Woman in a Rowboat curated by Diana Nawi brings together works from the Olivia Collection that span a breadth of genres, subjects, and styles, forming a chorus that reflects the imaginative space of interiority and self. These works by intergenerational and primarily women artists evidence the many vocabularies through which we express our inner lives—our memories and spiritual projections, our visions of the world and our connections to it, and our depth of feeling.
Surreal, fantastical scenes and quiet depictions of everyday surroundings are equal expressions of observation and emotion, while both evocative landscapes and works of bold abstraction conjure psychic states. The body is represented directly through imagery, as well as indexed indirectly through material and process. The female figure recurs throughout, a reflection not of how we are seen by others, but rather of the many ways we perceive ourselves. These works offer glimpses into the embodied, desiring, profound, and solitary experience of the self, insisting on the importance of our inner lives as spaces for respite, reverie, and liberatory possibility.
The title of this exhibition —Woman in a Rowboat— is drawn from Willem de Kooning’s 1965 painting of the same name. The phrase describes a scene the artist only partially suggests; instead, the work portrays a gestural, ambiguous figure in a similarly indeterminate setting. The painting is one person’s depiction of another, revealing little about its subject. But the painting’s narrative—a woman alone and afloat— offers an image in which we might see ourselves. In the rowboat, we may be anchored or adrift, poised to return to shore or to venture beyond the horizon. In any case, we are visible only to ourselves, and the infinite world within us remains our own.
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