Paperback, colour and black and white illustrations, 189 pages, W210mm x H280mm
"Otherworlds" accompanies a major exhibition of the work of two
American artists - Nancy Spero and Kiki Smith - at the Baltic Centre
for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, UK, from 13 December 2003 to 30 March
2004.
They are both prominent artists, from different generations,
whose figurative art addresses issues of the feminine across history
and mythology. The book explores thematic connections in their work -
the female body, myth and fantasy, the "decorative" - and situates them
in the context of post-War American art and social movements, as well
as feminist and cultural theory.
Spero's work on paper and her installations are an
acknowledgement of the power of the carnivalesque, and an exploration
of the potential recoding of space and architecture through a visual
poetics of word and image. Never abandoning the figure, even at a time
when images of women were thought to carry only negative connotations,
Spero has systematically refigured the feminine as collective, social
and empowered.
Coming from the generation of artists immediately
following Spero, Kiki Smith has always acknowledged a liberating
impulse in her art. Both artists have turned vulnerability into
strength, making art that represents the female body, but in forms that
avoid objectification or narcissism, and that can speak to the
universal without idealization or reduction. Both artists make art from
the histories, fantasies, legends and myths of the feminine, reclaiming
the female body as an expressive vehicle of emancipation and desire.