Nancy Youdelman’s Button Dress from 1972 hangs in the window of a nondescript gallery on Fountain Avenue. The garment represents early feminist strategies that confronted and subverted domestic roles and “feminine” mediums traditionally prescribed to women and labeled folk or kitsch. The exhibition “Womanhouse 1972/2022,” curated by Stefano Di Paola, commemorates the 50th anniversary of the legendary “Womanhouse” exhibition, organized in 1972 by 25 CalArts students enrolled in Judy Chicago’s Feminist Art Program. The 1972 exhibition was experimental, collaborative, immersive and situational (installed in a vacant mansion in Hollywood). As a student of art history, I often imagine what it felt like to be in Los Angeles during this time and to experience “Womanhouse”—wishing to be a fly on Robin Weltch’s Pepto-Bismol pink walls. Upon entering Anat Ebgi’s pop-up gallery, after encountering Youdelman’s dress and work by Mira Schor, Miriam Schapiro and Faith Wilding, I feel a tinge of disappointment when I notice Sandra Orgel’s mannequin linen closet reproduced in print on the central wall of the gallery. I did not imagine this iconic feminist work neatly installed on white walls, but in an immersive alternative space. The feminist practices that emerged in the 1970s were nurtured and catalyzed by site-specific alternative spaces like “Womanhouse” and the subsequent Woman’s Building. As I made my way through the show, I realized my mind was stuck in a Womanhouse fantasy. This feminist project did not begin and end in that mansion in Hollywood. It is impossible to articulate the impact “Womanhouse” had on the generations of feminist artists that followed. Di Paola’s curatorial approach is brave and impactful. By bringing together a selection of work made before, during and after the 1972 exhibition—including work by some of the core CalArts students as well as their collaborators—Di Paola engages and connects early feminist practices and strategies more broadly, emphasizing the collaborative and profound legacy of “Womanhouse” and the Feminist Art Program. 

To conclude the exhibition’s performance program—organized in collaboration with Los Angeles Nomadic Division (LAND)—artists Karla Ekatherine Canseco, Sebastian Hernandez, and Gabriela Ruiz will reimagine Sandra Ogel and Christine Rush’s 1972 performance series, “Maintenance.” The program will take place on Saturday, March 19th, 2022, with performances starting at 4 pm.

Anat Ebgi
4859 Fountain Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90029
On view through April 16, 2022