Inspire

May 3, 2020

Keshia Turley on Judy Chicago

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SMoCA staff members each chose an artwork from our collection exhibition Unapologetic: All Women, All Year to highlight. Curatorial Assistant and Co-Curator of Unapologetic, Keshia Turley, selected Judy Chicago’s work Nine Fragments of the Delta of Venus (2004) to focus on and had this to say about her work:

“As an artist who has worked hard to address and reverse the marginalization of women, particularly from the art historical record, I have always been a great admirer of Judy Chicago’s work and artistic practice. She inspires me to want to work toward a better future, one where a little girl—like I once was—can go to school and not wonder where all the great achievements by women are, but learns and is inspired to reach her full potential because of them. Nine Fragments of the Delta of Venus is not only beautifully rendered, it tells a story about the importance of the female voice and re-introduces the work of Anaïs Nin, a trailblazer in her own right, shuffled to the margins by a patriarchal system that devalues the female perspective.

Judy Chicago writes on the work ‘Too many aspects of female experience remain partially or entirely unrepresented in art. As a result, women have an insufficient cultural repository of images that support and/or expand our own lived female experiences. This is particularly limiting to our sexuality, which has been used and misused by advertisers, pornographers, and male artists alike.”

To learn more about the work, I invite you to visit SMoCA’s Collection online, where you can not only read about this work, but explore all the other artwork found in the exhibition Unapologetic.

About Judy Chicago

Judy Chicago is an internationally renowned artist, author, and feminist whose career has spanned over five decades. Her primary focus addresses areas of absence in visual iconography, particularly where it concerns women in history and their marginalization from the art historical record.

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