New Work by 100 Women Artists For Centennial of 19th Amendment Launches in Digital Portal
- August 19, 2020 11:58
Park Avenue Armory in New York has launched its interactive digital portal that allows audiences to explore new commissions by 100 women artists and cultural creators, including Carrie Mae Weems, Toshi Reagon, Renee Cox, Staceyann Chin, Zoë Buckman, and more. Unveiled on August 18—the date of the 19th Amendment’s ratification—during an online viewing party (watchable here), the archive and artist projects are part of the Armory’s 100 Years | 100 Women initiative, a partnership with lead partner National Black Theatre and nine other New York City cultural institutions including the Met and the Apollo, who together commissioned these artists to respond to the centennial anniversary of the amendment to the U.S. Constitution that gave women the right to vote.
Through the digital portal (100years100women.net), audiences can now explore each participant's profile and creative work, as well as additional opportunities for engagement with the project’s themes. Projects created for the initiative include:
- The installation The Right to Vote: ‘Women’s Work Never Praised/Never Done!’ A Reimagining by Deborah Willis, comprised of photos and images focused on women's labor, dress and domestic work alongside images of Black women suffragists in the early 20th century
- A portrait of 100 Indigenous Women of Turtle Island (North America) created by Indigenous beadwork maker Joselyn Kaxhyek Borrero (Tlingit of Yukon, Canada) and Roberto Borrero (kasike (chief) of the Guainía Taíno tribal community)
- Equality Tea, a performance by Jaime Sunwoo drawing parallels between the fraught histories of the tea trade and the suffrage movement
- A new song and music video by Toshi Reagon on what freedom means, created in collaboration with her mother
- A wearable art piece and performance work created by Yelaine Rodriguez in response to the concept of birthing a revolution, Oshun Orisha of Fertility: Help us Birth Generations of Revolutionary Womxn
- A powerful self-portrait series by disability inclusion activists, including actresses Marilee Talkington and Christine Bruno
Also featured on the website is a cinematic portrait of the 100 Years | 100 Women project by filmmaker Shola Lynch that documents the inspirations and processes behind the participants’ contributions, including the ways in which the COVID-19 pandemic, social distancing, widespread racial justice movements, and the divisive election season have informed their work.