" Exhibition
Lu Magnus
This event has ended.
A Room of Her Own brings together a group of artists – Natalie Frank, Hilary Harkness, Emily Noelle Lambert, Paula Rego, Dasha Shishkin, Eve Sussman | Rufus Corporation and Mickalene Thomas –who are working with figuration, and on paper, to construct personal environments that are singularly their own. These artists are all women, and these women share interconnected yet diverse interests in the construction of identity both personal and public. Addressing intimate and fantastic views of sexuality, fantasy, Nationality, race, gender and art history in these drawings, collages and paintings, these artists emphasize the primacy of the figure to create narrative.
What is the public role of personal fantasy? How do these women use images related to the female body to tell their own stories? The title of this exhibition refers to Virginia Woolf's 1929 essay, "A Room of One's Own." This seminal Feminist essay uses a fictional narrative and narrator to examine women both as writers of and characters in fiction. This exhibition, like this text, argues for both a literal and figurative space for women artists.
The exhibition is curated by Natalie Frank and Amelia Abdullahsani. The show runs from May 7 through June 19, 2011. A Room of Her Own is part of the New Museum’s Festival of Ideas, in the theme of The Reconfigured City. The opening reception will be on Saturday May 7, from 6pm – midnight. Panel discussion on Sunday, May 8 at 2pm (details below).
In the face of the changing city and the rapid development of a downtown milieu, specifically the Lower East Side (home to both the New Museum and Lu Magnus), how do women reconfigure the city and themselves? These worlds address major points of The Reconfigured City – the body, its function, its capacity to construct, and the City – the ordered environment that is both shaped and actively shaping. Natalie Frank’s drawings use narrative that is domestic, shared, and literary to address the ways in which women construct power. Portraying soothsayers, hangmen, figures of death and figures that exits between times and genders, these often animalistic figures interact in quiet and grotesque ways that reflect the theatricality of everyday life.
Drawing upon historical, literary and social references, Hilary Harkness explores power struggles of gender bias, fetish, fantasy and the complicated tradition of representing women through art history. The women in Harkness’ narratives embody interstitial spaces; they are outliers. They exist simultaneously in worlds of the past, the present, and those of fantasy.
Emily Noelle Lambert’s layered environments are felt: physically and the psychologically. With a play between an eccentric personal vision and an approach identified with the outsider, Lambert weaves together the figurative and the abstract in prefect tension and balance. Lambert’s figures and abstract motifs interact seamlessly in an imagined landscape
Media
Schedule
from May 07, 2011 to June 19, 2011
Opening Reception on 2011-05-07 from 18:00 to 23:59