Elles: SAM: Singular Works by Seminal Women Artists

To expand on the Elles: Women Artists from the Centre Pompidou, Paris survey on the Fourth Floor of SAM Downtown, the curators at SAM have organized a series of exhibitions in the Modern and Contemporary Art Galleries on the Third Floor that build and react to each other. Through diverse media, these installations and exhibitions offer a glimpse of the startling innovations attained and a reminder that these achievements were often hard fought for in a cultural landscape that was not always welcoming to women. Fully aware that many artists question or reject the label “woman artist,” we focus on them as a group not to segregate but to recognize them as seminal artists whose contributions collectively yield a whole greater than its parts.

Nine interrelated shows and installations in the Modern and Contemporary Art Galleries constitute Elles: SAM and highlight some of the connections and breaks in artistic developments during the last 50 years.

Elles: SAM extends to the other museum locations as well. In the Olympic Sculpture Park’s PACCAR Pavilion, Brazilian artist Sandra Cinto’s ambitious wall drawing Encontro das Águas (Encounter of Waters) offers a mesmerizing view of an expansive waterscape.

At the Seattle Asian Art Museum, Women’s Paintings from the Land of Sita delves into the work of nine Indian women painting in the distinctive Mithila style of their region. In Where Have They Been? Two Overlooked Chinese Female Artists, the works of nonagenarians Chang Ch’ung-ho Frankel and Lu Wujiu give voice to two artists who prioritized the careers of their husbands, and as a result have been neglected and marginalized by the art world. And in Tooba, Iranian-American Shirin Neshat offers a poetic narrative about individual and collective identity in this mesmerizing video installation.

–Catharina Manchanda, Jon & Mary Shirley Curator of Modern & Contemporary Art

No title, 1964, Eva Hesse, American, (born in Germany), 1936–1970, oil on canvas, 61 x 41 1/2in., Seattle Art Museum, Promised gift of the Virginia and Bagley Wright Collection, in honor of the 75th Anniversary of the Seattle Art Museum