Lorraine O'Grady

Lorraine O'Grady included in Visibilities: Intrepid Women of Artpace, curated by Erin K. Murphy, at Artpace, San Antonio, TX.

The institution's press release follows: 

For Artpace’s 25th anniversary year, Artpace has committed to focusing all non-residency exhibition programming to woman artists in 2020. With this in mind we will begin our 25th year with the exhibition Visibilities: Intrepid Women of Artpace.

A fair number of exhibitions in recent years have focused on the work of female artists, but none has focused on those coming out of Artpace’s International Artist-in-Residency program. With an eye to equity, the exhibition seeks to highlight and amplify global voices of a bold and powerful female-identifying artistic community. As Linda Pace once said, “As an artist, I realized artists must work in environments in which they can be understood and respected. Later, as a patron, I tried to put this lesson into practice, creating a climate that encouraged individual experimentation in the way I had experienced it in that course.”

The project focuses keenly on presenting a diverse grouping of work addressing issues of identity, femininity, gender, feminism, and womanhood (in whatever form that may take) in an age when Linda Nochlin’s 1971 essay “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” still resonates.

Curated by Erin K. Murphy, Artpace Residency and Exhibitions Manager, Visibilities: Intrepid Women of Artpace includes a wide array of mediums brought together in an exhibition with an astounding voice. Among the featured artists are the late Laura Aguilar, Jenelle Esparza, Jennifer Ling Datchuk, Janet Flohr, Regina José Galindo, Mona Hatoum, Koo Jeong-a, Autumn Knight, Margaret Meehan, Katrina Moorhead, Wangechi Mutu, Lorraine O’Grady, Artpace founder Linda Pace, Joyce J. Scott, Wu Tsang, Martha Wilson, and Kathy Vargas.

“Two of the works in the exhibition are by women with strong ties to Artpace: one work by Linda Pace (founder of the organization) and another by Janet Flohr (of Hare & Hound Press, with whom many resident artists have worked since 1995),“ remarked Erin K. Murphy, “The other artists in the exhibition all not only participated in our residency program, but their works address issues of identity, femaleness, gender, or feminism, which have been even more powerful statements in the past few years and is extremely relevant in the coming election year. Artpace celebrates its 25th birthday, but also in 2020 the U.S. will celebrate the 100th anniversary of the 19th amendment, which granted women the right to vote.”

Visibilities: Intrepid Women of Artpace
January 9 – April 26, 2020
Artpace
San Antonio, TX