ARTIST STATEMENT
My 100% HUMAN screenprints are an outgrowth of a larger installation of my work for the Lubeznik Center for the Arts exhibition “Well Behaved Women: Celebrating 100 Years of Women’s Suffrage” in 2020. Well-Behaved Women includes living, contemporary artists, and deceased artists from different eras. Many artists share their lived experiences, addressing areas where women lack access or rights, leaning into the emotions felt due to inequity, critiquing language, and subverting the canon of the “male gaze,” where women are presented as objects rather than subjects. They elevate and reclaim mediums, such as embroidery and quilting, which were historically denigrated as “craft” and “women’s work.” Some draw strength from the spiritual power inherent in their female ancestry.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Anoush Bargamian (b. 1963, Providence, Rhode Island) is a Chicago-based artist. She earned an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1990. Bargamian’s work is inspired by the history of abstraction, her Armenian-American identity, nature, Art Brut, memories, and more. The additive/subtractive process she uses creates highly textured surfaces. Materials in Bargamian’s work include paint, beeswax, soil, threads, and other media. Her works are in private collections and have been exhibited in galleries and museums. Bargamian is represented by Alma Art & Interiors in Chicago, Illinois, and Gallery/Studio Z in Warwick, Rhode Island.
© Anoush Bargamian