Curated by Leslie Weissman and Charlotte Hailstone for the Living Room exhibition space at DIMIN.
DIMIN is thrilled to present Unsettling Beauty: A Case for the Feminine in Feminist Art featuring the work of Poppy Delta Dawn, Michela Roman, Alexandra Rubinstein, Kamoy Smalling, and Ryan Wilde. As artists who actively explore the topic through different materials, each uniquely considers feminism in art as a critical movement that seeks to challenge and dismantle the patriarchal structures deeply embedded in the art world and reevaluate social norms of femininity and feminine reactions to materiality and subject matter. At its core, feminist art interrogates the representation of women as both subject and creator. This paradigm shift confronts historical exclusion, as women have traditionally been marginalized or omitted from mainstream narratives. By reclaiming these narratives, feminist art serves to validate women's experiences, perspectives, interactions and reactions with both art and physical world.
Through innovative practices and new usages of material, each artist in Unsettling Beauty actively engages and provokes discourse around personal issues including body politics, sexuality, and identity. Their work compels the viewer to consider the scope of acceptable material for female identifying artists, empowering a marginalized community to articulate a narrative that disrupts preconceived notions of materiality. Whether using sculpture – a male dominated medium – with both dense and soft material to present aspects of the female body; or painting utilizing actual female DNA to depict visual narratives of gender biases; or formal oil painting borrowing from historical contexts that excluded females and diminished the value of their contributions outside of externally dictated roles; the works in Unsettling Beauty aim to reconsider feminine material in form and function.
In essence, feminist art operates as both a reflective and transformative force, advocating for equity while simultaneously enriching the cultural landscape speaking to a larger audience about gender and equality and our shared humanity. Unsettling Beauty aims to champion inclusivity and celebrates diversity in artistic expression, thus making the case for feminism in feminist art not as simply relevant, but as essential.
Poppy DeltaDawn is an artist and educator making work guided by material. Her current research includes the communication and transition between ancient and modern technologies of labor as they relate to cloth production, land cultivation, and lineages of knowledge. DeltaDawn has participated in workshops at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts and Penland School of Crafts, and has curated several exhibitions, most recently with New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) and New York Live Arts (NYLA) as part of their Immigrant Arts Mentorship Program, and at Geary Contemporary, the gallery where until 2022 she served as Associate Director in New York City and the Hudson Valley.
Michela Roman is an emerging artist based out of Richmond Hill Ontario, Canada. She received a Bachelor Specialization of Fine Arts, Minor in History at Nipissing University. Second Prize Winner for the President’s Selection Committee Graduating Art Contest. Engaged in the study of human anatomy and the natural world, her art practice builds upon traditional figural sculpture by transforming the human body into a metaphor for life’s passions, histories and tribulations.
Alexandra Rubinstein is a Brooklyn-based conceptual artist whose practice focuses on how culture and gender affect power and narrative. She immigrated to the United States from Russia when she was nine and recalls her years of puberty enduring the misogyny of both cultures. In her paintings, drawings, and mixed media pieces, she challenges dated social systems and prejudices and reconstructs the cis heterosexual female experience by transforming women from passive objects into active consumers. Taking back power and control, without taking centuries of oppression too seriously.
Kamoy Smalling is a New York-based artist whose work explores the construction and deconstruction of the self through the lenses of race, femininity, and otherness. Raised in a conservative, insular religious community and bred in the orthodoxy of capitalism, Smalling’s works are heavily inspired by her personal history of oscillating between identity portals and ways of being. Common themes examined include the fabrication of authenticity, the commoditization of identity, dynamic nominalism, and the juxtaposition of normalized notions of success and inadequacy.
Ryan Wilde is a New York City based visual artist whose practice extends from her career in millinery. Wilde received a BFA from Syracuse University and an MFA from Queens College. Most recently, her work has been exhibited at Anton Kern Gallery, Perrotin, and Galerie Cadet Capela in Paris. Her work as both artist and designer has been featured in Vogue, New American Paintings, New York Magazine, and Forbes, among other publications.
THE LIVING ROOM is the street facing exhibition space at DIMIN. Unsettling Beauty will run concurrently with Taj Poscé’s Just on the Other Side in the main gallery.