Her Art/Their Art is a collection that aims to answer the question: “What does it mean to identify, live, navigate, or be perceived by society as Womxn in 21st century America?”
The gallery was co-curated by Natasha Ria El-Scari, the director of the UMKC Women’s Center and Wolfe Brack, the artistic director of InterUrban ArtHouse.
The collection’s theme developed from the thesis of the former director of the Women’s Center, Arzie Umali. Her research focused on highlighting discrepancies in representation, pay and success for women artists. She studied various aspects of being a woman in creative spaces and how women are depicted in art.
“Women create art at really different times in their lives,” El-Scari said. “There may be women that had the privilege of creating all their lives. But a lot of times there are women in these really clear and distinctive areas of their lives.”
The first version of this collection was displayed almost 15 years ago. The current display is the third edition. Though the core concept of the collection hasn’t changed, it has evolved over time.
Brack said the team realized the theme needed to broaden to include non-binary individuals that understand what it’s like to be perceived as a woman.
“As we developed it and we worked with different types of people, we gained more language around gender,” Brack said. “It went from Her Art to Her Art/Their Art to make sure that it encompasses everybody who understands what it’s like.”
As for the curation process, Brack said that a call for art was put out in November of last year. El-Scari and Wolfe worked together to determine which pieces would be displayed. Both said that there were few cuts made of the 65 submitted.
“I feel very strongly that our role as a curator is not to gatekeep,” El-Scari said. “I wasn’t looking for a specific style or type of work but rather that the work somehow had a theme that was living in it.”
Brack said that he views the exhibition as one big piece that tells a series of stories that connect back to the common story.
“It shows the range of who responds to the subject, of being a woman or perceived as a woman or female,” Brack said. “How many different identities there are within that, how many different ways there are to live with those identities all up on one wall.”
The exhibit will be displayed until March 29 at the InterUrban ArtHouse. More information can be found here.
