HOW DO I LOOK: Curated By Lauren Brooks Donovan

This is a show about how women look.

Being a woman, especially today, means you can never escape looking.  In many circumstances in contemporary media culture, a woman’s appearance – and more specifically her body – still speaks louder than her voice. From an early age, women are asked to consider how we look. There are few things we know better than the world’s relationship to our bodies. It is the water we swim in. The artists in this exhibition are mining this knowledge. With their work they are asking not just How do I appear?  but also How do I perceive? 

How do we perceive ourselves? How do we perceive our representations? How do we talk about those representations? Are they friends or foes? HOW DO I LOOK features the work of painters who explore the complicated relationship between women and their bodies, and examine the multifaceted experience of womanhood. Through their playful and often-times confrontational works, these artists subvert the notion that a woman's worth is solely determined by her physical presence. Through humor, candor, and a sharp intelligence, these paintings celebrate the beauty and pleasure and joy of existing within a woman's body while challenging the society that tries to control it.