Seeing with Empathy

This exhibition considers a variety of perspectives employed by eight modern American women artists: some self-reflective, others romantic, others spiritual. They each manifest what is known as the female gaze, a type of looking—achievable by anyone—that focuses on perceiving peoples’ interior selves, as opposed to objectifying their bodies. Through this lens, we examine the emotional intimacy created when an empathetic gaze shapes how an artist represents the body of a woman or an individual assigned-female-at-birth (AFAB). Given the recent legislative changes in the United States regarding the bodies of women/AFAB individuals, there remains more reason than ever to humanize and grant agency to the people to whom those bodies belong.