100 WOMEN: COLLABORATIONS BEYOND THE VEIL
Chase Gallery
August 10, 2024 to September 28, 2024
The selection of banners on view are part of a larger project entitled 100 Women: Collaborations Beyond the Veil. Ginny Sykes began the project in 2016 as a collaboration with the artist Teresa Mangiacapra of le nemesiache, a feminist performance art collective with a fifty-year history in Naples, Italy. Sykes created the project to immortalize women of different ages, ethnicities, and backgrounds. Together, the banners form an alternative narrative to the historically patriarchal tradition of monuments within public arenas. Portrayed as both subject and object, as public art, the women stand in contrast to a long tradition of sculptural works designed to regulate women’s bodies in misogynist political and religious traditions. Instead of idealized marble busts that recall the misogyny of Classicism, these translucent tapestries move in the wind, and invite light to pass through the porous portraits of the statuesque women.
The banners hang as intimate monuments, and as monuments to intimacy. The photographs capture an instant, and are not stationary or totalizing, but rather exist as a recollection of a specific memory and exchange between women. Standing face-front, the women hold power both individually and collectively. Their uniform dress and gestures recall the past and suggest the mythic, while envisaging an alternative history. These portraits of contemporary women invite contemplation of the present in the ongoing work of feminist liberation, drawing upon decades of the trans-feminist movement to create a monument to women as distinct beings with collective power. Personal and political liberty are at stake, and with women’s bodies under assault across the globe, the reparative and imaginative reclamation of power is paramount for all beings to exist fully and freely.
Despite their diversity, there is a striking commonality in those portrayed. To a woman, they are powerful, vulnerable, forward-looking, present—all at once. They dare and inspire present viewers and generations of women to come, to keep battling the various inequalities they still face—financially, politically, personally. Together in uniform and pose, the chorus of individuals is an image of unity and diversity, inspired by the histories and futures of feminist movements.
Photo credit: Ginny Sykes
RSVP for the opening reception on Saturday, August 10 from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. at the link below:
Click HERE for more information on gallery hours and private appointments.
100 WOMEN: COLLABORATIONS BEYOND THE VEIL
Chase Gallery
August 10, 2024 to September 28, 2024
The selection of banners on view are part of a larger project entitled 100 Women: Collaborations Beyond the Veil. Ginny Sykes began the project in 2016 as a collaboration with the artist Teresa Mangiacapra of le nemesiache, a feminist performance art collective with a fifty-year history in Naples, Italy. Sykes created the project to immortalize women of different ages, ethnicities, and backgrounds. Together, the banners form an alternative narrative to the historically patriarchal tradition of monuments within public arenas. Portrayed as both subject and object, as public art, the women stand in contrast to a long tradition of sculptural works designed to regulate women’s bodies in misogynist political and religious traditions. Instead of idealized marble busts that recall the misogyny of Classicism, these translucent tapestries move in the wind, and invite light to pass through the porous portraits of the statuesque women.
The banners hang as intimate monuments, and as monuments to intimacy. The photographs capture an instant, and are not stationary or totalizing, but rather exist as a recollection of a specific memory and exchange between women. Standing face-front, the women hold power both individually and collectively. Their uniform dress and gestures recall the past and suggest the mythic, while envisaging an alternative history. These portraits of contemporary women invite contemplation of the present in the ongoing work of feminist liberation, drawing upon decades of the trans-feminist movement to create a monument to women as distinct beings with collective power. Personal and political liberty are at stake, and with women’s bodies under assault across the globe, the reparative and imaginative reclamation of power is paramount for all beings to exist fully and freely.
Despite their diversity, there is a striking commonality in those portrayed. To a woman, they are powerful, vulnerable, forward-looking, present—all at once. They dare and inspire present viewers and generations of women to come, to keep battling the various inequalities they still face—financially, politically, personally. Together in uniform and pose, the chorus of individuals is an image of unity and diversity, inspired by the histories and futures of feminist movements.
Photo credit: Ginny Sykes
RSVP for the opening reception on Saturday, August 10 from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. at the link below:
Click HERE for more information on gallery hours and private appointments.
Artist photo by: Monika Plioplyte
Ginny Sykes incorporates Jungian ideas, symbol, and myth to critique patriarchal codes that have over-determined artistic content through much of history. Through her commitment to feminist research as a bedrock source of her artistic practice, she asserts a complexity of identities women negotiate to resist the idea of a universalized female experience. Working across a variety of media, Sykes is currently concerned with collaborative performance and video projects, painting, sculpture, and photographic installations. In 2022 she won First Prize from Naples Art Performing Festival for her video Unprecedented No More.
Sykes has presented her work at the Jungian Institute International Conference and at the College Art Association Conference. She serves on the advisory council for the Sam Fox School of Art at Washington University. Sykes has an MA in Women Studies and Gender Studies from Loyola University, a BFA from Washington University, and studied painting and art history at Studio Cecil Graves in Florence, Italy. She divides her working life between Chicago, Illinois and Naples, Italy.
Sykes is an accomplished community based public artist whose projects are informed by her deep ties to the Uptown community in Chicago, and as a member of Chicago Public Art Group. Her more than 40 public artworks include On the Wings of Water at O’Hare International Airport, and Rora at Erie Terrace on the Chicago River, which received an Honor Award from the American Society of Landscape Architects. Sykes taught at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Lill Street Art Center, Evanston Art Center, After School Matters, and the Illinois Arts Council.
Recent exhibitions include Bitches Not Witches, Berlin, Germany; Feminist to the Core, Salonlb; Art Performing Festivals Ed. IV and V, Naples, Italy and Forte Marghera, Venice, Italy; Dryphoto Arte Contemporanea, Prato, Italy; Water Tower Art Festival, Sofia, Bulgaria; LACE, Los Angeles, CA; Legler and Woodson Regional Libraries, Chicago, IL; top Schillerpalais, Berlin, Germany; Saltillo Contemporary, Saltillo, Mexico; Pieno e Vuoto, Pinacoteca Communale de Arte Contemporanea, Gaeta, Italy; Can Gelabert Casal de Cultura, Mallorca, Spain; Conspiracy Boogie, Circus 3000, Karlsruhe, Germany; The Tangle of Existence, Castel dell’Ovo, Naples, Italy; HearteartH Festival, Berlin, Germany.
Artist photo by: Monika Plioplyte
Ginny Sykes incorporates Jungian ideas, symbol, and myth to critique patriarchal codes that have over-determined artistic content through much of history. Through her commitment to feminist research as a bedrock source of her artistic practice, she asserts a complexity of identities women negotiate to resist the idea of a universalized female experience. Working across a variety of media, Sykes is currently concerned with collaborative performance and video projects, painting, sculpture, and photographic installations. In 2022 she won First Prize from Naples Art Performing Festival for her video Unprecedented No More.
Sykes has presented her work at the Jungian Institute International Conference and at the College Art Association Conference. She serves on the advisory council for the Sam Fox School of Art at Washington University. Sykes has an MA in Women Studies and Gender Studies from Loyola University, a BFA from Washington University, and studied painting and art history at Studio Cecil Graves in Florence, Italy. She divides her working life between Chicago, Illinois and Naples, Italy.
Sykes is an accomplished community based public artist whose projects are informed by her deep ties to the Uptown community in Chicago, and as a member of Chicago Public Art Group. Her more than 40 public artworks include On the Wings of Water at O’Hare International Airport, and Rora at Erie Terrace on the Chicago River, which received an Honor Award from the American Society of Landscape Architects. Sykes taught at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Lill Street Art Center, Evanston Art Center, After School Matters, and the Illinois Arts Council.
Recent exhibitions include Bitches Not Witches, Berlin, Germany; Feminist to the Core, Salonlb; Art Performing Festivals Ed. IV and V, Naples, Italy and Forte Marghera, Venice, Italy; Dryphoto Arte Contemporanea, Prato, Italy; Water Tower Art Festival, Sofia, Bulgaria; LACE, Los Angeles, CA; Legler and Woodson Regional Libraries, Chicago, IL; top Schillerpalais, Berlin, Germany; Saltillo Contemporary, Saltillo, Mexico; Pieno e Vuoto, Pinacoteca Communale de Arte Contemporanea, Gaeta, Italy; Can Gelabert Casal de Cultura, Mallorca, Spain; Conspiracy Boogie, Circus 3000, Karlsruhe, Germany; The Tangle of Existence, Castel dell’Ovo, Naples, Italy; HearteartH Festival, Berlin, Germany.
Photographer: Patrick Linehan
