Printing Women: Diane Victor
While the exhibition Printing Women focuses on Henrietta Louisa Koenen’s (1830–1881) collection of female printmakers from the 16th to 19th centuries, it is only appropriate to signal women’s continuing participation in the medium as well as the Library’s longstanding commitment to acquiring and exhibiting prints made by women from around the world. To complement this earlier history, therefore, I worked with the Library’s Digital Experience Team to display online a small sampling of works by contemporary printmakers in the Library’s collection. We began reaching out to artists, asking if we could display their work on the exhibition’s web page and digitize it for our digital collections. The majority were delighted to contribute, many also provided writings about their work and the exhibition. Throughout the exhibition’s run, I will choose and present a piece by one artist every other week on the exhibition’s web page. Additionally, I will produce a blog post about their work as well as about works in the exhibition, featuring their own words when possible.
For those who are interested in the long history of women’s involvement with the medium of print, there is much more to explore within the Library’s deep and varied holdings. The exhibition features only a smattering of Koenen’s collection (which numbers over 500 prints of which only a little over 80 are shown in the exhibition). In addition, the Print Collection not only owns large numbers of additional prints from the period in which Koenen collected, but also many, many more works from the 20th- and 21st-century.
The third blog post in our series is from David Krut Projects about Diane Victor's 'St. George's Despair,' 2012. In our previous post, from artist Sara Sanders, a quiz was presented. Answers follow this week's post.
“My images attempt to explore the metaphorical burdens people attach to themselves and drag through their lives as proof of their positions as scapegoats and martyrs.” After visiting an exhibition, called Vodun, at the Foundation Cartier in Paris in 2011, Victor became fascinated with the West African fetish effigies from collections of Jacques Kerchache (1942-2001). “I responded to the psychological implications that these bound and burdened figures evoked, transferring them into our obsession with contemporary fear and indulgences.”
St George Despairs formed part of a body of work titled Little White Lies and was exhibited in Reap and Sow, Victor’s second solo exhibition at David Krut Projects in 2012. Set in a vast landscape, the print depicts a woman with baby on back and child at side struggling to contain a large and restless crocodile, a substitute for the dragon slain by St George in the original story and perhaps a symbol of the “reptilian mind”. The woman is joined by a stout and balding white man, who offers no assistance and instead points towards a non-existent destination, urging her to continue her struggle with a deceptive promise of a reward at the ‘end’.
St George Despairs was created in 2012 during Victor’s residency in New York in March/April 2012. She had a studio at the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts and made the print at the Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop, working with Master Printer, Johee Kim. The print was later editioned by Jillian Ross of David Krut Print Workshop (DKW) in Johannesburg.
Answers to the Sara Sanders quiz :
From left to right, Chairs 3 and 4 are based on actual chairs from Sara's life. Chairs 1, 2, and 5 are imagined character studies. Chair 3, the green chair, "belongs to a friend whose mother spent the last decade of her life primarily in it. When I would visit, I always found myself drawn to sit in that chair, and I did the portrait before I knew its history and importance to their family." Chair 4, the yellow chair, "has been a fixture in my family home since long before I was born. It continues to be a favorite in my home because of tis generous proportions and cozy comfort, despite its homely appearance."
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