Untitled Flashcards Set

Wadsworth Jarrell, Revolutionary, 1971 - This bold, colorful portrait of Angela Davis uses text and patterns to create a vibrant, rhythmic image that blurs the line between portrait and protest poster. Jarrell, a co-founder of AfriCOBRA, fuses Black Power themes with a style meant to energize and affirm Black identity, using words from Davis's speeches to literally construct her face. It's a celebration of Black pride and radical activism during the Civil Rights and Black Power eras.

Jenny Holzer, Truisms, 1977-1979 - Holzer displayed short, punchy phrases like "Abuse of power comes as no surprise" on LED signs and public spaces. These phrases read like warnings, commands, or truths we all know but rarely confront. Her use of corporate and media formats to present feminist and political messages critiques how language controls behavior and power.

Barbara Kruger, Untitled (We Don't Need Another Hero), 1986 - Kruger overlays white Futura Bold text onto black-and-white imagery in this case, a child in a military helmet. Her signature style mimics advertising but subverts its intent, challenging media, gender norms, and authority. This work questions who gets to be called a "hero," especially in a culture shaped by violence and toxic masculinity.

Guerrilla Girls, Do women have to be naked to get into the Met Museum?, 1989 - This poster features a reclining nude wearing a gorilla mask, calling out the art world's sexism with sharp statistics and humor. The Guerrilla Girls used satire and anonymity to expose gender and racial inequality in major institutions, making feminist critique both public and unforgettable.

Peter Hujar, David Wojnarowicz, 1983 - This intimate, shadowy photo captures artist David Wojnarowicz in a pensive moment. Hujar's quiet, emotional portraits of downtown New York artists—many of them queer and affected by AIDS—are about presence, fragility, and love in the face of marginalization and loss.

David Wojnarowicz, Untitled (One Day This Kid), 1990 - Text surrounds a photo of the artist as a child, listing the systemic injustices queer youth face. Wojnarowicz mixes biography and activism, showing how identity is shaped—and attacked—by social institutions. The work is deeply personal and politically furious.

David Wojnarowicz, Untitled from Sex Series (for Marion Scemama), 1989 - Photographic juxtapositions mix erotic imagery with scenes of death, violence, or nature. This AIDS-era work confronts the demonization of queer sexuality, exploring desire, danger, and vulnerability. Wojnarowicz challenges the viewer to see intimacy without shame or censorship.

Nan Goldin, Rise and Monty on the lounge chair, 1988 - From her photo diary The Ballad of Sexual Dependency, this image captures two friends in a tender, tired moment. Goldin documents queer, trans, and underground communities with raw honesty. Her work resists glamour in favor of emotional truth and lived experience.

Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Untitled (Portrait of Ross in L.A.), 1991 - A pile of candy in a corner, which viewers are invited to take, representing the weight of his partner Ross. As the candy disappears, it mirrors Ross's physical decline. The work's generosity and loss are intertwined—turning participation into mourning.

Maya Lin, Vietnam Veterans Memorial, 1982 - A black granite wall inscribed with the names of U.S. soldiers lost in Vietnam. It cuts into the earth like a scar. Lin's minimalist design emphasizes personal loss and national reckoning without heroic narrative. Its power lies in quiet reflection.

Ellsworth Kelly, Memorial, 1993 - This stark, abstract installation in the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum uses light and form to create a solemn space. Kelly's use of geometry and restraint pays respect to memory through absence, avoiding spectacle in favor of silent reverence.

Jochen Gerz and Esther Shalev-Gerz, Monument Against Fascism, 1986 - A lead column invited people to inscribe their names, then slowly sank into the ground over time. Eventually, it disappeared. This anti-monument rejects permanence, emphasizing that remembrance must be active, not passive.

Christian Boltanski, Autel Chases [Chases High School], 1988 - A shrine-like installation with photos of Jewish schoolchildren and dim lighting, evoking both memorial and absence. Boltanski's work mourns those lost to the Holocaust without telling their full stories—emphasizing the unknowable and the void.

Adrian Piper, The Mythic Being (Village Voice ads), 1973-1975 - Piper dressed in a wig, mustache, and sunglasses to perform as a masculine alter ego in public and in print ads. These performances challenge racial and gender stereotypes, asking what it means to be seen and read by society. Her work uses conceptual art to probe identity politics.

Adrian Piper, My Calling Card, 1986-1990 - Piper handed these cards to people who made racist comments, a quiet but firm confrontation. It turns social discomfort into performance and pushes viewers to reflect on their biases. It's conceptual art that doubles as real-world activism.

Ana Mendieta, Untitled (from Silueta series), 1977 - The artist forms her body's silhouette into natural landscapes using materials like flowers or fire. These earth-body works explore identity, belonging, and spiritual connection to land, especially from the perspective of exile and feminist spirituality.

Tehching Hsieh and Linda Montano, One Year Performance (Rope Piece), 1983-1984 - The two artists were tied together by an 8-foot rope for a full year, unable to touch. This extreme durational performance explores boundaries, dependency, endurance, and the passage of time as lived through the body.

Marina Abramović and Ulay, The Lovers—the Great Wall Walk, 1988 - Each walked from opposite ends of the Great Wall of China to meet and separate. A deeply symbolic breakup, it merges performance and personal ritual, exploring love, distance, and finality through landscape.

Sally Mann, New Mothers (Immediate Family series), 1989 - Part of Immediate Family, this photograph shows her children in raw, emotionally complex situations. Mann's work blurs public/private boundaries and challenges idealized images of childhood, exploring family, memory, and mortality.

Sophie Calle, Take Care of Yourself, 2007 - Calle invited 107 women to interpret a breakup email from a former partner. Their responses—legal, poetic, comedic—turn personal pain into a collective, multimedia feminist archive. It's both playful and cathartic.

Kiki Smith, Untitled, 1990 - Two wax female figures lie prone, leaking tears, urine, and blood. Smith explores the body as both fragile and sacred, confronting taboos around female biology and trauma with raw vulnerability.

Mona Hatoum, The Light at the End, 1989 - A tunnel ends in glowing red heating elements, evoking danger rather than salvation. The work speaks to political imprisonment, exile, and the illusion of escape, especially from the perspective of displaced identities.

Janine Antoni, Butterfly Kisses, 1993 - Antoni used her mascaraed eyelashes to brush paper, making intimate marks with blinks. This playful, bodily form of painting links self-care rituals to labor and feminine expression.

Gabriel Orozco, My Hands are My Heart, 1991 - A photo shows the artist cupping a heart-shaped lump of clay. Simple yet symbolic, the gesture connects body and creation—emphasizing intimacy, spontaneity, and the emotional weight of making.

Yasuaki Onishi, Reverse of Volume, 2012 - An installation using plastic sheeting, glue, and thread to form the negative space of boxes now removed. The result is a ghostly floating sculpture that visualizes emptiness, absence, and impermanence.

William Kentridge, Felix in Exile, 1994, - An animated film made from charcoal drawings, featuring the character Felix watching scenes of violence and erasure unfold. Kentridge's erasures and redrawings mimic memory itself—fragmented, altered, and haunted by apartheid's legacy.

Doris Salcedo, Atrabiliaros (Defiant; also translated as Melancholy), 1992-93 - Worn shoes belonging to Colombia's disappeared are embedded behind cloudy animal skin in a wall. The work is quiet, raw, and mournful—evoking loss, memory, and the void left by political violence.