Women have always played an important role in the art world. He Said/She Said: Contemporary women artists are stepping inon display at the Dallas Museum of Art through July 21, shows how women artists are making bold statements and inserting themselves into a canon often defined by men.
Curated by Kathryn Brodbeck, the Hoffman Family Senior Curator of Contemporary Art at the museum, the exhibition includes several works recently acquired by the museum. Veronica Myers, curatorial assistant for contemporary and Asian art, assisted Brodbeck with this exhibition.
He said/She said juxtaposes works by men and women, creating conversations about the place of women in art history and illuminating new contexts for the contributions of women and people of color. Although the works are contemporary, the exhibition is organized thematically rather than chronologically to show the evolution of these creative conversations.
“We really wanted to highlight the fact that these dialogues are happening across time and space, and they’re ongoing,” Myers said.
Kaleta A. Dulin
Major artworks welcome visitors, including works by Jackson Pollock and Jasper Johns along with Kaletta A. Dulin’s Enhanced Janson: A Woman on Every Page. Doolin makes a subversive change to HW Janson History of Art, textbook that originally featured women mainly as nude models.
The first section, Women and Appropriation, features artwork from the postmodern era from the late 1970s to the 1990s.
“The artists of the postmodern movement argue that creation is an act of looking back, an act of reference, and an act of combing through history and recontextualizing these works,” Myers said.
These female artists explore the nature of their identity through their work.
“Through acts of appropriation, through acts of reference, the artists in this section, and especially the women artists in this section, were able to redefine who they were by saying, ‘This is my body, this is my place in the world, this is how I understand my gender, my race, my sexuality,’ through this very tongue-in-cheek and also very, very powerful reclaiming and appropriation,” Myers said.
Kimberly Richard
In the Black Female Subjectivity section of the exhibit, black female artists take images made famous by white male artists and infuse them into their own experiences. To Lorna Simpson Blue reverse temporal references to the Frederick Edwin Church monument The icebergs.
“What she’s saying here is that black Americans are the foundation and that they can’t be invisible and they can’t be untangled from this history of imperialism and conquest that really defines how America was made,” Myers said.
The section titled Friendship and Collaboration reminds visitors that men and women work as colleagues in the art world. One wall in the gallery features three works by artists who know each other and whose works refer to each other: Cracked screen by Troyin Ojih Odutola, Clouds by Sigmar Polke and Rest 3 by Lynette I’m not afraid
“This room is full of collaborators — whether they’re friends, family, contemporaries, spouses, partners — to show the fact that there’s always a reciprocal museum that’s always happening, and a collaboration that’s always happening,” Myers said.
Kimberly Richard
The final gallery, Women and Surrealism, features some of the youngest artists in the exhibition and some of the museum’s newest acquisitions. Surrealism is an exciting way for these female artists to explore gender in their art.
To Danica Lundy Compressions is a startling picture of a woman’s torso as someone performs CPR compressions. It is an antique portrait of femininity.
“This kind of grotesque and indistinguishable work was really a way for Danica to analyze what it means to be a woman in this world, what it means to have a body, a female body, and what it means when it comes down to the bottom line that we are all skin and bones at the end of the day,” Myers said.
Kimberly Richard
As the Dallas Museum of Art prepares for a major renovation, He said/She said is indicative of the museum’s approach to building the collection.
“As a permanent collection exhibit, it’s a really beautiful opportunity to see what’s been here and how we’ve been collecting over time,” Myers said.
Find out more: Dallas Museum of Art
