New Worlds, Renewal, and Radical Transformation at the National Museum of Women in the Arts
By Norah Vawter
Lead Me to Places I Could Never Find on My Own I. By Meryl McMaster. Digital C-print. 2019. Courtesy of the artist, Stephen Bulger Gallery, and Pierre-François Ouellette art contemporain.
Every three years, the National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA) stages a large exhibition that features new pieces by emerging artists from all over the world. The latest exhibition in this series, entitled New Worlds: Women to Watch 2024, is on view through August 11, 2024.
The exhibit was conceived in the early days of the Covid pandemic and reflects the unrest many of us felt as the world shut down. We lived through a period of collective anxiety and intense political and social upheaval. Instead of turning away from that unrest, the artists, curators, and organizers of New Worlds turned towards it. Many pieces were made specifically for this exhibit, focusing on the theme of creating new realities. Transformation. Radical change. Disruption. Alternate realities. Defiance instead of fear.
New Worlds is a breathtaking collection of art—a diverse, eclectic, and unified exhibit. It was no easy feat for the curators, who had to weave together the work of 28 individual artists. With many standouts in the collection, there are 39 works in total, which were chosen because of their individual merits, their relation to the theme, and how they work in conversation. NMWA was closed for two years as the building underwent a major renovation. It reopened in late 2023 and now features spaces and galleries that are much more open and inviting, as well as other updates. New Worlds benefits from the renovation. Its gallery is laid out to empower you to meander, explore the art in whatever order, and linger.
Intra-Venus. By Marina Vargas. Carrara marble. 2019 - 21. Courtesy of the artist. Photo by Oak Taylor-Smith.
Walking through the open, airy gallery feels like a world in flux. A world facing a reckoning. This colorful, dynamic exhibition is the largest installment of NMWA’s Women to Watch series to date. There are diverse mediums—including paintings, sculpture, photography, installation, video, and textiles. But even more interesting is the diversity of artists’ backgrounds, geography, ethnicity, race, sexuality, and ideas. It’s a stunning diversity of perspectives.
NMWA Director Susan Fisher Sterling says, “The artists in New Worlds, many of whom have created work specifically for this exhibition, are being recognized for challenging today’s status quo, encouraging us to see issues from multiple viewpoints, and envisioning different futures than most of the rest of us can possibly imagine.”
As I entered the gallery, the first piece that drew me in was Intra-Venus. This powerful marble statue by Spanish sculptor Marina Vargas is also a nude self-portrait. Created during the artist’s breast cancer treatment, the sculpture depicts her body after a mastectomy. Rather than an idealized, unrealistic view of femininity, Vargas gives us a real woman with flaws and puckers. She also gives us a woman standing tall, with an expression of determination and a fist raised. Intra-Venus is vulnerable and defiant.
Below the Deep South. By Noémie Goudal. Video. 2021. Courtesy of the artist.
Noémie Goudal’s video installation, Below the Deep South, is captivating. The French artist depicts a fire burning through multiple layers of what appears to be foliage but is actually photographs, until you see the bare stage beneath the fire. It evokes images of forest fires and climate change but also of renewal, even rebirth. As with many pieces of New Worlds, there’s a sense that a beautiful world full of untapped possibilities could come from the upheaval we’re living through now.
Another standout piece is Past/Presence/Future, a beaded gas mask by Indigenous artist Mona Cliff/HanukGahNé (Spotted Cloud). An enrolled member of the Gros Ventre tribe living in the United States, Cliff uses traditional Indigenous crafting methods to create something new. This gas mask made with seed beads, smoked brain-tanned hide, acrylic paint, and Oklahoma red dirt suggests a link between the past, present, and future. It also suggests adventures to be had in that future.
Baltimore artist SHAN Wallace also uses her cultural heritage to create provocative work rooted in the past but giving us a sense of a fantastical future. Her collage, Pale Blue Egun, depicts the embodiment of ancestors in Yoruba folklore. Drawing on these West African traditions and the contemporary Black experience in the United States, the collage is playful yet powerful.
Pale Blue Egun (detail). By SHAN Wallace. Collage. 2024. Courtesy of the artist.
Several pieces resonated with me deeply, but Molly Vaughan’s work is particularly gut-wrenching. I was in awe viewing her silkscreen-printed garments, Project 42: Gwen Amber Rose Araju, Newark, CA, and Project 42: Myra Ical, 4300 block of Garrot St., Houston, TX. These are part of an ongoing series, begun in 2012, in which the American artist honors the lives of transgender and gender-nonconforming people who have been murdered. Vaughan starts with an image of the Google Earth location where an individual was killed. She digitally manipulates that image to create an entrancing abstract pattern and prints the pattern onto a garment that a living performer can wear. Vaughan organizes performances for each piece. This is powerful activist art. It’s devastating, provoking outrage and sorrow. It’s also cathartic, creating beauty out of horror, without diminishing the horror.
New Worlds features work by Irina Kirchuk (Argentina), Saskia Jordá (Arizona), Aimée Papazian (Arkansas), Nicki Green (Northern California), April Banks (Southern California), Meryl McMaster (Canada), Francisca Rojas Pohlhammer (Chile), Ana María Hernando (Colorado), Randa Maroufi (France), Marianna Dixon Williams (Georgia), Sophia Pompéry (Germany), Mona Cliff (Greater Kansas City Area), Rajyashri Goody (India), Hannan Abu-Hussein (Israel), Irene Fenara (Italy), Ai Hasegawa (Japan), Daniela Rivera (Massachusetts), SHAN Wallace (Mid-Atlantic Region), Alexis McGrigg (Mississippi), Eliza Naranjo Morse (New Mexico), Amanda Phingbodhipakkiya (New York), Migiwa Orimo (Ohio), Graciela Arias Salazar (Peru), Marina Vargas (Spain), Arely Morales (Texas), Noémie Goudal (U.K.), Molly Vaughan (Washington), and Sarah Ortegon (Wyoming).
Past/Presence/Future by Mona Cliff/HanukGahNé (Spotted Cloud). Gas mask, seed beads, smoked brain-tanned hide, acrylic paint, Oklahoma red dirt, and matte medium. 2020. Photo by Bill Ganzel.
New Worlds: Women to Watch 2024 is on view through August 11, 2024. The National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA) is the first museum in the world solely dedicated to championing women through the arts. NMWA is located at 1250 New York Avenue, NW, Washington, D.C. It is open Tues.–Sun., 10 a.m.–5 p.m., until 8 p.m. on the third Wednesday of the month, and closed on Mondays and select holidays. Admission is $16 for adults, $13 for D.C. residents and visitors 70 and over, and free for visitors 21 and under. Admission is free on the first Sunday and second Wednesday of each month. For information, call 202-783-5000, visit nmwa.org, their Broad Strokes blog, Facebook or Instagram.
Norah Vawter is the Local Authors Editor for DCTRENDING. She’s a freelance writer, editor, and novelist, represented by Victress Literary. Norah lives in Virginia with her family. Follow her @norahvawter on Instagram and Twitter, where she shares words & works of DC area writers every Friday.