Sister Chapel
The Sister Chapel is a visual arts installation, conceived by Ilise Greenstein and created by thirteen women artists during the feminist art movement.[1] The installation premiered in January 1978 at P.S.1 in Long Island City, New York.[2] It featured eleven panels that represented contemporary and historically significant women, deities and mythological figures, and conceptual heroic women:[2]
- Bella Abzug—the Candidate (1976) by Alice Neel
- Betty Friedan as the Prophet (1976) by June Blum
- Marianne Moore (1977) by Betty Holliday
- Joan of Arc (1976) by Elsa M. Goldsmith
- Artemisia Gentileschi (1976) by May Stevens
- Frida Kahlo (1976) by Shirley Gorelick
- God (1977) by Cynthia Mailman
- Durga (1977) by Diana Kurz
- Lilith (1976) by Sylvia Sleigh
- Womanhero (1977) by Martha Edelheit
- Self-Portrait as Superwoman (Woman as Culture Hero) (1977–78) by Sharon Wybrants
Each monumental figure occupied a nine-by-five-foot canvas in a twelve-sided space, into which viewers were invited to enter.[1] Above the eleven panels, which formed an enclosure around the viewers, was a circular abstract painted ceiling by Ilise Greenstein (1976).[2] Viewers were invited to imagine and see themselves in the company of historically significant actors in developing a new way of looking at history, culture, and themselves.[1]
A tent-like fabric enclosure, designed by Maureen Connor in 1976, was never executed, although a model was constructed and shown at the premiere exhibition.[2]
The nominal pun regarding the Sistine Chapel ceiling was intentional.[3] As the Sistine Chapel represented an apex of global and western culture, and a realization of the patriarchal conceptualization of history, The Sister Chapel comprised an invitation for people to re-imagine familiar, often unconscious presumptions about gender roles, recognition and relations from a female perspective.[1] As Gloria Feman Orenstein explained in 1977, "This chapel, then, is not about the creation of man, but the birth of woman."[4]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 Norma Broude and Mary D. Garrard, ed., The Power of Feminist Art (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1994), 231-33.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 Andrew D. Hottle, The Art of the Sister Chapel: Exemplary Women, Visionary Creators, and Feminist Collaboration (Farnham, England: Ashgate Publishing, 2014), 6-7.
- ↑ Grace Glueck, "Art People," New York Times, November 5, 1976.
- ↑ Gloria Feman Orenstein, "The Sister Chapel—A Traveling Homage to Heroines," Womanart 1, no. 3 (Winter/Spring 1977): 12-21.