In Arles, the psychedelic feminism of Judy Chicago

It was a burst of smoke into the sky and an outpouring of joy on earth. A surreal moment worthy of a futuristic fantasy tale written under psychotropic drugs. The appearance of these opaque clouds carried by the wind declining all the shades of the rainbow offered spectators of the Toronto Biennial a final bouquet worthy of the name on this evening of June 4, 2022. Visible from the shore of Lake Ontario, this work on site ephemeral, smoke sculpture part of a barge to upset the sky and the lake where it was reflected, was in the image of its instigator, Judy Chicago: a liberating multicolored explosion to communicative energy.

Come to mingle with the crowd, the artist of 83 spring, like a Modern Gaia with a hippie look, purple hair matching her little round glasses and her lipstick, was delighted that her work was able to bring so much happiness because “isn’t that the primary role of art? “. For Toronto, the providential artist who came to illuminate the darkened horizon of our tormented times had agreed to replay the performances of his debut, the Atmospheres. In these volatile propositions that have become iconic, through the grace of pyrotechnic and smoke effects, she offered to escape with lightness from the shackles imposed on her gender by the patriarchal system.

An activist with a wild imagination

Having arrived on the artistic scene sixty years ago, Judy Chicago made the feminist cause his great artistic fight. A pioneer in the field, with her spray paint and spectacular actions, she has become one of its leading figures. So don’t be surprised to come across this humanist activist with her unbridled imagination everywhere at the moment… For the first edition of La Contemporaine de Nîmes (which closed its doors on June 24), the young Aïda Bruyère chose her as godmother, exhibiting the Atmospheres alongside his video Full Firesan anticipation story where adolescents seek to build a new society by getting rid of gender inequalities.

It is found on the island of Porquerolles in the collective exhibition of the Carmignac Foundation, “The Infinite Woman”, which deconstructs the clichés of feminine representations; also at the Antwerp Photography Museum in an eco-feminist tour on the links between degradation of nature and oppression of women; at the Jewish Museum in Berlin for a rather daring proposition on the different perceptions of sexuality in Judaism; at the Serpentine Gallery in London which exhibits and publishes, five decades after its creation, its story of a history of humanity rewritten in the light of great female figures; And at Luma, in Arles, in a retrospective from New York retracing sixty years of a colorful career and life.