Articulating Activism:
Works from the Shelley and Donald Rubin Private Collection
March 3 – June 18, 2022
Guerrilla Girls, Do Women Have to be Naked to Get Into the Met. Museum?, 2012. © Guerrilla Girls, courtesy guerrillagirls.com. [Image description: this cut out image on a yellow background with text is based on La Grande Odalisque (1814) by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, it features a woman lying sideways on cushions to the left of the image, she has a snarling gorilla mask and holds a fan in her right hand. The text on the piece towards the right is the title of the piece followed by “Less than 4% of the artists in the Modern Art sections are women, but 76% of the nudes are female.”]
This exhibition continues to be accessible through our virtual presentation at the bottom of this page, best experienced on desktop. Please email us with any questions on navigating the virtual space.
Protest and anger practically always derives from hope, and the shouting out against injustice is always in the hope of those injustices being somewhat corrected and a little more justice established. - John Berger
The Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation is pleased to present Articulating Activism: Works from the Shelley and Donald Rubin Private Collection. Predominantly drawn from their Art and Social Justice Collection, which began in 2015, the formation of this branch of the collection celebrates the prescience and power of art at this particular location and moment in history. The exhibition will also encompass work from other areas of concentration in the Rubins’ collection, namely contemporary art from the Himalayan region and Cuba. Each of the artists are devoted to finding solutions rather than simply highlighting problems, visualizing issues that have been previously obscured, overlooked, or ignored.
Featured artists and artist groups: ACT UP, Belkis Ayón, Firelei Báez, Abel Barroso, María Magdalena Campos-Pons, Tony Cokes, Ángel Delgado, Antonia Eiriz, Carlos Garaicoa, Guerrilla Girls, Gonkar Gyatso, Hock E Aye Vi Edgar Heap of Birds, Shaun Leonardo, Cannupa Hanska Luger, Armando Mariño, Carlos Martiel, Frank Martínez, Mary Mattingly, Ana Mendieta, Cirenaica Moreira, Michael Rakowitz, Hunter Reynolds and George Lyter, Dread Scott, Tsherin Sherpa, José Ángel Toirac, Betty Tompkins, Chungpo Tsering, José Ángel Vincench, and Jorge Wellesley.
With society as their perpetually moving inspiration, artists no longer observe and make from a distance, but include the public directly, seeing them as participants and collaborators. Works in this exhibition exemplify a compulsion, or passion, to deconstruct reality in a variety of media. How we see our bodily reality, reality as information through text-art, political reality, and the reality of injustice are the central threads of this presentation. The Foundation is proud to present works by groups and individuals that are at times deeply personal, revealing, and bordering on confessional, frequently made in protest, but always hopeful, and aiming towards a better future for us all.
The exhibition coincides with the publication of An Incomplete Archive of Activist Art, published by the Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation. Reflecting on the Foundation’s art and social justice initiatives, the two-volume publication features thematic essays, roundtable discussions, newly commissioned artworks and documentation of visual art exhibitions.
This exhibition is curated by George Bolster and Anjuli Nanda Diamond.
Our current guidelines on Covid-19, accessibility, and more can be found here.
Installation views of “Articulating Activism” at The 8th Floor, March 2022. Photos by Adam Reich. Courtesy of the Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation.
Virtual Presentation of Articulating Activism:
Best experienced on desktop. If you encounter any difficulties, please contact info@the8thfloor.org.