ART-TRIBUTE:Another-Energy Power to Continue Challenging, Part II

In contemporary art for the past decade or so, attention has turned increasingly to female artists who began their contemporary art careers between the 1950s and 1970s and continue to stay active as artists today. The exhibition “Another Energy: Power to Continue Challenging – 16 Women Artists from around the World” shines a light on female artists, who began their careers in the turbulent postwar years from the 1950s to 1970s, and who remain active today in 2021.
This Tribute is in four parts, focusing on four artists each time.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Mori Art Museum Archive

Ranging in ages 71-105 with their careers spanning over 50 years, the artists, of the exhibition “Another Energy: Power to Continue Challenging – 16 Women Artists from around the World” are originally from 14 different countries, and equally diverse in their current locations. Nonetheless, what these women share regardless of recognition or evaluation by art museums and the art market is a determination to pursue their own distinctive creative paths in turbulent environment and times. Showcasing their wide array of powerful works from paintings, video, sculptures, to large-scale installations and performances, 130 works to total, this exhibition contemplates the nature of the special strength or what one may call the driving force – “another energy” – of these artists. Amid the unprecedented condition of the world, perhaps the sight of 16 artists, who all have spent their lives walking their own paths with such immovable conviction, may offer us just the strength to tackle the ongoing challenges and to face the future with resilience and determination.

Lili Dujourie’s early works are regarded as a feminist reaction on the impersonal dogmas of the Minimalism during the 1960s. Starting from a relation to body, matter, and culture at large, her artistic practice unfolded into her own intimate artistic terra incognita by combining painting, sculpture, film, performance and photography. In silence, muteness and poetic expression of absence, all of which are distinct elements that characterize her works, “pause” is frequently celebrated as a necessary condition for an action. In Another Energy, Dujourie is to present sculptures, works on paper, and video work covering various periods of her practice from 1967 to 2009.

Anna Bella Geiger is amongst the most important contemporary artists in Brazil. Since the 1950s, she’s built up an oeuvre where engagement and experimentation stand central. Her early abstract work connected with the body in the same way as her work in other media such as print, video and sculpture always kept a relation to the social situation surrounding her. Her personal standing as a child of a Polish migrant family, operating on the margins of Western modernization within the deep political turbulences of Brazil, has caused her to continuously examine the issues of geopolitical borders and identities.

Beatriz González started practicing art in the 1960s after studying architecture, painting and art history. She produced works by appropriating images both from Western art history and local newspapers, modifying them through a language based on figuration, flat surfaces, and a broad color palette. Not confined to the canvas format, she explored everyday supports – curtains, furniture, wallpapers, which have similarities with the pop art movement. At Another Energy, works in different media referring to the socio-political conflicts in her home country of Colombia will be showcased.

Carmen Herrera is considered as one of the pioneers of geometric abstraction in the U.S. After studying architecture in Havana, she studied painting at the Art Students League in New York. She befriended artists of then-newly-emerging Abstract Expressionism. Later in postwar period, she moved to Paris where art and literature burgeoned. Since the 1960s, she has produced “Estructuras (Structures)” sculpture series furthering the architectonically-oriented abstraction, aside from her paintings. What characterizes her entire oeuvre is her quest for humanism far beyond any -ism taken as trends in the art world.

Participating Artists: Etel Adnan, Phyllida Barlow, Anna Boghiguian, Miriam Cahn, Lili Dujourie, Anna Bella Geiger, Beatriz González, Carmen Herrera, Kim Soun-Gui, Suzanne Lacy, Mishima Kimiyo, Miyamoto Kazuko, Senga Nengudi, Nunung WS, Arpita Singh and Robin White.

Photo: Phyllida Barlowm Undercover 2, 2020, Timber, plywood, cement, scrim, plaster, polyurethane foam, paint, PVA, calico, and steel, Dimensions variable, Courtesy: Hauser & Wirth, Installation view: Another Energy: Power to Continue Challenging – 16 Women Artists from around the World, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, 2021, Photo: Furukawa Yuyam Photo courtesy: Mori Art Museum, Tokyo

Info: Curators: Kataoka Mami and Martin Germann, Mori Art Museum, 52F/53F Roppongi Hills Mori Tower, 6-10-1 Roppongi, Minato-ku, Tokyo, Japan, Duration: 22/4-26/9/2021, Days & Hours: Mon & Wed-Sun 10:00-20:00, Tue 10:00-17:00, www.mori.art.museum