In this year’s major autumn exhibition, Statens Museum for Kunst (SMK) turns the spotlight onto some of art history’s prominent women artists who, with both compassion and combat-ready resistance, have created important and influential works fuelled by a sense of social and political commitment.
The show takes its starting point in the 50th anniversary of the Danish Redstocking movement and the 1970s pioneering struggles and dreams of a more peaceful, more equal and freer world. From here, the exhibition goes back another fifty years in time and fifty years ahead, showing how artists and women have, across generations, used art to express resistance to and criticism of the prevailing state of things.
All in all, visitors can explore more than 130 works by eighteen women artists from Denmark and abroad, all of them moving, shaking, provoking and confronting their viewers. With their art, they delve unflinchingly into major political themes and new approaches to current topics such as war, climate, gender, colonialism, class divisions and capitalism.
The artists featured are: Käthe Kollwitz, Hannah Höch, Hannah Ryggen, Nancy Spero, Paula Rego, Dea Trier Mørch, Kirsten Christensen, Ursula Reuter Christiansen, Kirsten Justesen, Lene Adler Petersen, Jenny Holzer, Mona Hatoum, Shirin Neshat, Pia Arke, Simone Aaberg Kærn, Jeannette Ehlers, La Vaughn Belle and Tabita Rezaire. All are impelled by pressing issues close to their heart, unfolding here as powerful and universal narratives.
Source: SMK – National Gallery of Denmark