‘Anonymous Was A Woman’ celebrates women artists’ individuality

Anonymity erases authorship from works of art. Without a name, these individuals’ contributions end up forgotten. Throughout history, women visual artists have traditionally been subjected to this erasure. Under patriarchal constructions, women were expected to take on domestic duties,  leaving little time for artistic exploration.  

Founded by Susan Unterberg, the Anonymous Was A Woman grant program uplifts mid-career women visual artists over the age of 40 to counter this exclusion. The award makes woman-identifying artists’ work possible by reducing limitations that might restrict them from creating their work, providing resources such as workspaces and child care. Currently on display at NYU’s Grey Art Museum, the exhibition “Anonymous Was A Woman: The First 25 Years” presents the work of awardees from 1996 through 2020. The name of the award references a line in Virgina Woolf’s “A Room of One’s Own,” alluding to the many anonymous works that were created by women, and thus forgotten. 

The exhibition at the Grey Art Museum excellently declares the power of this award to change the careers of female artists. In addition to their work, some of the artists’ reactions to receiving the award are quoted in the wall descriptions. This addition further allows the artists’ individuality and voices to enliven the exhibition space. 

In one of the first pieces in the exhibition, “Stillness #25” by Laura Aguilar, the artist asserts her power of self representation through photography. In the self-portrait, the artist lays naked curled up in a ball with her knees tucked up to her head. The landscape is desolate and barren, filled with leafless thin trees. A white piece of thin fabric flows in the wind in the center of the image. Aguilar infused this image with the emotions she experiences while taking care of her dying father. She explains “stillness and dying made me think about how we find serenity, how we grow to discover grace in dying and in life.” Aguilar’s photograph is a reminder that if we experience life passively, we can too easily skip over important details of the present. Aguilar’s piece is a beautiful opening to an exhibition that refuses its artist’s abandonment and asks viewers to take a moment and closely observe the photograph.