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Judy Chicago
Deflowered
Judy Chicago, Deflowered, 2013
Oslo Kunstforening/Oslo Fine Art Society is happy to announce the first solo presentation of the work of American artist Judy Chicago in Scandinavia.
Judy Chicago is most famous for her large collaborative projects and installations that examine the role of women historically and culturally. She is considered a pioneer in contemporary art and participated actively in the transformation of the male-dominated art landscape by creating innovative work from a female perspective. Her art and ideas continue to influence generations of artists.
Judy Chicago, Deflowered, 2013
Bio
Judy Cohen was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1939. In 1970 she changed her name to Chicago when she decided to reject patriarchal naming conventions. After a decade of professional art practice, Chicago created the first feminist art program at California State University, Fresno. She brought her program to the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) where she team-taught with artists, Miriam Schapiro. With their students, they produced the groundbreaking installation Womanhouse in an abandoned house in Hollywood, California, the first major feminist art installation.
Early in her career, Chicago began to use non-traditional media like plastics and fireworks. She soon appropriated traditional handicrafts such as embroidery and needlework, using these in an atypical manner or combining them with traditionally male-dominated crafts as in The Dinner Party (1974-1979), the work for which Chicago is most famous. This monumental sculptural installation is a symbolic narrative of the history of woman in Western civilization.
The exhibition at Oslo Kunstforening/Oslo Fine Art Society includes works from the 60s and 70s, such as her famous Car Hoods from 1965 and several versions of the Large Dome Drawings from 1969, but also later work such as Fragments from the Delta of Venus from 2004 based upon the erotic writing of her mentor, Anais Nin. The exhibition also includes a rare bisque test plate and runner design from The Dinner Party, which traveled around the world to a viewing audience of over one million people. It has been on permanent display at the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum in New York since 2007.
Judy Chicago, Deflowered, 2013
A catalogue entitled Deflowered with essays by Tim Nye, Lucy Lippard and Saul Ostrow will be available during the exhibition at Oslo Kunstforening/Oslo Fine Art Society.
In conjunction with the exhibition the seminar The First Supper Symposium on gender and power with a particular focus on women in the arts will take place. Judy Chicago is one of the key speakers.
Part of the exhibition will be shown at 3,14 The International Contemporary Art Foundation in Bergen in August 2013 in concurrence with the First International Triennale, Bergen Assembly.
The exhibition is made possible through the kind support of Arts Council Norway.
Judy Chicago, Deflowered, 2013