Shah Garg & Ruins We Carry

MAKING THEIR MARK:

WORKS FROM THE

SHAH GARG COLLECTION

Ongoing – April 20

“Making Their Mark” brings together more than seventy artworks from the Shah Garg Collection, which is committed to amplifying the voices and visions of women artists. The exhibition premiered in New York City to 50,000 visitors before moving directly to BAMPFA.

This collection juxtaposes contemporary practices with pathbreaking historical works to illuminate transgenerational affinities, influences, and methodologies among artists from the postwar era to the present. Featuring a wide spectrum of artworks spanning eight decades, the exhibition emphasizes dialogues between artists who circumvent and break through conventions in artmaking, embracing craft techniques, uncommon supports, and alternative materials.

Artists featured in the exhibition are award-winning, nationally and internationally known artists, including: Pacita Abad, May Lovelace O’Neal, Judy Chicago, Kay WalkingStick, Toshiko Takaezu, Joan Mitchell, Faith Ringgold, Barbara Chase-Riboud, Zarina, Tau Lewis, Dyani White Hawk, Uman and dozens more.

Sarah Sze: Crisscross (detail)

The exhibition is accompanied by a major publication in the “Making Their Mark” series.This entry in the series explores the bold vision and vast range of achievements of women artists. If you choose to obtain the book (by purchase or in a library?), you will find that the tome, Making Their Mark: Art by Women in the Shah Garg Collection, includes two sweeping essays by the editors Mark Godfrey and Katy Siegel, writings by six scholars on topics relevant to the depth of the collection, the importance of craft traditions, artistic experimentation with new technologies and the impact of personal and communal identity on artmaking, as well as lively texts by 15 artists about the artists who inspire them.

Richly illustrated with works by 136 artists, this volume compiles significant examples by artists whose works go beyond prescribed definitions of artmaking established within a historically patriarchal field and challenges the assumptions of what media are valid in the fine arts. It offers new insights into women artists that make it a resource for students of art and general readers alike.

Emma Amos: Star Amy Sillman, Radiator

SPECIAL OPPORTUNITIES

EXHIBITION TOURS

Selected Wednesdays, 12:15pm; Sundays, 2:00pm, and

Free First Thursdays, 1:15pm

UC Berkeley graduate students in the Departments of Gender & Women's Studies, History of Art, and Film & Media Studies will offer tours.

Mary Weatherford: Light Falling like a Broken Chain; Paradise

THE RUINS WE CARRY

Ongoing – February 23, 2025

Abounaddara is an anonymous collective of artists based in Damascus, Syria. Best known for their unsettling portraits of everyday life during the Syrian Revolution and subsequent civil war, the members of the collective created and posted a short film to Vimeo every Friday between 2011 and 2017, as well as two acclaimed feature-length films.

This is the collective’s first solo US museum exhibition. Known for its intimate portrayals of Syrian life amid upheaval, Abounaddara debuts a new three-channel film installation, The Imagemaker. The film explores the virtuosity of Abou Diab, the last practitioner of the art of stamped cloth in Damascus and a central figure in the history of the collective. Like a photographer in a darkroom, he labors in a dimly lit workshop, printing on fabrics using improvised, alchemical inks made from rotting, rusted matter.

As Abou Diab transforms his cloth, Abounaddara considers the potential of the creative act to refashion ruins into life. Layering filmic fragments across time and space, "The Ruins We Carry" presents this new work in dialogue with a selection of Abounaddara’s short films, screened every weekend during the exhibition’s run. The entire exhibition is on film.

Stills from The Imagemaker

L – R Stills from Shorts: The Mother and the Dogs Rejoice in Raqqa

This exhibition is also part of BAMPFA’s Campus Collaborations series, an ongoing series in partnership with faculty and students at UC Berkeley. This series brings exhibitions at BAMPFA into critical dialogue with the vibrant academic life at UC Berkeley. “The Ruins We Carry” is specially curated by Anneka Lenssen, Associate Professor in the Department of the History of Art, UC Berkeley, and Stefania Pandolfo, Professor in the Department of Anthropology, UC Berkeley.

For more information about either exhibition, click here.