MoFA Judy Chicago’s Birth Project: Born Again
The Birth Project: Born Again, works by artist Judy Chicago will be available to visitors at the Museum of Fine Arts beginning on September 24 with a reception on October 14. Judy Chicago’s Birth Project was completed between 1980 and 1985 and this current exhibition gathers a number of exceptional Birth Project works. Originally the works together were shown as single exhibition units or in groups in galleries, museums, libraries, hospitals, and other conventional and unconventional locations.Curator Viki Thompson Wylder states that “these images afford a vision seldom seen in western culture since the Neolithic, when woman embodied Creation itself.” She adds that “Chicago wanted to reveal birth as spiritual and intellectual, a source of potent myth and symbol, but also wanted to show birth as physical and real. . . .Renewed interest in the maternal body makes this exhibition timely. A number of recent political and scientific developments re-emphasize women’s bodies as commodities. In contrast, all Chicago’s bodies are empowered and Chicago’s images encourage viewers to perceive women in unaccustomed ways.”
The Birth Project was stitched by 150 women needleworkers who joined artist Judy Chicago over the five year period of its production to complete approximately 85 textiles for a series of “exhibition units.” Chicago worked with needleworkers, providing underpaintings, cartoons, drawings, mock-ups, color specifications, and written directions for the transformation of her images and every needleworker received public credit for her work. Dr. Thompson Wylder summarizes Chicago’s Birth Project, now “born again” in this exhibition, as “a continuing force for cultural change and aesthetic transformation.”