September 19–December 13, 2019
"Woman It Woman" presents the work of the #notwhite collective, and explores constructions of womanhood and the fluidity of gender and feminisms grounded in the experience and voice of artists of color. The art presented here is animated through the framework of activism, presenting the visual arts as a force for justice and an agentive mode for change.
The #notwhite collective's model, a non-hierarchal community of twelve artists, is rooted in the feminist histories of consciousness-raising learning groups that incubated education, empowerment, and action in order to foment change outside of dominant and exclusionary institutional spaces such as governments, universities, and museums. From these small, interconnected groups, powerful social movements were seeded that ranged from abolitionism, women's rights, and civil rights movements of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries that challenged colonial frameworks and racial and gender inequities.
Woman It Woman represents a twenty-first century iteration of this activist legacy. With works that range in scope from intimate to epic, the exhibition interconnects personal testimonies, histories, experiences, and imaginaries with the oppressive socio-political frameworks that give shape to the fraught environments within which we navigate. Through art that engages language, the iconography of the body, and excavations of personal and cultural memory, the #notwhite collective presents a body of work that is transcultural and trans-temporal, providing an artistic platform for difficult discussions on the complexities of cultural identity in the U.S.