Artist Sonya Boyce will represent Britain at the 2021 Venice Biennale; she is the first black woman in the event’s history to do so. In an interview, the artist said that the fallout from Brexit would influence her work, as would the idea of nationhood.
Boyce came to prominence in the black British art scene in the early 1980s. In 1987, her work became the first by a black woman to enter the Tate’s collection. Boyce’s art combines photography, drawing, performance, and film; she works with a range of collaborators to explore her experience as a black woman in the art world.
Front-Page Femmes
Artsy profiles Howardena Pindell, who at the age of 76 is finally receiving acclaim.
An all-female team from the South African architectural firm Counterspace has been selected to design the 2020 Serpentine Pavilion; they are also the youngest architects ever to be commissioned for the project.
Emily Mason, abstract artist and teacher, has died at age 87.
Frieze publishes a conversation between Judy Chicago, Jane Fonda, and Hans Ulrich Obrist about art and environmental activism.
The Royal Academy of Art has elected visual artist Rana Begum as a royal academician in the category of painting. Begum’s work was featured at NMWA in Heavy Metal—Women to Watch 2018.
Colossal profiles artist Liz Sexton, who brings animals to human scale with her papier-mâché masks.
Juxtapoz reports on a new book of photographs by artist and curator Maude Arsenault, who represents women in the context of domesticity and intimacy.
Artland magazine’s “Female Iconoclasts” series features Leonora Carrington, Tamara de Lempicka, Hedda Stern, and Louise Bourgeois.
Creative Review profiles illustrator and book designer Jinhee Han.
Frieze reviews Jenny Offill’s new novel, Weather, which offers a sardonic take on contemporary environmental anxieties.
The U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill approving the establishment of a Smithsonian Women’s History Museum. “Our country should know the names of its history-making women,” said D.C. Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton.
Shows We Want to See
Dorothea Lange: Words & Pictures is open at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City. It is the museum’s first major exhibition of Lange’s work in 50 years, bringing together iconic works from the collection with less familiar photographs—from early street photography to projects on criminal justice reform. The New York Times calls it “revelatory.” On view through May 9, 2020.
Calida Rawles’s latest exhibition, A Dream for My Lilith, is open at Various Small Fires in Los Angeles. The show features whimsical and political hyperrealist paintings that show African American youth playing in swimming pools. On view through March 14, 2020.
Ana Benaroya’s solo show Teach Me Tonight opens on February 15 at Richard Heller Gallery in Santa Monica. Juxtapoz published an excerpt from Benaroya’s essay about her works: “In this show, lesbian desire is both explicit and hidden. Cue the music! It’s about listening to a woman singing a song and pretending she’s singing to another woman.” On view through March 28, 2020.