Juror : Jameela F. Dallis
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Jameela F. Dallis, Ph.D., is a multidisciplinary writer, scholar, critic, and art collector who travels the world to experience art. A former member of The Carrack’s advisory board and curatorial committee, she has led several art and writing workshops, including ekphrastic poetry workshops at North Carolina Museum of Art.
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Did you know?
Opening Night, May 5, 2023
6 - 9 pm
April 3 - June 30, 2023 | Artspace Corridors
201 E Davie St, Raleigh, NC, 27601
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A grassroots local exhibition by women & non-binary artists
Part of the global 2023 Taking Up Space initiative
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The work women and non-binary artists create is essential and deserves to be seen. In its second year, Taking Up Space invites women and non-binary artists living and working in the Triangle into conversation with each other and the broader community.
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In May 2022, there were 80 worldwide Taking Up Space exhibitions happening simultaneously. From bookstores to front porches to The Pocket Gallery in Raleigh, women and non-binary artists were creating space for their art–not asking for permission. This year there are 75 planned exhibitions and counting worldwide.
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Last year, we were 8 women showing together in The Pocket Gallery, and this year, we’ve extended the call. With this exhibition, we call attention to our past, present, and future. We support and elevate–we scaffold–voices, visions, and multiple ways of expressing and being in the world by women and non-binary artists. We share our histories, our inspirations, and our differences. We open space for us to celebrate, frame, and reframe our experiences, relationships, and connections–what joins us, what scaffolds us together.
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Through Scaffold, we invite you into the conversation and encourage you to support women and non-binary artists by buying their art, making room for them at the table, connecting them with your networks, and investing in their dreams.
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Interested? Reach out to join in the conversation.
SCAFFOLD 2023 Curator’s Statement
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Scaffold brings together works by 37 NC Triangle-area women and non-binary artists. From emerging to established, self-taught to formally trained, together they represent a variety of histories and influences.
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In Scaffold, you’ll find several themes and resonances: the imaginary and abstract, the figurative and representational, the animal, hybrid, and cheeky, the textural and architectural, and spaces and materials traditionally associated with women. These themes can coexist in one work or work together to create space for conversation and to scaffold or provide support.
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Scaffold invokes many eras of art history including color field, expressionism, surrealism, and the Pattern and Decoration movement of the 1970s and 80s. Movements wherein, against varied obstacles, women and gender nonconforming artists created important, influential, and enduring artwork. The works here are beautiful, dreamlike, provocative, sculptural, representational, figurative, and abstract. They represent the past, present, and point toward what’s possible.
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As you move through Scaffold, look for ways works scaffold each other the visual and nominal. Observe how lines and texture converse. The works ask us to consider how, for example, spaces and materials traditionally associated with women and marginalized peoples—kitchens, yarn, and cotton can be soft, complex, simple, pedestrian, and extraordinary all at once. Note the washes of color, the precision of a print or collage, or the gestural quality that conveys motion. Look for connections across form and style, for colors and materials that bring together works unexpectedly. Witness how these works take up space in more ways than one.
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- Jameela F. Dallis, Ph.D., Scaffold Juror
Last May, 8 women showed at the Pocket Gallery in Raleigh, NC. This year, they’ll support and help expand the annual, worldwide Taking Up Space initiative.
NCMA 2021: Number of works, 11% women, 3% black, New Acquisitions, 22% women, 28% black
https://ncartmuseum.org/series/impact-report/
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87% of the works in major museum collections are by men
$5 billion is the pay gap between the top male and female artists
“Become an Advocate: National Museum of Women in the Arts.” NMWA, February 3, 2021. https://nmwa.org/support/advocacy/.
Only 13.7% of living artists represented by galleries in Europe and North America are women.
Halperin, Julia. “The 4 Glass Ceilings: How Women Artists Get Stiffed at Every Stage of Their Careers.” Artnet News. Artnet News, December 20, 2017. https://news.artnet.com/market/art-market-study-1179317.
Just 11% of all acquisitions and 14% of exhibitions at 26 prominent U.S. museums over the past decade
were of work by female artists.
Halperin, Julia, and Charlotte Burns. “Museums Claim They're Paying More Attention to Female Artists. That's an Illusion.” Artnet News. Artnet News, October 28, 2019. https://news.artnet.com/womens-place-in-the-art-world/womens-place-art-world-museums-1654714.
In a study of 820,000 exhibitions across the public and commercial sectors in 2018, only one-third featured women artists.
Shaw, Anny. “Gallery Representation Dwindles for 'Established' Female Artists, New Research Finds.” The Art Newspaper - International art news and events. The Art Newspaper - International art news and events, September 28, 2021. https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2019/01/25/gallery-representation-dwindles-for-established-female-artists-new-research-finds.
A recent survey of the permanent collections of 18 prominent U.S. art museums found that the represented artists
are 87% male and 85% white.
Topaz, Chad M., Bernhard Klingenberg, Daniel Turek, Brianna Heggeseth, Pamela E. Harris, Julie C. Blackwood, C. Ondine Chavoya, Steven Nelson, and Kevin M. Murphy. “Diversity of Artists in Major U.S. Museums.” PLOS ONE. Public Library of Science. Accessed March 15, 2022. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0212852.
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For the first time, a majority of the artists at the 59th edition of the longest-running survey of contemporary art will be female. Cecilia Alemani, the first Italian woman to curate the Biennale, has filled the 2022 show with a record number of female artists.
Nayeri, F. (2022, April 19). This Venice biennale has a new star: Women. The New York Times. Retrieved December 8, 2022, from https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/19/arts/design/venice-biennale-women-art.html#:~:text=For%20the%20first%20time%2C%20a,contemporary%20art%20will%20be%20female.
Shanny Kohli
Joanna Moody