Art Fix Friday: January 14, 2022

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.

In Sydney, Australia, from January 14–16, three female artists—Issy Estrella, Vicki Van Hout, and Victoria Hunt—will perform consecutively on a 2.5 ton block of ice suspended 20 meters above Sydney Harbour. Thaw is the brainchild of Joshua Thomson, artistic director of the theater company Legs on the Wall, who wanted to “continue to push the conversation…around climate change.” The Guardian describes the performance as “a metaphor for the fragile and diminishing natural world melting under the burden of humanity.”

Against a clear blue sky, a white iceberg in the shape of a diamond is suspended by four dark cords. In the center of it, a woman stands with her back to the camera, also suspended by a dark cord. Her left arm is raised slightly.
Victoria Hunt rehearses on the ice block for Thaw; Photo by Shane Rozario

Thaw will be livestreamed as part of the 2022 Sydney Festival’s At Home digital program and on the Sydney Opera House’s Stream platform.

Front-Page Femmes:

Ronnie Spector, founder of pop girl group The Ronettes, has died at age 78.

Lourdes Castro, the Portuguese artist known for her semi-abstractions that made use of silhouettes, has died at age 91.

Hyperallergic profiles Navajo designer Samantha Platero, who uses jewelry to talk about misconceptions around Indigenous identities.

The New Yorker examines the work of photographer Judith Joy Ross on the occasion of her survey exhibition, recently at Fundación MAPFRE in Madrid.

A 1972 Faith Ringgold work will move from the Rikers Island Correctional Institution for Women, where it has resided for five decades, to the Brooklyn Museum. Philanthropist Agnes Gund will fund a new work to occupy the painting’s place.

The Guardian interviews photographer Phyllis Christopher about her experience participating in and documenting San Francisco’s Dyke March. 

In this black-and-white photo, five topless women emerge from three bay windows in a San Francisco row house. Most have short, cropped hair and are light-skinned. There is one dark-skinned woman with dreadlocks. They smile, laugh, and raise their arms/fists as they look down, seemingly at something happening on the street below.
Phyllis Christopher, San Francisco Dyke March, 1999; Photo courtesy of the artist

The US Postal Service will release a new stamp honoring Edmonia Lewis, known as the first internationally recognized Black American sculptor. 

Poet Maya Angelou has become the first Black women to be featured on a U.S. quarter. It is the first in a new four-year program that will include coins featuring prominent women in U.S. history.

Hyperallergic reviews Alma Thomas: Everything is Beautiful, currently on view at the Phillips Collection.

Cao Fei’s digital artwork Quantum Garden debuted on January 5 in the cabin of the new electric BMW iX M60 during the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

ARTnews speaks to Andrea Karnes, chief curator at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas, about the museum’s upcoming exhibition Women Painting Women.

Shows We Want to See:

At the Derek Eller Gallery in New York, Jiha Moon: Stranger Yellow presents the artist’s new paintings and ceramic sculptures that mix Asian tradition and folklore, Western contemporary art, and global popular culture. Throughout many of the works, Moon incorporates a particular shade of yellow that speaks to her notions of the visibility of the Asian community in America as well as her own identity as an Asian American artist. Hyperallergic recently reviewed the show. On view through February 5, 2022.

A colorful ceramic vase features abstract painted illustrations of a Asian woman's face, a ripe banana, and other lines and forms in yellow and blue. The narrow neck of the vase has braided synthetic hair, also in blue and yellow, draped and knotted around it.
Jiha Moon, Lucky Face, 2021; Earthenware, underglaze, glaze, synthetic hair, 12.75 x 9.5 x 4.5 inches; Photo courtesy of Derek Eller Gallery

At the Pérez Art Museum Miami, Felice Grodin: Invasive Species is a virtually interactive, digital exhibition of commissioned works by the artist. Drawing on her training as an architect, Grodin analyzes the relationship between physical and mental territories and transforms the museum’s environment as a response to Miami’s ecological reality. This augmented reality exhibition that can be viewed via the PAMM App.

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