Lydia Schouten Featured in “Women House” at NMWA

Fri, Mar 9 - Mon, May 28  2018

From March 9 to May 28, Dutch visual artist Lydia Schouten will be featured in the exhibition “Women House” with a video called “Cage” at the National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA), Washington, DC. The exhibition presents work by 36 global artists, including Louise Bourgeois, Judy Chicago, Mona Hatoum, Zanele Muholi, Cindy Sherman, and many more. NMWA is the only US venue for the exhibition, which is organized by La Monnaie de Paris.

About “Cage”

Lydia Schouten created “Cage” in 1978, a performance piece in which she stuck aquarelle pencils to the bars of a literal cage. Lydia walked around in a wet body stocking and colored herself by brushing her body against the pencils. A video has been made of the performance, which can be seen at the “Women House” exhibition (duration: 30 minutes). Find more information about Lydia Schouten here.

About “Women House”

“Women House” forms a sequel to the famous project “Womanhouse”, developed in 1972 by Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro. The artists and their students at the California Institute of the Arts transformed a dilapidated Hollywood mansion with works that disrupted conventional ideas about the home as a feminine space. It attracted thousands of visitors and national media attention. A landmark exhibition in art history, “Womanhouse” was the first female-centered art installation to appear in the Western world. Continuing the dialogue with their artistic foremothers of the 1970s, the contemporary artists in “Women House” recast conventional ideas about women through photography, sculpture, installation and video. Organized across eight themes, “Women House” emphasizes the plurality of women’s views on the home from “Desperate Housewives” to “Mobile Homes”.

About the National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA)

The National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA) is the only major museum in the world solely dedicated to championing women through the arts. With its collections, exhibitions, programs and online content, the museum seeks to inspire dynamic exchanges about art and ideas. NMWA advocates for better representation of women artists and serves as a vital centre for thought leadership, community engagement and social change. NMWA addresses the gender imbalance in the presentation of art by bringing to light important women artists of the past while promoting great women artists working today.