Trailblazing artist, author, educator, cultural historian and feminist Judy Chicago has been challenging the male-dominated landscape of the art world since the 60s, producing work that was boldly from a woman’s perspective. This month, Serpentine is heralding her long and influential career with Revelations, Chicago’s largest solo presentation in a London institution.
“Revelations, both the exhibition and book, expresses my lifelong commitment to gender equality and my deeply held belief that people must come together to change the patriarchal paradigm, which — at this point in history — has become lethal to all creatures, human and nonhuman, as well as to the planet,” Chicago shares.
Throughout her six-decade career, Chicago has contested the absence and erasure of women in the Western cultural canon, developing a distinctive visual language that gives visibility to their experiences. To this aim, Chicago has produced both individual and collaborative projects that grappled with themes of birth and creation, the social construct of masculinity, her Jewish identity, notions of power and powerlessness, extinction, and expressed her longstanding concern for climate justice.
The exhibition takes its name from an unknown illuminated manuscript Chicago penned in the early 1970s which will be published for the first time in conjunction with the exhibition by Serpentine and Thames & Hudson. Titled Revelations, this visionary work is a radical retelling of human history recovering some of the stories of women that society sought to erase, and one that Chicago never imagined would be published in her lifetime. Audio excerpts from the book can be heard in each of the galleries through an accompanying audio guide, seamlessly creating a link between visual art and written word that has occupied the artist’s practice since the 1970s.
Revelations charts the full arc of Chicago’s career with a specific focus on drawing, highlighting rarely seen works. Several immersive, multi-media elements, including an AR app, a video recording booth, and other audio-visual components, set this show apart from previous surveys of Chicago’s work. With never-before-seen sketchbooks, films and slides, video interviews of participants from The Dinner Party (1974–79), audio recordings, and a guided tour of The Dinner Party by Chicago herself, this novel approach to exhibiting Chicago’s work makes the artist’s presence felt throughout the gallery.
Maria Grazia Chiuri, Creative Director of Dior women’s haute couture, ready-to-wear
and accessories collections said, “The power of Judy Chicago’s work has always had, and
will always have, a significant impact on both me personally —I still keenly recall her
installation piece The Dinner Party, which is regarded as a masterpiece of feminism — and
all generations fortunate enough to see it. She speaks about women and our history,
celebrating our combined creative and intellectual strengths.”
Revelations is on view from May 23 to September 1, 2024.
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