SYLVIA NETZER SHEBA CHHACHHI DIMA SROUJI GABRIELLE

Before devoting herself fully to her art and poetry practice, Abigail

Reyes studied and worked as a secretary. This experience deeply

inﬂuenced her approach to artmaking and is particularly visible

in Plana. The piece is composed of sheets of paper with repeated

lines from a secretarial-training typing manual which are held

together by embroidery and suspended overhead. Objects and tools

associated with work viewed as women’s professions, seldom seen

in public, are thus transformed into a way of openly voicing the

inequities of that work.

Reyes’s practice draws on research including studies of soap

operas, signiﬁcant in Latin American popular culture, oen featur-

ing a character of “the secretary,” as well as interviews with women

who worked in such positions. These accounts, combined with her

own, become testimonies to the struggles and abuse intrinsic

to power structures that require a submissive, depersonalized, and

disciplined feminized body to accomplish their aims. Reyes reclaims

the poetry at the heart of repetition, and ﬁnds through such systems

her own way out of abusive experiences. “My intention is to

reﬂect from all these places,” the artist has said, “on the inequalities

that continue to exist in the workplace, for secretaries, but also

for professions considered as women’s jobs, and their problems.”

Underscoring the mechanical repetition and almost military order

required in this profession, the artist shows how these skills can

also become tools for endurance.

Sheba Chhachhi is a photographer and installation artist who inves-

tigates questions of gender, eco-philosophy, violence, and visual cul-

tures. An activist/photographer through the 1980s–90s, Chhachhi’s

works bring together her artistic vision, her feminism, and decades

of involvement in the women’s movement in India. In From the

Barricades, Chhachhi revisits her archive of documentary images made

between 1980 and the late 1990s to explore how both the self and the

collective are formed through protest and resistance.

The photographs begin with images from the anti-dowry

movement in New Delhi, which peaked in the early 1980s, gaining

momentum aer the dowry-related femicides of Shashi Bala and

Jaswanti. The anti-dowry campaign led to legislation, the establish-

ment of women’s cells in the city, as well as building social stigma

around the practice. Other images depict Indian women’s demon-

strations and awareness campaigns against other forms of oppres-

sion, such as rape, religious fundamentalism, domestic violence, and

state violence. Key ﬁgures of Indian women’s rights activism appear

in Chhachhi’s photographs, such as Shahjahan Apa (1936–2013),

the mother of a dowry victim who campaigned against dowry and

co-founded a shelter for survivors of gender violence; Shanti and

Devi, activists with Action India, a foundational organization of the

autonomous women’s movement; Moloyashree Hashmi, a performer

who co-founded the Jan Natya Manch New Delhi street theater

company; and Maya Krishna Rao, a theater and street performer,

educator, and activist.

Lalitha Lajmi was born into a family of artists in Kolkata, India,

in 1932. She studied the intricate art of intaglio and etching in

evening classes and set up a printing press in her kitchen in the early

1970s. Working late into the night by electrical light, she created sin-

gular prints that showcase her unique use of grisaille and sepia tones.

Lajmi’s creativity and talent were not limited to printing, as she went

on to produce oil paintings and watercolors. Her works narrate an

intimate and layered history of an Indian woman artist living and

working in the years following India’s independence.

Lajmi balanced her career with family responsibilities and

teaching art. Drawing inspiration from her own life, her largely

autobiographical artwork contemplates gender roles and patriarchy.

Metaphorical images of dream sequences, relationships, and

performances recur across her works. The performer ﬁgure in these

works, oen portrayed as a clown, represents gendered roles she per-

formed in her own domestic life. The motif of the mask signals the

concealment of one’s true identity, feelings, and aspirations

while performing.

TOP ROW LEFT TO RIGHT:

Exhibition on patriarchy,

community fair,

Landworkers’ Union,

Mehrauli, 1983

Sit-in at Nangloi police

station, Jaswanti’s dowry

death, New Delhi, 1981

Satinder of Trilokpuri,

widowed in anti-Sikh

violence, women’s

meeting resisting

communal violence, 1985

Anti-dowry

demonstration, India

Gate, New Delhi, 1982

Shahjahan Apa, mother

of dowry victim, public

testimony, Boat Club,

New Delhi, 1981

MIDDLE ROW LEFT TO RIGHT:

Maya Rao performing in

Om Swaha, anti-dowry

street play, Mehrauli,

1980

Dalit leader speaking

at Women’s Tribunal on

violence against women,

Lucknow, 1997

International Women’s

Day procession, Karol

Bagh, New Delhi, 1983

Anti-dowry

demonstration, New

Delhi, 1981

Jaswanti’s mother, public

testimony, Nangloi police

station sit-in, New Delhi,

1981

BOTTOM ROW LEFT TO RIGHT:

Shanti and Devi, feminist

health workers meeting,

Action India oce, New

Delhi, 1991

International Women’s

Day March protesting

violence against women,

New Delhi, 1987

In the community,

protesting sexual child

abuse in the home, New

Seemapuri, New Delhi,

1992

Moloyashree performing

in Aurat (Woman) street

play by Jan Natya Manch,

New Delhi, 1981

Shanti, Action India,

storytelling with painted

scroll, consciousness-

raising on patriarchy

in the community,

Dakshinpuri, New Delhi,

1990

SHEBA CHHACHHI

(Ethiopia, b. 1958, lives and

works in India)

From the Barricades, 198097

Archival pigment prints

SYLVIA NETZER

(United States, b. 1944)

Glen-Gery Olympia, 2004

Carved brick and encaustic

MARCH 5

MAY 4, 2024

SHEBA CHHACHHI

GABRIELLE GOLIATH

LEONILDA GONZÁLEZ

LALITHA LAJMI

KENT MONKMAN

TULI MEKONDJO

SYLVIA NETZER

ABIGAIL REYES

DIMA SROUJI

KEIOUI KEIJAUN THOMAS

CURATED BY:

ISIS AWAD, ROXANA FABIUS,

BEYA OTHMANI

WITH CURATORIAL

ADVISORY GROUP:

MARÍA CARRI, ZASHA

COLAH, MARIA CATARINA

DUNCAN, KOBE KO,

MARIE HÉLÈNE PEREIRA,

MINDY SEU, SUSANA

VARGAS CERVANTES

Maternal Exhumations II contemplates colonial violence towards

feminized bodies, looking speciﬁcally at archeological excavation

as a colonial practice in Palestine. The work stems from Srouji’s

research into archives of the ﬁrst excavations led by American

and British archeologists around Sebastia, a small village in the

Palestinian West Bank. Srouji found that Palestinian women were

part of the workforce who excavated the land during these early-

20th-century missions. The artist took interest in how Palestinian

women were instrumentalized for political gain even as they

were being stripped of their land and subjected to colonial control.

Srouji’s installation aims to reinterpret and reclaim looted

Palestinian archeological artifacts, now housed in Western insti-

tutions, by creating forgeries of them in collaboration with profes-

sional forgers and glassblowers in Palestine. These artifacts are glass

vessels and toilet ﬂasks, historically used by women in cleansing

and healing rituals. Placed in a grid of soil as though just excavated,

Srouji brings aention to the deep connection between Indigenous

Palestinian women and their land, emphasizing the rich evidence

of feminine life found within the earth. The installation oﬀers

an homage to these women through imagining the vessels’ return

to the soil.

DIMA SROUJI

(Palestine, b. 1990, lives and

works in London)

Maternal Exhumations II, 2023

Steel trays, glass vessels, soil

The glass vessels were

produced by the Twam family

workshop in Jaba’, Palestine

Sylvia Netzer is a sculptor and professor whose career spans

more than ﬁy years and has transcended conventional media cate-

gories. Deﬁning herself as a sculptor, she challenged established

notions in the ﬁeld, working with clay and ceramics since the 1970s

when the material was seen as belonging to the world of cra.

Bringing ideas like modularity and repetition from the ﬁeld of mini-

malist sculpture to her ceramics practice allowed Netzer to create

large-scale installations.

Though her artmaking is systematic and methodical in its

replication of molds and forms, it also focuses on the personal, on

her experience as a woman, and, in particular, as a large woman

who has been excluded and rejected from value systems. Her vision-

ary installations considered issues of body image and perception

when discussions of body positivity were not on the horizon of

the mainstream. Her striking blend of self-referential humor and

formal innovation gives her ﬁgures a uniquely engaging presence.

Glen-Gery Olympia, a monumental work in the form of a reclin-

ing woman composed of hand-carved terracoa bricks, is a clear

example of how Netzer combines both the personal and the sys-

tematic. Giving her personal experience space and size, grounded

in embodiment, Netzer’s work shows art’s unique power to share

understanding of others’ experiences of being.

KENT MONKMAN

(Canada, b. 1965)

I am nipiy, 2022

Acrylic on canvas

GABRIELLE GOLIATH

(South Africa, b. 1983)

This song is for . . ., 2019–

2-channel video installation

KENT MONKMAN

(Canada, b. 1965)

Compositional Study

for The Sparrow, 2023

Acrylic on canvas

ABIGAIL REYES

(El Salvador, b. 1984)

Plana, 2014

Rice paper, typed text

TULI MEKONDJO

(Angola, b. 1982, lives and

works in Namibia)

Omalutu etu, omeli medu eli/

Our bodies are within this soil,

2022

Image transfer, resin, acrylic

ink, cotton embroidery thread,

and rusted cotton fabric

on canvas

The Cree word “nipiy” means water in English. Floating blissfully

and eternally in water as if in space is Monkman’s gender-ﬂuid alter

ego, Miss Chief Eagle Testickle, a key ﬁgure in many of Monkman’s

tongue-in-cheek paintings.

Kent Monkman is an interdisciplinary Cree visual artist who

lives and works between New York City and Toronto. Monkman

is a member of Fisher River Cree Nation in Treaty 5 Territory

(Manitoba). Monkman reclaims the underrepresented historic and

contemporary experiences of Indigenous people by inserting and

intervening within canonical Western European and American art

history in shocking and oen cheeky ways. Across painting, ﬁlm/

video, performance, and installation, Monkman’s work explores and

comments on themes of violence, colonization, joy, sexuality, and

resilience. A leading ﬁgure in many of Monkman’s interventions is

his gender-ﬂuid alter ego Miss Chief Eagle Testickle, seen here, who

reverses the colonial gaze to challenge received notions of history

and Indigenous peoples.

Gabrielle Goliath generates in her practice spaces that sensitively

address gendered and sexualised violence. On entering the gallery

dedicated to This song is for . . . , audiences encounter a collection of

dedication songs, each chosen by a survivor of rape. These are songs

of personal signiﬁcance to the survivors, evoking memories and

feelings. However, at particular moments in each song — and oen

comfortingly familiar ones — the notes are disrupted like a broken

record or a repeating scratch in memory.

As collaborators on the project, the survivors shared not only

their songs, but also a color of their choosing and a wrien reﬂec-

tion. The artist then worked closely with women- and gender-queer-

led musical ensembles to reinterpret and re-perform the songs.

Color and voice, both channels for visceral emotional meaning,

are entwined in Goliath’s platform for testimony that transcends

words, accessing deeper layers of understanding. In moments of

musical rupture, visitors witness a frozen present, sharing in testi-

monies of trauma entangled with personal and political claims to

life, dignity, hope, faith, and even joy.

Boarding or residential schools played a major role in the ethnic

cleansing or “civilizing” of Indigenous people. Almost one third of

these schools were administered by the Christian church. Monkman

paints a grim depiction of a child so close to freedom, represented

by a curious sparrow, yet just as far away from it.