The National Museum of Women in the Arts has announced the artists who will appear in the museum’s latest biennial, which opens this summer. “Organic Matters,” the fourth installment of the museum’s Women to Watch series, will bring artworks by 13 women artists from around the world to Washington, D.C.
The show will feature emerging and underrepresented artists working in a wide variety of media. Nature, and the relationship between women and nature, serves as the broad umbrella theme for the exhibition. Artworks in the biennial will depict “fragile ecosystems, otherworldly landscapes, and creatures both real and imagined,” according to a release.
The artists were selected by outreach committees working across the world. Thirteen regional committees, most of them led by curators from that region, each picked a tribute artist. (Most, but not all, of the curators involved are also women.) The committees involved with this year’s biennial comprise 13 of the museum’s 18 total outreach areas, from Massachusetts to Chile.
Two of those artists have strong D.C. ties. Jiha Moon, an Atlanta-based painter (work shown at top) representing Georgia, is represented by Andrea Pollan, a D.C. art dealer. The photographer representing the greater Kansas City region, Lara Shipley, is a former District resident.
“The artists highlighted in Organic Matters build upon and expand the pre-existing conceptualizations of women’s relationship with nature by actively investigating the natural world—to fanciful and sometimes frightful effect,” said Virginia Treanor, the museum’s associate curator, in a release. “Collectively, their work addresses modern society’s complex relationship with the environment, ranging from concern for its future to fear of its power.”
This biennial follows close on the heels of “Total Art,” a survey of new video works by 10 prominent artists advancing the medium today, including Alex Prager, Pipilotti Rist, and Eve Sussman. (Read City Paper‘s review of that exhibition here.)
“Organic Matters” opens on June 5 and runs through September 13. See the full list of the artists and the regions they support after the jump.
Arkansas: Selected Artist Dawn Holder; Curator Courtney Taylor, Arts and Science Center for Southeast Arkansas
California (Southern): Selected Artist Jennifer Celio; Curator Corrina Peipon, Hammer Museum
Chile: Selected Artist Andrea Lira; Curator Soledad García Saavedra, Independent Curator
France: Selected Artist Françoise Pétrovitch; Curator Julia Garimorth, Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris
Georgia: Selected Artist Jiha Moon; Curator Michael Rooks, High Museum of Art
Italy: Selected Artist Goldschmied & Chiari; Curator Iolanda Ratti, Museo del Novecento
Greater Kansas City Area: Selected Artist Lara Shipley; Curator Catherine Futter, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art
Massachusetts: Selected Artist Rebecca Hutchinson; Curator Jen Mergel, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
New Mexico: Selected Artist Mary Tsiongas; Curator Lisa Tamiris Becker, UNM Museum of Art
Greater New York Region: Selected Artist Rachel Sussman; Curators Christiane Paul, Whitney Museum of Art; Dana Miller, Whitney Museum of Art
Ohio: Selected Artist Mimi Kato; Curators Reto Thüring, Cleveland Museum of Art; Rose Bouthillier, MOCA Cleveland
Texas: Selected Artist Ysabel LeMay; Curator Virginia Treanor, National Museum of Women in the Arts
United Kingdom: Selected Artist Polly Morgan; Curator Lisa Le Feuvre, Henry Moore Institute