Maria Nepomuceno, Wangechi Mutu and Celia Paul included in NO MAN’S LAND: Women Artists from the Rubell Family Collection at NMWA, Washington DC

National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA) is collaborating with the Rubell Family Collection (RFC) to realize a new vision for NO MAN’S LAND, an exhibition (30 September 2016 - 8 January 2017) that opened at the RFC’s space in Miami in December 2015. Featuring work by 37 artists from 15 countries, NMWA’s presentation imagines a visual conversation between women artists new to the Rubell Family Collection and those whose works they began collecting decades ago.

NMWA curators worked with RFC to choose a highly focused group of paintings and sculptures that center on the process of making as well as images of the female body, both topics that extend from the feminist art movement of the 1970s. Many artists in the exhibition use labor-intensive techniques to alter conventional notions of “women’s work” and handcraft. Some sculpt or paint semi-abstract shapes that reference the body obliquely, while others depict the female form directly, forcefully reclaiming its visualization and interpretation.

Painting and sculpture are among the oldest and traditionally most revered mediums of fine art, yet in the hands of many contemporary artists, they are avenues for experimentation, play, and subversion. Artists in NO MAN’S LAND paint with neon, weave with Carnival beads, and glue metal bread baskets into their assemblages.

Established in 1964 in New York City by Don and Mera Rubell, the Rubell Family Collection is one of the world’s largest privately owned contemporary art collections. Located in Miami, Florida, since 1993, the RFC is exhibited within a 45,000-square-foot re-purposed Drug Enforcement Agency confiscated goods facility and is publicly accessible.

Image: Maria Nepomuceno, Untitled, 2010.  Installation view, Maria Nepomuceno, 7 May - 12 June 2010, Gallery I, Victoria Miro, 16 Wharf Road, London, N1 7RW.