Judy Chicago’s Wo/Manhouse 2022 Could Use Some More Diversity
Although more inclusive than the original 1972 Womanhouse, the current remake would still benefit from more BIPOC artists, a broader intersectional dialogue, and a wider breadth of lived experience.
By Annie Bielski, Hyperallergic - July 24, 2022
BELEN, NEW MEXICO — It’s been 50 years since Womanhouse debuted, helmed by Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro. The installation and performance space opened in 1972 inside of a dilapidated Hollywood mansion as a result of the yearlong experimental Feminist Art Program that Chicago led at California State University, Fresno, and her co-teaching stint with Schapiro at California Institute of the Arts. To mark the occasion and offer a contemporary lens, the exhibitions Looking Back at Womanhouse and Wo/Manhouse 2022 are on view in Belen, New Mexico, Chicago’s adopted hometown of 30 years.
Looking Back at Womanhouse is installed at Through the Flower Art Space, Chicago’s nonprofit gallery in its second year, and includes reproduced historic photographs and original ephemera from Womanhouse. Photographs feature installations and the artists who made them, whom Chicago still refers to as the “Fresno girls,” though they are now in their 70s. In a corner of the gallery, Chicago recreated “Menstruation Bathroom,” last seen at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) in 1995.
The installation features a toilet, an overflowing wastebasket, and a variety of menstrual products, including fake-bloodied pads and tampons. Labeling on one of the product’s packaging uses co-opted language from the pro-choice movement, borrowing from the slogan “Your body, your choice,” an unfortunate marketing decision conflating bodily autonomy with purchasing power. This has become all the more topical since the US Supreme Court’s vote to strike down Roe v. Wade on June 24, 2022, after 49 years of protection. Along with the Stonewall Riots of 1969, the events serve as salient guides through which to experience both exhibitions.