Colorado Women to Watch
Colorado Women to Watch
Center for Visual Art, Metropolitan State University
965 Santa Fe Drive, Denver, CO 80204
August 18-October 21, 2023
Curated by Cecily Cullen
Admission: Free
Review by Zoe Ariyama
An open, curious approach to material and a long-term commitment to process emerge as the conceptual through-lines of Colorado Women to Watch, currently on view at MSU’s Center for Visual Art (CVA). Curated by CVA director Cecily Cullen, the exhibition brings together five well-established, female-identifying artists: Kim Dickey, Ana María Hernando, Maia Ruth Lee, Suchitra Mattai, and Senga Nengudi.
A view of the exhibition Colorado Women to Watch at the Center for Visual Art. Image by Wes Magyar, courtesy of CVA.
The artists were first nominated via the Colorado Committee for the National Museum of Women in the Arts and then selected by Nora Burnett Abrams, Ph.D., Mark G. Falcone Director at MCA Denver, to represent the state. The National Museum of Women in the Arts (Washington, D.C.) ultimately chose Ana María Hernando for inclusion in their upcoming exhibition New Worlds: Women to Watch 2024, which will feature twenty-eight artists put forward by outreach committees around the world.
A view of works by Senga Nengudi in the Colorado Women to Watch exhibition at the Center for Visual Art. Image by Wes Magyar, courtesy of CVA.
The above may read as the less-than-exciting procedures of museum bureaucracy, but is necessary context for understanding the motivations and goals of Colorado Women to Watch, which, as an “all women exhibition” is susceptible to easy criticism for its curatorial methods. This writing is an attempt to continue to hold their space. But more on this later.
Kim Dickey, Paradise Elsewhere (detail), 2023. Image by Wes Magyar, courtesy of CVA.
At the front of the gallery, Kim Dickey constructs a series of sandy islands, unpopulated but for ceramic pineapples and palms surrounding a solitary chair. Only a lonely, empty cup and parrot-topped ashtray hint at the possibility of a human presence. Devoid of water, a stark white cluster of meticulously-built, radial forms spring up between the islands, evoking a bleached coral reef.
Kim Dickey, Archipelago, 2023 and Mirage (solo version), 2000-2023. Image by Wes Magyar, courtesy of CVA.
The amalgamized, vaguely tropical aesthetic leaves the viewer unsure of their location. The island is a deserted limbo of questionable reality, which is reinforced by the titles of the pieces: Mirage and Paradise Elsewhere. Dickey emphasizes this absence with a pale pink neon sign blushing above the tableau, reading “VACANCY.” Who was this set staged for? Is it abandoned or merely waiting? Time does not seem to be a variable in this place.
A view of works by Suchitra Mattai in the Colorado Women to Watch exhibition. Image by Wes Magyar, courtesy of CVA.
Suchitra Mattai also tackles the imaginary, but that which exists in the dissonance between the colonial gaze and personal histories of the South Asian diaspora. Mattai weaves richly-hued vintage saris into large scale tapestries, enveloping the walls with textiles that were created, worn, and cherished by Indian women—and highly valued as exports. The artist’s family migrated from India to Guyana under a term of indentured servitude when British colonial powers sought a source of labor following the outlaw of the trade of enslaved persons from Africa.
Suchitra Mattai, the intrepid garden (detail), 2023, vintage saris, fabric, vintage objects made of salt, cast objects made of salt, porcelain objects, and vintage shelves, 120 x 168 inches. Image by Zoe Ariyama.
In between the warp and weft of the intrepid garden (2023), the gaps of blank wall blot out the color. Within these spaces Mattai has placed ornate shelves, each holding 18th-century porcelain figurines. Though considered benignly kitschy today, these objects are still reminiscent of past (and continued) white supremacy, especially against the backdrop of materials by and for Indo-Caribbean women whose histories are not widely known.
A view of works by Ana María Hernando in the Colorado Women to Watch exhibition. Image by Wes Magyar, courtesy of CVA.
Across the way, orange, pink, and white plumes of sheer fabric burst from the walls and ceiling. Ana María Hernando wields tulle, the material of “brides, ballerinas, and fairytales,” to create bountiful works that play with softness and the act of taking and holding space. [1] Like Mattai, Hernando is interested in textile’s relationship to conceptions of femininity—as craft, dress, or decoration—and describes the works as “a feminine rejoinder to historical movements in abstractions,” as they are composed in bands of color. [2]
Two works by Ana María Hernando: on the left, El mar enamorado de la noche // The Sea in Love with the Night, 2022, tulle, metal lattice, wood, and felt, 52 x 28 x 8 inches; and on the right, El Retumbe // The Rumble, tulle, metal lattice, wood, and felt, 32 × 29 × 11 inches. Image by Wes Magyar, courtesy of CVA.
Upon first glance, the artworks composed of all black tulle seem to be the scorched or withered versions of their bright counterparts, but the dark fabric allows one to see the endless layers of folded fabric more clearly, like the endless waves of a dark ocean. The titles are The Rumble and The Sea in Love with the Night. Compared to the massive, room-filling tulle artworks Hernando installed during her 2020 residency at La Napoule Art Foundation in France, Hernando’s works in Colorado Women to Watch are merely small blooms, though each radiating joy and abundance.
Maia Ruth Lee, <Rhythmed in silence> (detail), 2023, painter’s tape on found metal forms, dimensions variable. Image by Wes Magyar, courtesy of CVA.
During the Colorado Women to Watch artist panel discussion event on September 14, Maia Ruth Lee touched on materiality in her artistic practice: “I think my approach to material is language…so thinking about language as a material, and using physical objects as a place holder for the language…” [3] Living in Korea, Nepal, and the United States, the act of translation has been a constant in Lee’s life.
Maia Ruth Lee, <Rhythmed in silence> (detail), 2023, painter’s tape on found metal forms, dimensions variable.. Image by Wes Magyar, courtesy of CVA.
In the displayed collection of welded, found metal fragments, Lee recognizes the graphics of language, known or unknown. By presenting the pieces linearly, they seem to assume an order—an alphabet, a sentence, a spell—as the letters dip, dot, and dash across the wall. The “glyphs” take on a further talismanic air as Lee has bound each in blue painter’s tape (perhaps indicating a constant work in progress), taking care to completely cover their surfaces. Is she protecting them, bandaging them, or muting their sound?
Senga Nengudi, Performance Piece, 1978, silver gelatin photographic prints, 31.5 × 40 inches each. Photographer: Harmon Outlaw © Senga Nengudi, 2023. Image by Wes Magyar, courtesy of CVA.
Finally, Senga Nengudi is likely the most widely known artist included in Colorado Women to Watch, and the three black and white photographs of her acclaimed Performance Piece (1978) are instantly recognizable. A woman’s body holds the center as pantyhose legs intersect, binding her body while also extending its reach. What’s most striking about Nengudi’s installation, though, is how the artist collaborates with herself across time, echoing these foundational works in her more recent projects.
Senga Nengudi, Ellioutt ~ Love, 2022, a triptych of two chromogenic photographic prints and one silver gelatin photographic prints, 30.7 × 137.8 inches total. Photographer: Doug Harris © Senga Nengudi, 2023. Image by Wes Magyar, courtesy of CVA.
The adjacent photographic triptych depicts Nengudi’s late husband, Ellioutt—who passed away in 2022—half immersed in the bathtub, surrounded by his floating dreadlocks. The images are slightly pixelated, like an iPhone photo that you’ve zoomed in on just a bit too much—snapshot memories held dear. If Performance Piece (1978) deals with the incredible elasticity of the body in pregnancy and childbirth, as discussed by the artist during the panel talk, then Ellioutt ~ Love (2022) evokes the potential energy of the body and its transformation into death. Nengudi is sensitive to the quiet, constant amazement of personal change, in oneself and the people you love.
A view of Colorado Women to Watch with works by Suchitra Mattai and Ana María Hernando visible. Image by Wes Magyar, courtesy of CVA.
Taken together, the exhibited artworks display a fascination with the limitless possibilities of materials—the wonders of tension, weight, form, color, softness, and hardness—that each artist works to reveal and render legible. Colorado Women to Watch is an exceptional convening of artists who call this place home, whether it’s been only a few years or many decades. This is what is most compelling about the exhibition: its function as a site for gathering. It brings into dialogue five remarkable artists who practice within the same artistic community but are, at least on the surface level, doing very different things.
And not just “dialogue” in the metaphorical sense but actual dialogue, given it is a group show of living, breathing artists. At the panel event following the publication of a review of the exhibit by Ray Mark Rinaldi in the Denver Post, the artists were asked for their response. Nengudi smiled while stating, “I’m just really happy that he wrote that article…and then we can talk about it and really flesh all this stuff out…” [4]
The question of whether all-women exhibitions are “tactically necessary,” as posited by art historian Griselda Pollock, is well trodden in arts writing. [5] The exhibition’s title has opened it up to criticism, at least from Rinaldi, as “problematic” for its “segregation” of artists by gender. [6] Rinaldi writes that it is “...an old-school ‘she’ of a show in an emerging ‘they’ world,” which is an odd way of saying “Move on ladies!” while dismissing the long past and continued impact of misogyny in the arts, for both cisgender women and gender-queer persons. [7]
A view of the exhibition Fluid State in the Center for Visual Art’s 965 Project Gallery. Image by Zoe Ariyama.
Rinaldi also completely disregards Fluid State, a related exhibition in CVA’s adjoining 965 Project Gallery space, which features trans and non-binary artists. In this show, Astrid Wenham and Camille Garcia consider the ever-evolving nature of self. The artworks are pointedly amorphous, melting the boundaries of their materials and time as the artists look back to trilobites and forward to AI.
What is ironic is that while Rinaldi critiques Colorado Women to Watch for its “inadequate framing” as an all-women show, absent from his brief review is any critical engagement with any of the artworks on display. Note this line: “...it is well-produced, cohesive and unpretentious. It’s colorful, kid-friendly and full of rich ideas.” [8] I have never read something so blatantly patronizing that also poses as progressive. If anything, the review is a reminder to writers to stay conscious of the power dynamics of one’s position in relation to artist subjects (i.e., as a white male critic).
Framing an exhibition via the identities of the included artists can have its pitfalls, particularly when asserting an easily identifiable shared experience. But there are no “neat, binary categories” being toted, as Rinaldi posits. [9] None of the artists are working to essentialize the experience of identifying as female, but rather they look to explore the ever-deepening multiverse of what being a woman—an undeniable lens as a self in the world—can be.
A view of Colorado Women to Watch with works by Maia Ruth Lee and Senga Nengudi visible. Image by Wes Magyar, courtesy of CVA.
The exhibition is not necessarily revisionist either—another common critique of all-women shows. There is not an effort to rewrite art history’s past, but rather to highlight its current course. Institutional visibility of women artists is changing, but slowly, and it will be decades before any sort of “parity” could possibly be reached. It comes down to whether there is a space for this art to be shown, and CVA and the National Museum for Women in the Arts have decided to dedicate time, energy, and resources to this ongoing project. Colorado Women to Watch may be a temporary show, but it is part of a sustained effort. Moreover, the exhibition takes the role of the advocate and conduit for potential future collaboration among the artists, or at least some friendship!
Zoe Ariyama is a writer / reader currently located in Denver. She holds a B.A. in Art History and Political Economy from Tulane University, and focuses on projects considering Asian-American makers, institutional memory, and the oddities of the art market.
[1] From Ana María Hernando’s artist statement.
[2] Ibid.
[3] A recording of the September 14, 2023 panel discussion with all five artists is available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohKC7x0yGtQ&t=3s.
[4] This statement appears at the 15:00 minute mark in the recording of the panel discussion.
[5] Griselda Pollock, Action Gesture Paint: Women Artists and Global Abstraction (London: Whitechapel Gallery, 2023).
[6] Ray Rinaldi, “Women-only shows have gone a long way toward encouraging equity in the arts. But in 2023, they can be problematic.” The Denver Post, September 11, 2023: https://www.denverpost.com/2023/09/11/women-only-exhibitions-still-relevant-denver-center-visual-art/.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Ibid, emphasis mine.
[9] Ibid.
