Art Fix Friday: February 8, 2019

Blog Category:  Art Fix Friday
A black-and-white photograph of a light-skinned adult woman holding a newspaper with news about World War II. She wears a coat and her short, curly hair is caught in the wind.

The Washington Post profiles Ambreen Butt and Shahzia Sikander, two Pakistani American women artists “reinvent[ing] traditional art with unconventional subjects.”

Ambreen Butt's etching depicts a dragon hovering above a woman wearing a hijab with her head arched back, chest up to the sky. The pale yellow background is patterned with the sketches of hand guns.
Ambreen Butt, Untitled (Woman/Dragon) (from the series “Daughters of the East”) (detail), 2008; Etching, aquatint, spit bite aquatint, drypoint, and hand coloring on paper, 25 x 19 in.; Courtesy of the artist; Photo by Stephen Petegorsky

NMWA hosts Butt’s first solo exhibition in D.C, Ambreen Butt—Mark My Words, in which she uses her training in classical Indo-Persian miniature painting to explore contemporary political narratives. Similarly, Sikander’s work is highlighted at the National Portrait Gallery, where she is the first artist from Pakistan to have her work acquired and displayed by the museum. “As these remarkable artists prove, making one’s mark sometimes means rewriting the rules.”

Front-Page Femmes

Metropolitan Museum of Art curator Carmen Bambach wins the inaugural Vilcek Prize to Support Immigrant Achievement.

Vogue spotlights three female directors who did not receive Oscar nominations this year, but whose work is “on the frontier of changing the face of Hollywood.”

Ivanka Vacuuming, a new performance piece from Jennifer Rubell, opened at Washington D.C.’s Flashpoint Gallery this week to much debate.

A portrait of United States Artists CEO Deana Haggag wearing a hot pink suit and jeweled, chunky soled Gucci sneakers.
Deana Haggag, CEO of United States Artists, in a Rachel Comey suit and Gucci sneakers; Photo by Gabriela Herman

The Cut profiles Deana Haggag, CEO of United States Artists, tireless arts advocate, cancer survivor, and owner of some very fly shoes.

Mexican American writer Sandra Cisneros has won the 2019 PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature. Cisneros’s celebrated body of work is credited with “inspiring a new era of Latinx writers we see emerging today.”

Artsy takes a look at the pioneering work of the women who designed car interiors at General Motors in the 1950s.

The Museum of Modern Art has announced plans to close in the Summer/Fall of 2019 for renovations, a collection rehang, and a renewed focus on women artists, Latin American, and African American art—their exhibition on reopening will feature Betye Saar.

Five female artists talk about the way Los Angeles has influenced their art.

After Sotheby’s Masters Week, artnet asks: Are female old masters an untapped market, or a marketing ploy?

Vice interviews eight black women artists and entrepreneurs about their representation in pop culture and how they are changing the narrative.

Marina Abramović’s new piece, The Life, will be the first large-scale performance presented in the Mixed Reality form, a new technology that merges real and virtual worlds.

Shows We Want to See

Frida Kahlo: Appearances Can Be Deceiving opens today at the Brooklyn Museum—the largest U.S. exhibition of the artist’s work in a decade. The show is the first to include many personal items from Casa Azul, her home-turned-museum in Mexico City, that were rediscovered in 2004. “The objects shed new light on how Kahlo crafted her appearance and shaped her personal and public identity to reflect her cultural heritage and political beliefs, while also addressing and incorporating her physical disabilities.”

A charcoal and colored pencil self portrait sketch by Frida Kahlo titled Appearances Can Be Deceiving. The artist is depicted with her signature braids piled atop her head, the dress she wears is transparant so the viewer can see under she wears her corrective corset. Her sprin is depicted as a steel rod and there are blue butterfly tattoos on her right leg.
Frida Kahlo, Appearances Can Be Deceiving, n.d.; Charcoal and colored pencil on paper; Collection of Museo Frida Kahlo; © Banco de Mexico Diego Rivera Frida Kahlo Museums Trust, Mexico, D.F. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Tracy Emin’s new exhibition, A Fortnight of Tears, opened at London’s White Cube gallery this week. An expansive show that includes sculpture, neon, painting, film, photography, and drawing, her works “cover the whole spectrum from loss and pathos to anger, and love.” Emin talked candidly to the Art Newspaper Weekly podcast about the difficult events that inspired the material. “I’ve never been so honest,” she said.

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