Women House

Arrangement of nine small, felt houses on a white table. Each house is a different, vibrant color and represents a different style of architecture spanning time and cultures—including a hut, a yurt, a cottage, art deco, postmodern architecture, and more.
Mar 09 to May 28, 2018

Featuring work by thirty-six global artists, Women House challenges conventional ideas about gender and the domestic space. The exhibition is inspired by the landmark project Womanhouse, developed in 1972 by Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro. With works that disrupted traditional ideas about the home as a feminine realm, Womanhouse was the first female-centered art installation to appear in the Western world. In the new exhibition, Women House, women artists from the 1960s to today examine the persistence of stereotypes about the house as a feminine space.

Through photography, sculpture, installation and video works organized across eight themes, Women House emphasizes the plurality of women’s views on the home. In Walking House (1989), Laurie Simmons creates a playful yet disconcerting image of the female body being consumed by expectations and responsibilities. Laure Tixier’s series Plaid House (Maquette) (2005–11) explores domestic architecture from worldwide cultures in solid-colored felt sculptures that resemble miniature residential homes, tents, towers, or high-rise buildings. Zanele Muholi’s 2007 photograph of a young female couple in South Africa leaning into the warmth of their kitchen stove speaks to the possibility of domestic space as a place of both privacy and freedom.

Sculpture of a large, brown brick house with black roof sits atop white mannequin legs forming a half-house, half-woman creature.

Laurie Simmons, Walking House, 1989; Collection of Dr. Dana Beth Ardi; Photo courtesy of the artist and Salon 94, New York

Exhibition Sponsors

Women House is organized by La Monnaie de Paris. Its presentation at NMWA is made possible by GRoW @ Annenberg and Denise Littlefield Sobel. Additional funding is provided by the Sue J. Henry and Carter G. Phillips Exhibition Fund, Belinda de Gaudemar, the Estate of Sara D. Toney, Mahinder and Sharad Tak, and Étant Donnés Contemporary Art, a program of FACE Foundation.

Étant Donnés is developed in partnership with the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the United States, with lead funding from the Florence Gould Foundation, the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, the French Ministry of Culture, and Institut Français-Paris. NMWA also thanks Regina Weingarten for her special contributions. Further support for Women House at NMWA is provided by American Airlines, the official airline of the museum’s 30th Anniversary.

  • American Airlines
  • Grow Annenberg
  • Face Foundation Logo

Related Media

Videos

Explore this online playlist of artist interviews, studio visits, and historical footage of the 1972 installation, Womanhouse.