Explore modern city life from women’s perspectives in this trailblazing exhibition curated by Turner Prize-winner Lubaina Himid.
Featuring work by celebrated artists including, among others, photographers Hannah Starkey and Markéta Luskačová and installation artists Anthea Hamilton and Cornelia Parker, the exhibition considers the experiences of women in the city, exploring how urban spaces have restricted our freedom to roam. The exhibition invites you to arrive with your own experiences in cities at the forefront of your mind, to create a dialogue between artists and audiences.
Drawing primarily from the Arts Council Collection and Birmingham’s own collection, over 60 works of modern and contemporary art will be on display, ranging from painting and sculpture to photography and film. Some highlights include an embroidered tie by Sophie Calle, documentary photography by Margaret Murray and Markéta Luskačová and Klara Liden’s photograph, Self Portrait with Keys to the City, which raises the issue of who has access to what in our society and where we belong.
Other parts of the exhibition explore the aesthetic quality of maps and how they have shaped and informed city life, as well as reimaging and questioning what a city designed solely for women might look like – Tai Shani’s performance work, Dark Continent: Semiramis, builds a metaphorical protected city for women, using examples of important contributions women have made to Western civilisation and arguments that prove their intellectual and moral equality with men.
