You can read Annie Bielski's review on Hyperallergic: Judy Chicago’s Wo/Manhouse 2022 Could Use Some More Diversity.
In it, Bielski states that Wo/Manhouse 2022 could "benefit from more BIPOC artists, a broader intersectional dialogue, and a wider breadth of lived experience."
I appreciate the naming of the need for a broader representation of BIPOC artists and intersectional dialogue in the space regarding race and gender. Sometimes the naming of a thing gives power, and sometimes it levels hierarchy. By naming second wave feminism as white, cisgender, heteronormative, middle class feminism, it allows space for bodies and terrains considered nonnormative to shed the fiction of occupying a space inherently of lesser power. By not naming this structure, the ‘blankness’ and ‘whiteness’ is not visible and supports a hierarchy that serves no one. By not naming it, the cisgender binary occludes the wide spectrum of gender identities. By not naming heteronormativity, it is considered the default orientation and marginalizes all other sexual orientations. By erasing the naming of class, the stories outside of the middle fall away.
There is so much more to say about this. For now, I am going to bed and dreaming of dismantled hierarchy..... shapes collapsing into unstructured form and a broad spectrum emerging in which each color is seen, recognized, and given space to Be.
