Judy CHICAGO is a pioneering feminist artist, whose complex installations have challenged the gendered structure of contemporary society. With Red Flag (1971), Chicago makes public that most intimate act of menstruation: showing the removal of a used and bloodied tampon from her vagina. The role of women as ‘mothers’ and agents of reproduction is often celebrated but the physical traces of this ability are ignored, if not made to seem shameful.
In 1972, Chicago opened the ground-breaking Womanhouse with artist Miriam Schapiro and their students at the CalArts Feminist Art Program in Los Angeles. Chicago’s installation The Dinner Party (1974-1979), a monumental triangular table with place settings dedicated to notable women in history, has become a landmark piece of feminist art history and is considered to be her most iconic work.
In 2007, Judy Chicago was included in the seminal exhibition ‘WACK!: Art and the Feminist Revolution’ at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA. Her work has been exhibited extensively at venues such as the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA; the New Museum, New York, NY; the Centre Pompidou, Paris, France; the Whitney Museum, New York, NY; the Jewish Museum, New York, NY; the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Berkley, CA; and Tate Modern, London, UK, amongst others.