DETAILS:
86" x 76" x 7"
Homemade Egg-oil Tempera, Dutch Metal Leaf and Mixed Media on Linen
Original Artwork one of a Kind
SHIPPING WILL BE CALCULATED SEPARATELY
STATEMENT:
Big Girls
In 1981, I saw the exhibition, The Wild Man: Myth and Symbolism, at the Met Cloisters, New York. The Medieval manuscript illuminations that I poured over, many measuring only three inches high, inspired a series of twenty-four paintings and drawings that later became Big Girls.
Inverting the scale of these miniature creatures into seven-foot giants, Big Girls occupied my imagination for almost two decades. I translated their medieval symbolism into contemporary feminist ideals: hairiness represented wildness while bare skin conjured vulnerability. Sprung from a 1970s identity politic, I sought depictions of primordial beings.
The Big Girls’ stare was confrontational. These would be in-your-face women: hairy, naked, trenchant. My themes were mythological, rendered with a hieroglyphic language of the psyche. Later, I borrowed ecclesiastical imagery from the votives I passed daily in Granada, Spain: gilded halos, feathered angel wings, Our Lady of the Water.
The drawing, Presa narrated the psychological effects of domestic violence. It was my response to the learned helplessness theory, which asserted that victims of abuse forfeited liberation after repeated, random assault. Other themes I addressed were single motherhood and a body politic that chronicled the morphing aesthetics of feminism.
Big Girls peppered my practice on and off over the decades, and in some ways, their stories continue to inform my compass as I navigate the political landscape.
With reinvigorated urgency, a new generation of female-identified makers redefine the assertion that the personal is, in fact, political.
– Nancy Lu Rosenheim Big Girls is dedicated, with love and admiration, to Mishikea Davis Brathwaite, 1979 - 2014
ABOUT THE ARTIST:
News: September issue, 2024 Artforum review by Jason Foumberg
Practice
Nancy Lu Rosenheim’s narratives explore the exquisite yet sinister elements of the natural world. Her sculptures, printmaking, and mixed media works on paper have been featured in Artforum, the Huffington Post, Chicago Tribune, and NewCity. Based in Chicago, IL, and Steuben, WI, she has exhibited in venues such as Epiphany Center for the Arts, Hyde Park Art Center, Slow Gallery, and the Koehnline Museum in Illinois; the Anchorage Museum of History and Art, Alaska; Galerías Cartel and Verlín in Granada, Spain; and the Singer Sweat Shop in Rotterdam, Netherlands. Rosenheim’s residencies include Studio 88 in Chiang Mai, Thailand; Ragdale Foundation, IL; Atelier Neo-Medici in Monflanquin, France; and the Center Program at the Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago.
Curate
Rosenheim was the founding director and curator of The Bike Room, a contemporary project space in Chicago, where she showcased the work of over fifty emerging and established artists from 2011 to 2016. She continues her curatorial practice in a popup format under the name TBR@.
Educate
Rosenheim is a faculty member in the Art + Design Department at Northeastern Illinois University. She served as Associate Professor at the Illinois Institute of Art-Chicago until its closure in 2018. Her commitment to social justice includes leading extensive workshops in mural painting and public art for the Shanti Foundation for Peace and other nonprofit organizations in Chicago. Rosenheim earned her MFA in Painting and Drawing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and her BFA from the School of Visual Arts, New York.
