 Hello everyone and welcome. We are going to get started in just a minute give folks just another minute or two to join us for this really exciting conversation that we have planned today. So hang in there and I will come back and we will get things started in just about two minutes. All right, well we are going to get this party started hello everyone and welcome I want to thank all of you for joining us today for this conversation about art and craft, and the inspiration for and the intentions that motivate the work of three exceptionally artists who have been an artist who are featured in the women's work exhibition at Linter's Beatrice glow, Nafis and white and basic is out of Iran. I am so excited, and so grateful that they have agreed to be part of this session today in conversation with curator Rebecca Hart. I'm Chris Morris and I'm the senior field director of the Los Angeles office for the National Trust for Historic Preservation. So good morning to all my friends here in the western part of the US and good afternoon to all of my friends in the eastern part of the US. And most importantly for the purpose of today the manager of the National Trust initiative called where women made history. And for those of you who may not be familiar with the National Trust for historic preservation we are the nation's only nonprofit advocacy organization that is dedicated to saving historic places right there in the name, but our work goes far beyond the act of preserving a physical structure or historic interior or a design landscape. We believe that these places are meaningful and they are powerful because of their connections to people, the stories that they can tell us the lessons that they can teach us in the many ways in which we continue to be inspired by their struggles and their successes and I think you will see those through lines very clearly in the work of the artists that we are going to be hearing from today. Next slide please. And at its heart, the initiative for where women made history is a manifestation of the National Trust's commitment to tell a more truthful and a more equitable national story is the last two and a half years have brought into focus myriad racial inequities and injustices. And to have they revealed the deep inequities that continue to be faced by women in our country, particularly women of color, indigenous and LGBTQ women, but by bringing recognition and respect to women's achievements, honoring the ways in which they have changed their lives and changed the world and supporting their own place based work in their own communities, we move closer to a world in which women's contributions are instinctively understood as equal, and they are valued as such. Next slide please. Now it wouldn't be a webinar if we didn't have to deal with a few logistics right off the bat so let's get those out of the way. First, I am honored to say that our virtual program today is brought to you by where women made history in concert with the women's work exhibition at Lindhurst, which is a national trust historic site located in Terry town New York just north of New York City. If you are in the New York area and you have the ability to visit the Hudson Valley before the end of September, I cannot recommend strongly enough that you make the trip up to Terry town to see the stunning Lindhurst mansion and the women's work exhibition that is there and you are going to get just taste today of some of the objects that are on display there so hopefully that inspires you to make the trip. This exhibition is a showcase of three centuries of women's artistic achievement, activism, creativity, professionalism and self expression. We're going to begin today's event with presentations from each of the speakers and that will be followed by discussion but we will be taking questions from the audience throughout the webinar. So please feel free to send your questions directly to the panelists via the q&a function in the zoom. I'm not going to submit your questions at any point, but just know that we'll be waiting until the end of the webinar closer to the end of it in order to answer those audience questions. You're also encouraged to communicate to all the participants at any time through the zoom chat function. Also please note that the closed captioning function is enabled for this webinar for anyone who would like to take advantage of that feature. At least please note that this presentation is being recorded. So following the program and the next couple of days will be sending out a recording of today's webinar directly to all of you via the email that you use to register. And you can find all of the webinars in this series on saving places.org at the link that's going to be provided in the chat. Thank you for taking care of all of the logistics. It is my pleasure to introduce Becky Hart Becky, come on screen for me. She is one of the three co curators of the women's work exhibition and is the absolutely perfect person to lead this conversation today. She is a curator and advisor who retired after 30 years of practice in public institutions, leading the contemporary art department at the Denver Art Museum and the Detroit Institute of Art, where she organized 15 collections based thematic and one person exhibitions, headed contemporary acquisitions for both museums and added significant works established by emerging artists. Becky, please take it away. Hello. I'd like to thank you Chris and also Priya Chaya, the director of content at the National Trust for hosting today's event. It's an important conversation. And I'm just thrilled to be a part of it. I also want to acknowledge Howard Tsar, the director of Lynn Hurst, who conceived women's work and was its lead curator. And Nancy Carlisle, the senior curator of collections at Historic New England. She, like me, assisted Howard, and we are the exhibition co curators. Women's work brings together over 100 over 125 artworks and domestic objects spanning 300 years of women's creative production. It tracks the deep pervasive and continuing influence of the domestic craft tradition in the practice of contemporary women artists. Next slide. Lynn Hurst is a majestic mansion on the banks of the Hudson River. The estate was developed under the stewardship of the Pauline, Merritt and Gould families. The land on which it stands now was originally hunting grounds for the indigenous Lenape Monse people who were the first inhabitants of the Hudson Valley. Next slide. In the exhibition, historic objects and artworks anchor each section that are loosely ordered by object type or technique. Here, the 19th century dressing ground is shown in proximity to contemporary artworks based on other articles of women's clothing. Next slide. This exquisite robe gifted to Historic New England from the Home for Aged Colored Women secrets unspoken stories that are amplified by contemporary commentaries. On the left, Yoko Ono remains serene as she performs cut piece intended to address the violence that occurs against women's bodies. In our bold of Valencia, Daisy Quasada Arena slip casts women's underwear to make a sculptural response to the rape trees that are found in the Sonoran Desert. Her porcelain garments point to the fragility of migrant women's lives and their spirit. The inherent strength of the clay recalls the resilience of these women who experience this abuse. The proximity of the historical gown to these and other contemporary artworks questions what older histories are left untold, as quiet as they are kept. Next slide. Inside the mansion, contemporary objects are placed mise en scene, in other words, just as you might find them in a, if you were living in the house. Tableware for the 19th and 20th centuries has distinct meanings in the dining room. The 19th century sever porcelain coffee cups signify wealth, status, and luxury. Understanding this, Cindy Sherman commissioned the sever manufacturing to make a soup terrine decorated with a self-portrait of her reenacting Madame de Pompadour, and thus commenting on the commodification of women by men as objects of desire. By contrast, Beatrice Glow used decals and acrylics to decorate commercially made ceramic blanks. These non-luxury materials were selected to critique an imperialist land exchange between the Netherlands and Britain, resulting in forced migrations, enslavement, and violence for indigenous peoples who lived in each territory. Beatrice is going to discuss this in great detail. Next slide. Here I wanted you to see the library. This house is absolutely magnificent. And here, silhouettes on the library table and wreaths that are displayed on the wall and on an easel are featured in the library. Next slide. A 19th century hair wreath is paired with oculus, triumphed in blue, green, and gold by Nafis M. White. The wreath is on the right. The historic wreath was made of hair, wire, beads, and pins and created to memorialize the dead. The components of the wreath, meaning each separate element, the leaves, the basket, the large semicircular crescent, commemorated various people dear to the maker and they were made individually with a specific person in mind. Its crescent shape is open at the top so that their souls may ascend to heaven. White's materials are qualitatively different. They include synthetic hair, embodied knowledge, ancestral recall, audacity of survival, gold leaf, and bobby pins. Not intended as momento mori or reminder of death, white sculpture enshrines a history of making by calling out the fortitude and the wisdom of her forbearers, implicating herself in the history of all black women. At this point I'd like to invite the artists to speak about their individual practices. And as they begin to speak, you will see links placed in the Q&A or the chat, I'm not sure which, and they will include their bios and links to various articles and issues about their practice. The speakers will talk in this order, Beatrice Glow, Daisy Quasada, and Nafis M. White. So Beatrice, I'm thrilled to invite you to begin your presentation. Beatrice, we can't hear you for some reason. Can you hear me now? Yes, we're good now. Okay, that's odd. All right, sorry about that. Good day to everyone. Thank you for tuning in. I was saying it's such an honor to be part of this really exciting program and dialogue. My name is Beatrice Glow and my pronouns are she, her, they, them. I'm a dark haired and slightly melanated woman wearing a bronze color shirt and the background behind me is white. I am an American of Taiwanese heritage. And I think of myself as a descendant of the trade routes of the maritime Silk Road and the mountains and coasts southeast and western Taiwan. I make multimedia and multisensory research creations to share how history impacts our shared futures. I was a daughter of immigrants growing up in a lonely land, California, I then made a second home and the estereal bio region of the Muncie Lunapal, all of it, also known as New York, and questions of sovereignty, erasure and belonging always have propelled me. I also knew that I have family in Argentina, which motivated me to learn about the various migration ways from Asia to the Americas, and uneven experiences and the northern and southern hemispheres. So my trajectory as a younger artist began by retracing 19th century Asian labor in Peru, where the largest Asian Latin American population resides. But this is a map of my two year journey where I became very aware of the interwoven struggles and tensions between indigenous formerly enslaved peoples, settlers and migrants, as well as starting to understand myself in this larger scope of stories of migrations as a visibly racialized settler in the Americas, and also uncovering a deep need to resist my own complicity and settler colonialism. The question that always haunted me for years was what does colonialism smell like. How is it that the taste for aromatic spices, spiraled into global trade networks, motivate the colonization of countless lands and a discovery of the Americas. So I wanted to know our Magellan and Columbus simply spice hunters and said a great explorers. So that led me to install our America pop from a pop of perfumery in a shopping mall to question luxury and its connections to dispossession and enslavement. So what is it in the learned fume, a pop from a plant such as tobacco, pepper, cocoa, or cinnamon that brought people to navigate oceans but also motivated massacres human trafficking, the very foundations of neoliberalism. Sorry, the video isn't playing suddenly. So one spice that Becky mentioned that I talk about is that of nutmeg that used to only grow in the Banda Islands of present day Indonesia. In fact, Eastern Indonesia, in the 17th century spice wars, the Dutch and English were fighting over the Banda Islands. Sorry, this is a little annoying. They're fighting over the Banda Islands. And they eventually led to the signing of the Treaty of Breda were in the Dutch. Traded this tiny ankle room for the island of Manahata. And this led to multiple ways of colonial violence, dispossession, and also enslavement and migrations across the world. And so this led me to think about, well, how can we tell this story and how can we open a portal of communication between the islands. We're having a little tech issue here. And so I started to travel between the islands and ask questions to both the communes, both on Lansi Lunato, as well as the Banda needs, whether they want to get to know each other and learn about the histories and before the ways are told in our textbooks. And so I created images, including these kind of collages between Banda and Broom. That started to explore connections across archipelagoes, understanding that all islands are connected underwater. I wanted to question the ways in which we think about foundational narratives across the world and how we think about coloniality in relation to a present. So this was a map that I made, highlighting how the pink area shows size of Manahata and Broom in relation to that. Broom was actually only seven times smaller than Manhattan. Yet it was worth its weight in gold. And back then Manhattan was seen as a backwater trading post and thinking about how, you know, these objects are traded, maybe they had a story to tell that we kind of don't think about. So I created a Runehattan tea room where I created, as Becky mentioned, these porcelain pieces and a collage details onto them to tell the story of this trade at the islands. And you see here, these images of nutmegs, but also bloody porcelain and images of colonial violence that I saw in archives. I also showed images of forts such as this one called Fort Nassau, where in 2021 I got to hold these conversations with culture bears from Amsterdam to from emblematic culture bears in Banda to talk about how in that fort in 1621 or 15,000 people were massacred over the months. And also wanted to share that that same fort is seen as Fort Amsterdam and lower Manhattan. That's where the National News American Indians dance today. This then led me to also want to learn more about the land in which I started to make my home, Manahata, and learning about how in that process that that fort sitting on Broadway, kind of actually was a former way and continues to be an almost pathway that leads lower Manhattan and connects to the greater lakes in the north. And how can you refer surface of history so I worked with students at NYU and culture barriers to surface wherever the former month in the school and office settlements for on Broadway and try to tell stories and we even made a Manahata VR, a virtual reality experience that tells the story by recreating original ecologies and inviting culture bears to tell their stories with volumetric spans that people young people can wear the heavier headsets and curate direct testimonies and all traditions from the original culture bears and also think about look up the sky and see Turtle Island is really present. And that led to another conversation about challenging foundations histories in NYU Institute of Fine Art in a mansion I was built in a revenue tobacco. We created a bunch of prints talking about plants that change the world, including nutmeg and tobacco and here and by two months he will not be older on George's knowledge to be part of the symposium to talk about the smoke in the room. So having created this exhibition in the house of Wilson smoke I spent a lot of time trying to grasp smoke through painting a fleeting moment of rising smoke. Now research at the Smithsonian institution looking at the visual culture tobacco as a sacred medium, a luxury item, as well as heteropatriarchal clubs and the smokers or decisions are made by elite men. What was also made as shown here, be our smokers thinking about how aromatic realities such as spice smoke and small seem like the icons of the capitalism, a term used to describe a present geological time impacted by the impacts of rampant capitalism so I use VR to sculpt and 3D print this colonial style plate height stuff dishes and even a big to replete tobacco is harvesting and it's for our role in the United States history as both foundation for the colonial economy and also a major driver for enslavement and forced migrations. And so the VR sculptor 3D models further led to a video that was filmed in a virtual reality environment and also an artist book I wrote with an art historian and researcher do not can call the collection of the EOS 10 to 15 power EOS 10 to 15 power stands for empire smoke, and it takes on this form of an auction catalog for an estate sale by a quadrillionaire family dog empire smoke EOS 10 to 15 power and set in the year 2068. The EOS 10 to 15 power was about to relocate into remote bunker. The VR sculptor has become increasingly uninhabitable, their environmental degradation wise for social unrest and ceaseless ways of global pandemics. Since their vast wealth, your eyes from the 17th century size was, and the tobacco trade, as well as their deep financial ties, the military industrial complex, the catalog and the video showcase the family positions reflecting their rarely capitalist heritage and consumption driven lifestyle over generations. So that was a little sneak peek and this is the cover of the mock auction catalog, I just mentioned, and the cover features a piece in the auction that's titled close to George Washington plantation owner enslavement and town destroyer town destroyer from a letter wrote by cynical leader. Tony Harrison who accused him as being a town destroyer. So rising snow. The communication the creator became the integral and fibers of an inequitable global economy. Many of works from the spotty of work are now on view in a solo exhibition once the snow clears at Baltimore Museum of Art that's on view until October 2 for a little plug, and invites you to peer beneath the luxurious gilded facades and see the realities that shoot present. So thank you for the time I want to invite Daisy to share. Yes, thank you for a beautiful sharing and very critical sort of approach to understanding your work. Hi everybody, my name is Daisy Casa Lorena, I'm a visual artist based in Oga Pogue also known as white shell water place in Santa Fe, Mexico. I'm a Mexican American that works in ceramics primarily, but ends up exploring other means of communicating and exploring different issues of gender class inequities between different cultures specifically Mexican American and smaller Community. To start off I wanted to share this image this is a photo of where my family is from in Jalisco both of my parents are from this area my father from from it. My mother from Fitness, I share this place because it's very important in forming whom I am. very formative years in this space. And it taught me a lot about who I was to become and who I'm sort of growing into. I spent a lot of time in the fields, working with my grandpa, my father's farming. On the left hand side is a photo of an uncle who is plowing through some of his beings that he planted this summer, actually. And on the right hand side is a photo of my grandma, who taught me a lot about what it means to be a caretaker and what it means to provide food. And different ways of working with textiles and forms. A lot of my youth was also spent running around grinding masa, or doing anything that that needed to be done in that area. And I share these images in this background as sort of as a root of understanding of where I come from. And not as a hope of romanticizing or idealizing or fetishizing my history and my culture, but to really lay the groundwork of who I am, and where the work I'm made comes from. In 1942, the United States started a labor worker program called the Pestettos, which both of my grandparents were part of. They came here to the United States and they worked in the fields in California, Arizona, New Mexico. And as seen as this photo, there's ill treatment of individuals that are coming into this country that is still pretty much relevant. And we see through immigration policies that are currently in place. This is something that carries on in through my work. And we see it in Sevende, which translates to for sale in this piece is bagged earth from the US Mexico border area, and also of lead light that it's hanging overhead of a porcelain undergarment that has been embedded in concrete. This piece speaks against the commodification of individuals, and hopes to push people to understand more consider all of our stories and where it is that we're coming from. Other works talk about violence against women. This is an image in the Sonoran Desert of a rape stream. So undergarments of women that have been sexually assaulted as they're crossing through the border. I've made work in response to this has taken those undergarments translated them into porcelain and hung them up on an acrylic rod. The process for me very much carries the memory into the material that's being produced. These materials are then placed into different situations. This one specifically was taken back to the Sonoran Desert. And sort of a protest of those actions. Thinking beyond the US Mexico border. A lot of the issues that undocumented first generation or other people that have confronted border issues face are beyond those general regions. This was a piece that I created at the Denver Museum called Displazamiento Contención, translating to displacement and containment. In this piece, I worked with youth from downtown Aurora Visual Arts, and a program called El Otro Lado here in Santa Fe, where I also connected with students at Montadol Sol, where we talked about our experiences being immigrant or first generation immigrants here in the United States. Through our connection and our sharing and our conversing, we ended up working on this project. And inside of this bin are porcelain garments that I was able to have on loan from these individuals. So through our sharing, they shared pieces that were very meaningful to them that had importance and value. Some of the items included like a dress from their childhood of being in El Salvador, a beanie from being homeless in Chicago and having to endure the winners, a glove from their father who was providing for them when there wasn't a lot of substance. And all of these pieces are coming together sort of holding the space for that. In this installation, there's also an audio component where you can hear them sharing these stories that are spliced with audio from the US Mexico border area. Also included in this installation is concrete floor referencing to the United States. Silver straps that are holding the bin in place referencing to the exploitation of indigenous people in Botoci through the mining of silver and the US Mexico border wall. Thinking about stories and what it is that people share. This was a project I recently worked on that started as a ceramic piece and ended up having to become something more for its intention. It became this chapbook publication called dos que protante, which includes stories and conversations for people residing along the Rio Grande. You can hear from the at the sociopeña and Marianna Rajo who are talking about Los Alamos labs and the impact it had on this public. Jonathan Moreto with Roxanne Swencel talking about the damning of Cochiti Pueblo and how they lost their clay. And Professor Robles Manuel with all of his assistants where he talks about environmental racism and his protest against nuclear waste site dumps that were happening during this period. This is an image where you can see that he gathered his students and closed down the US border and protest of this. Other work that I've done and more so recently because of the need of the community that I'm a part of is engaging in conversation in a different way. In support of the United by the United States Latinx art form I was able to conduct this conversation with multiple organizations and youth in that in my Santa Fe community through the medium of clay. On the left hand side is an image of my gathering with people from chainbreakers of local nonprofit here in town and on the right hand side of the hands of an individual from Capitol High School who shared a lot of these conversations took place virtually during the pandemic, but we were able to have some in person and it was a great way of connecting and being present with one another in a time that we're isolated. And last I'd like to share is this piece that I made a public art piece that ended up going in a midtown campus that was created also during the time of the pandemic when we were living in isolation. And the function of this or the purpose of this was to recognize our presence in the space, the importance that we exist here, even if we were in isolation. And what it is that we were creating and giving in that area as a form of recognizing everybody in this space. And I'll stop my sharing here and like to introduce Nathie Swight. Thank you so much Daisy. Hello everyone. It is a privilege and pleasure to be with you all. I'm joining you from Yaddo, our residency in Patoka Springs today. So I'm thrilled to be sharing my work with you. We have some videos that we will share momentarily, but I just wanted to say that my pronouns are she, her, they, them. I am a cinnamon-complexed woman wearing a yellow pleated dress and my hair is in a high bun and twisted in a Senegalese style and pinned. All right. So I think that it's really important as I begin to talk about my work. I think we can roll the first video, please. This body of work is hair. And I will dive more in in just a moment. So hang on. All right. Let's pause there for just a second. So the works at the Lindhurst Mansion are made of hair. That piece is titled Oculus and indeed the pieces are as well. They are composed of hair, embodied knowledge, ancestral recall, audacity of survival, and bobby pins. And the reason that I got interested in creating work with hair was because I'm, I had a birth family or have a birth family was in foster care and then went to my adoptive family. And so a lot of, you know, my purpose in artwork is about, you know, learning about family, learning about history and bringing all of these components together. Hair is such a charged element. It's such a charged piece and part of us. And it also has been, you know, kind of an indicator as I was growing up. It was both something that was celebrated and also something that was a problem. And I say that, you know, because being African American, being mixed race, you know, some people find it, you know, problematic, you know, want to straighten it, want to change it. And then there's the celebration of what that is. So it took me a long time to become comfortable in my own skin. And I know that we all have those kinds of journeys. And so as I began my foray in fine art as a sculptor, I really wanted to start thinking about hair, looking at hair, like really kind of, you know, using my own as impetus, you know, like of self love, really, you know, to begin growing it and thinking about what that means, but also doing that at the same time as I was beginning to search for family. Right. So I was born in Texas and in Texas, the birth records are all closed. And so, you know, I don't have the ability necessarily to uncover as easily. So this work into hair work became a place of finding self and then also honoring, you know, and then also as a person who comes from diverse backgrounds, you know, there's the side of my family that's African-American side of my family that's English and Scottish. It's very important to me to kind of bring those parts together. We can take a look at the second video now. We could please just to give you all a taste of these. Both of these are at a great scale. Thank you so much. And let's go on to the next slide, please. So and we can go to the next slide as well. This is titled Oculus made, as I said, entirely of hair. And what I started doing when I started growing out my hair, I started experimenting with different hairstyles. I thought it was really important to identify with, you know, parts of my family that, you know, I was like, you know, what are these practices of braiding and twisting and all of these things, you know? And so in fabricating, in building, in learning how to take care of my hair, you know, I started delving in and getting curious about other processes, other ways of that people express themselves. And so I learned about Victorian work, Victorian hair work, momentum more specifically morning wreaths, as we saw earlier. And really was intrigued. I was so captivated by this way of honoring others and specifically honoring women and how, you know, the hair of these, you know, important people were woven with wire work and assembled in, you know, in these floral elements, you know, this is during a time where floreology was really, you know, celebrated. And so you have these gorgeous motifs, you have rosettes and you have hyacinths and you have all of these things that, you know, that really honor and then you're pulling together the hair colors of, you know, and well, hair of, you know, grandmothers and daughters, you know. And so really creating something beautiful. And what I wanted to do was do something similar, take that as inspiration. But what I wanted to do was then talk about my family, look at the searching of my family, you know, looking at landscape, you know, traversing the landscape of this globe, looking at where people are, you know, seeing how patterns appear and then disappear in these works and then also merging the braiding techniques, the twisting techniques of African American and Africans and then bringing in the Victorian work of the English. So honoring both sides of my family in that way. And really getting to the very intricate, very detailed, very tiny and then building out. The piece that we're looking at right here is eight and a half feet in diameter. It goes out about 12 inches. I build substructures to, you know, lay the hair over. I never sketch these works. Something to mention to you all that's very important in my process is the ritual. And the ritual is very important because the hair, this is not human hair, this is synthetic hair. Maybe we look at the next slide. The reason that it is synthetic hair and not human hair is because human hair is so charged. When you take what is here, so my hair is pretty long. If I were to take it and use it somewhere, I'm bringing in all of this wisdom. You all see that. All of this silver. But I'm also bringing in all the things that I've experienced. My hair is so long that it encompasses the pandemic. It talks about loss, you know, personal challenges that I've been through, you know, ups and downs. And so all of that history and all of that ancestry is in the work. And so the question is, do I want to bring all of that into it? And in fact, because these works are all rooted in joy. They're rooted in love. They're rooted in power, presence. They're called Oculus because they are portals. It needs to be synthetic hair because it has to be in some ways a neutral ground for me to use my instruments to braid, to twist, to build, to imbue with love and power and great intentionality. Next slide please. This particular piece was just on view at the Worcester Art Museum in Massachusetts. This piece and the one before are about two feet in diameter. And again, I never sketched before. I do all of this work intuitively. And it's also important that I tell you all that I have to be in a good set of mind when I do these works. And that's important to be in a positive state, which thank God is not so different from my general state, but to be in a place where I can receive messages, where I can be a conduit of spirit, and create this kind of, you know, vocabulary, you know, work, you know, intuitively and as I'm intended, right, but with a positive inertia. So let's take a look at the next slide please. This particular piece here is my most recent. It's seven feet in diameter. Again, about 12 inches extended. This is on view currently at the DeCorteva Sculpture Museum in Lincoln, Massachusetts. May we look at the next slide please? We will be getting a little bit closer here. So these works, you can see some of the details. I usually don't work so deeply in black, but again, I make myself open to what the work is asking. I don't try to control so much what it's doing, because I think that that would be dishonest to the process. And so here I'm starting to bring in also the use of textiles. So this is actually garments that I've worn. So this is a leather jacket that I have segmented and then inserted into this particular piece. So bringing in, you know, different kind of meaning in that way. We have the ancestral, we have the familial, and then, you know, kind of extending that into other realms, right? So we could bring that into the realm of king, you know, into the realm of, you know, adornment, symbology, in those kinds of ways. So a little more deeply autobiographical there. May we look at the next slide? Okay, that was the last one. Yes, so what I can say about these particular works is that, you know, they're very spiritual, very rooted in love, very resonant, very much inspired by family, particularly inspired, you know, and my mother is actually here in the room, so I want to say hello to her and also say, you know, how much her presence in my life has meant to me and how much this work is also informed by her love, her care, and her, you know, unwavering support and belief in me, you know, so these are also love letters in ways as well to family. So yeah, so we can dive much more deeply in, of course, during Q&A, I'm more than happy to talk more about these works, how they come to me, how they live in the world, and with that, I think I'm handing it to Becky. Thank you, Nafis. At this point, all the speakers are going to come on and we're going to discuss some of the issues that are raised by the exhibition, and I'd like to remind the audience that if they have questions, we will have some time for Q&A at the end of this time, and to please go to the Q&A section you find at the bottom of your screen and enter your question. I think that Priya and Colleen are monitoring, or Chris is monitoring that for us, and we will have time to answer a few questions. So now, I'd like to just kick this off. We were very happy to have a full page article in The New York Times about this exhibition. It was like, alleluia! The people are taking notice, and in that article, critic Laurel Grabner interviewed Judy Chicago, and Chicago said, it's something to be celebrated that artists can be themselves in their work now, but the struggle is long, way long from over. And Judy Chicago is one of the most celebrated feminist artists and one of all of our elders as a theorist and as a leader in feminism, and she understands that women's work at Lindhurst is important and perhaps an even necessary exhibition. Beatrice, what are your thoughts about its urgency and necessity? Yes, I think we definitely are living in a very, I think, troubling time, very, very troubling time, where we're living in a very divisive cultural moment, where there's a huge attack against women's reproductive rights, and also an attack on our environmental, on environmental ecologies, and it's all interlinked, and I think what Judy Chicago is saying there is that, yes, there is a long lineage that we need to be aware of women and generations of women who came before us, and I'm talking biological as well as feminist thinkers and our intellectual and artistic ancestors, who have really struggled to make way for us to today be able to speak about ourselves not only from gender but also racialized class experiences, so I think that the struggle is definitely not over and we need to use every possible platform and space as women have ingeniously done over generations to push against dominant narratives and I think creative arts is definitely that particular magical space where we can kind of open up other ways of imagining our shared realities, so I definitely do agree that that struggle is long from over and we are part of ways and ways to change, yeah. I think I seem to be applauding so intensely about to hear what's on your mind. Oh, yes, I mean just what you were saying exactly and in addition, if I made like I just want to evoke the you know the words of ancestor Toni Morrison you know who was also talking about you know and much like Judy Chicago has done for us or you know Kiki Smith or you know just I mean Carol Walker like so many people right is you know the responsibility to because the change is not coming as quickly what Toni Morrison talks about is like the urgency as practitioners to extend yourself and bring others with you and so I think that in terms of community building adding to what you were saying the interest is is so vital as well you know visibility being you know very present being politically active I mean we being in these bodies at this time is political you know and I feel a powerful responsibility to do this work there's not a question of like could you or not you must you must and especially because not that much is changing and I do not appreciate performative talk I like sustained action and so I want to be part of that so the work is not done we are making wonderful strides and we must hold each other powerfully as we have been held and extend you know to others as Toni says to bring with and so that is some of what of my philosophy yes completely and also bringing in our sisters and individuals and people of color that have been left behind and that haven't been part of the discourse that haven't been part of that conversation I think of a lot of maybe my colleagues and individuals that aren't in spaces yet that need to be here that have so much to contribute that are very much active in their communities so absolutely yeah thank you this is such an important question and unfortunately I think Judy Chicago often expresses her frustration that this questions continually has to be asked and has to be brought up and one of the remedies that has happened is that the Brooklyn Museum established the artist feminist artists database and in it how many Harman who was also in this exhibition noted that New York during the 1960s and 70s there was a period of interdisciplinary experimentation that resulted in work both conceptual and abstract artists move between the disciplines they're ignoring crossing and dissolving boundaries feminism brought a gendered content to this way of thinking but she is reflecting on something that happened 40 50 years ago how do you see the gender and your practice interrelated who wants to kick this off I mean I I can kick it off if I might I mean okay so when I come to the work you know whether I don't have a choice you know what I mean I am a queer black woman when I come into whatever I'm doing that is who is coming in the room and also all the ancestors who brought me here to the place that I am and those who are chosen family adoptive family all of that are extensions of me so I not only bring myself to the room but I bring all of those I don't have a choice you know like that is just you know that is so the work is going to be you know queer and feminist and pro black and like all of these things like it's just going to be all those things and and it and it must you know it must you know maybe some people have the option to you know kind of you know say like oh I'm not going to include this or that or that you know but I also feel I have a responsibility for and I think Daisy said this powerfully also is like who isn't here in the room yet or who is not visible yet you know so maybe somebody who's queer and black is just like you know doesn't see a representation of themselves I need to step up for them for us right so yeah so the work the work just is it is because I am Daisy you're very good at this um of articulating these voices can you talk a little bit more about gender and what you're doing yeah I think my work specifically that I come across that issue a lot um then my family sometimes I get push back about why are you using all of these materials that are not very or seen as soft or as delicate as what has been traditionally conveyed as being a female role and I think it's not that it we're needing to convey and be in specific spaces and do specific things to communicate those issues so if my work needs to be concrete if my work needs to have digital components if my work needs to have hair in it in the grander scale like that needs to happen and I shouldn't be confined by specific notions of what it means to be a female or what it means to be a queer individual or what it means to be assist gendered folk I think gender is shifting a lot in how we understand it and we shouldn't be confined by any sort of medium or any sort of process or any way of making in that I think it's growing and I think we shouldn't confine and just think or assume even that that because it's a specific object or a specific way of making that it was or was not made by a woman or other identifying individual and Beatrice you have such a wide ranging practice that's conceptually based how do you approach issues of gender and and content sure I think that is a broad conversation but I was thinking specifically today for this conversation you know what it means to be a feminist and for me it's really for my personal perspective and my generation thinking a lot about equality and respect both for each other as well as for life so I think my husband is a is a total feminist I'm really proud of him in that sense too everyone can be feminist and I think a lot about how bringing that ethos into the work it's always thinking relationally and perhaps it's more like to introduce this conversation archipelagically that we are all islands and all of our islands are connected underwater I think I love that visual and I think it's a way to really reach out to each other horizontally and be porous in our approach whether it's in relating to communities orchestrating dialogues such as your organization has done today for us to how we work with people who come from less privileged positions in ourselves and how do we hold each other together such as sister Toni Morrison's words are guiding us always so I really think about this female approach in a very broad sense about making sure that I don't replicate violent power structures in my practice in my interactions and one thing I was really thinking about today is I sometimes used to get critiqued a lot when I use scent or fragrance in my practice but I think a lot about using something that is so powerful and omnipresent like you smell something like if there's a bad perfume it's in their room it doesn't go away but it's invisible visually and I think that is sort of a great metaphor for so much of what we experience for sometimes we experience something that feels like an aggression or it feels like a form of a prejudice experience. Smell is a great metaphor to bring us around and to rethink about what we can't see but what we can intuit and I think that is some way of defining feminine intuition that I think that informs a lot of my practice even if something seems very rational there's always an incurrent of my approach a little abstract but I think that's the lot of magic that happens in the studio. Well I think that that's part of what makes you're the conceptual basis of your work so strong is that you allow that space for the accident for intuition for the smoke to enter the aromas. I know that I could talk to you all for about two more hours and I'm just thrilled to hear everything that you that we've been talking about but we do have a responsibility to our audience and so Chris can I just ask one question before we wrap it up. Absolutely do we have time for I would love to we've got a couple of really good questions from the audience can I can I pose one of those to all of you so thank you all for putting those questions in the in the Q&A and that's really wonderful so each of you has such an expansive idea of what art is and what it can do. So Raymond Kurziel asks do you have an artist that you were exposed to at some point in your career that sort of gave you a different perception of what an artist can do? Could I start? I mean I'm focusing on like a long list of women but I think when I was an undergraduate student the amazing Wangechi Mutu came to speak to these little 19 year olds and she blew my mind away absolutely starting off with talking about her research practice and her anthropological formation and she showed that you can woman can dig into science dig into fashion embrace these wide range of materials and transform materials to tell us perspectives that are coming from another realm yet touches deeply in our core levels I just wanted to shout out to that another person is Tomia Arai who is another amazing artist I want to shout out to who's a public artist a true public artist who holds space for community and has a really robust studio practice and always carries younger generations forward in the most humble way I like to age like her. I'd like to add to that Teresa Marguerles I feel like her work of sweeping and mopping in area with people who had passed their blood in that space and putting it into bubbles like definitely pushed how it is that I understand work in a different way I know it's confrontational and controversial very much but it pushes how it is that we understand art and spaces in the conversations and the issues that are social that are not necessarily being directly addressed I think that was an individual when I first came across their work that I was like this is extraordinary we're moving beyond an object and an individual as an object to art as protest in action. Wow those are both incredible artists I think of I was thinking of a couple you know I'm like talking about like you know feminists I'm like Miguel Gatirez as well but Barbara Chase Rabou Barbara Chase Rabou and I say that because this sister you know she's kind of she's iconic she's quietly you know in the in the peripheries but like legendary you know powerful intellectual merging you know in in abstract format but like the like legacy materials like merging bronze with textile you know she's confronting she is saying I'm here she is saying pay attention you know she is talking about ancestry she's talking about you know legacy she's talking about the transit like transitional space like you know the the imbuing of materials like there's just so much that she does in creating these larger-than-life sculptural works that have an attitude and when they are in the room they cannot be they cannot be hidden they cannot be ignored and I think that that kind of in the words of Cornell West that kind of stick-to-it-ness you know that kind of presence that kind of critique in a Baldwinian way is so powerful you know and that she is somebody I have aspired to be able to use these instruments you know to to honor you know she's such a powerful presence in my practice oh thank you all um and I am like Becky I could continue this for another hour or two this there's so much that we have not even begun to touch on but I'm afraid we are at our time today so I want to be respectful of all of your time as well as our our audiences so I just want to thank everyone for joining us for this event today and offer a special thanks my gratitude to Beatrice Daisy Nafis and Becky for your time your talent and most importantly your inspiration I I don't know how anyone can listen to the work that you do which is so personal so poignant so relevant and so powerful and not come away inspired so thank you for everything that you are doing and we hope this program is inspired all of you who are listening and watching today in your own work and we encourage you to keep the conversation going um you can do that through form connect which is our online community for people who are in the business of saving places and saving history we have active conversations happening all the time from section 106 consultation to women's history and historic sites like at Linter's so if you haven't joined form connect uh yet please do it's a great place to continue this discussion and start new conversations and if you enjoyed today's conversation I encourage you all to come back in just a few weeks on September 20th for a the third and final event in this series it's a conversation with Lucy LaPard and Harmony Hammond who are two giants of women's art feminist art LGBTQ art feminist art theory you name it they've touched it and influenced it over the last half century and that is happening on September 20th at 1 p.m eastern 10 a.m west on the west coast and pacific for all of those here on the west coast so you will not want to miss it and you can get a link to that in the chat so last but not least again thank you to all of our attendees to all of our fantastic women artist speakers uh today and to the forum staff and Lynn her staff who helped make this event possible do you have any questions about the women art you can contact us at our email forum at savingplaces.org thank you all so much have a wonderful rest of your day bye bye everyone