January 10–February 22, 2014
Opening: January 10, 6–9pm
Threewalls
119 N Peoria #2C
Chicago IL 60607
Threewalls is honored to present Fearful Symmetries, the first retrospective exhibition of the influential feminist artist Faith Wilding. Widely known as a performance artist, Wilding was a key figure in the formation of the first Feminist Art Program in Fresno in 1970, and at Cal Arts in 1971. She was a major contributor to the now historical, month-long collaborative feminist installation Womanhouse, sited in an abandoned mansion in Los Angeles in 1972, where she performed her highly celebrated work Waiting.
Fearful Symmetries curates a selection of works from Wilding’s studio practice spanning the past forty years, highlighting a range of works on paper—drawings, watercolors, collage and paintings—exhibited together here for the first time. Taking up key, allegorical imagery in Wilding’s work, the exhibition focuses on themes of “becoming,” both the transformative event itself, and the threshold to transfiguration. This state of in-between-ness is articulated through imagery of leaves, the chrysalis, hybrid beings, and liminal circumstances themselves, like “waiting,” the subject of Wilding’s two prominent performances Waiting and Wait-With.
Alongside the exhibition is a curated archive, featuring Wilding’s work with the collaborative research and performance group subRosa; rare videos of performances made throughout her career; and papers and publications dating from Wilding’s participation in the feminist art movement in the 1970s.
Wilding’s exhibition was planned to coincide with her reception of a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Women’s Caucus for Art at the College Art Association annual conference on February 15, 2014 in Chicago. The exhibition will be accompanied by a publication featuring original writings by Irina Aristarkhova, Mario Ontiveros, and Faith Wilding.
Faith Wilding is Professor Emerita of performance art at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, a graduate faculty member at Vermont College of Fine Arts, and currently a visiting scholar at the Pembroke Center, Brown University. Born in Paraguay, Wilding received her BA from the University of Iowa and MFA from the California Institute of the Arts. Wilding was a co-initiator of the Feminist Art Programs in Fresno and at Cal Arts, and key contributor to the Womanhouse exhibition with Crocheted Environment and her Waiting performance. Her artworks have been featured in major feminist exhibitions including WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution; Sexual Politics; Division of Labor: Women’s Work in Contemporary Art; and re.act Feminism. Her writings have been featured in such books as The Power of Feminist Art, By Our Own Hands, The Feminism and Visual Culture Reader (edited by Amelia Jones), MEANING, and many more.
Wilding has exhibited nationally and internationally, including the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid; Centre for Contemporary Art in Glasgow; MoMA PS1 and the Bronx Museum of Art in New York; Museum of Contemporary Art and Armand Hammer Museum in Los Angeles; UC Riverside Museum of Art; the Singapore Art Museum; and many others. Wilding cofounded and collaborates with subRosa, a cyberfeminist cell of cultural producers using BioArt and tactical performance in the public sphere to explore and critique the intersections of information and biotechnologies in women’s bodies, lives, and work, and she is the co-editor of Domain Errors! Cyberfeminist Practices! She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, Creative Capital grant, and NEA artist grants.
Programs:
Preview event: Faith Wilding in conversation with Irina Aristarkhova
January 9, 6–9pm at Venue 1, RSVP required
Screenings from the archives: documents on feminist art movement
January 29 at The Nightingale, 1084 N. Milwaukee
Screenings from the archives: documents on Womanhouse
February 5 at The Nightingale, 1084 N. Milwaukee
Tracers takes on Feminism: Conversations about Motherhood, LGBTQ and Race, organized by Jennifer Reeder and Carrie Ruckel
February 14, 10am–5pm
Being like leaves: Faith Wilding reading selections from her memoir
February 14, 8pm at Gallery 400 Lecture Hall
Material, and The Politics of Making: Harmony Hammond and Faith Wilding in conversation with Ellen Rothenberg
February 18, noon at Gene Siskel Film Center
This exhibition has been generously supported by The Irving Harris Foundation & The Foundation for Contemporary Art.
