In celebration of the achievements of women in the arts, the Saint Louis Art Museum will present If It Wasn’t for the Women, an annual program dedicated to honoring women of color making significant impacts in the arts. Please join us Saturday, March 21 at 11 am for this free presentation in the Museum’s Farrell Auditorium. Three female interdisciplinary artists will reflect and represent their various ideas for using materials in their work. New York-based artist Pamela Council along with St. Louis based artists Mee Jey and Jessie Donovan will discuss the relevance of material use in their work while exploring their own interpretations of materiality.
Council creates fountains for Black joy. Guided by material, cultural, and metaphysical quests, Council’s practice embodies a darkly humorous and inventive Afro-Americana camp aesthetic, BLAXIDERMY. Through this lens, Council uses sculpture, architecture, writing and performance to shed light on under-examined and under-valued narratives. Jeyhas carved her interdisciplinary art career working with various communities in India and America. Her forms are derived from pre-historical and historical art forms. Jey uses her research background in history to contrast the archetypal forms she creates with contemporary subject matters by bridging the two ends of time and spaces. Donovan is a multidisciplinary creative, working primarily in printmaking, drawing and video. Her practice explores topics of racial classification, language and truth. Donovan was selected as a DELUX Magazine 30 Under 30 recipient and was awarded the Sister Exchange Artist in Residence Award in Stuttgart, Germany.
During the panel discussion each artist will be able to share some of their own work with the audience while elaborating on the importance of material use in their practices. Artists also will discuss a work within the Museum’s collection that resonates with them. This will allow the artists to connect their practices within materiality to the Museum’s collection.
The Saint Louis Art Museum hopes that you will join us for If It Wasn’t for the Women: An Exploration of Materiality in Art on Saturday, March 21 at 11 am in The Farrell Auditorium. The program is free, but tickets are required.
Tickets may be reserved in person at the Museum’s Information Centers or through MetroTix at metrotix.com or 314.534.1111. All tickets reserved through MetroTix incur a service charge; the service charge is waived for tickets picked up at the Museum. Same day tickets can be obtained on-site.
