Explore how female artists challenge the historical and cultural representation of women in art. Join us for a conversation featuring artists Siona Benjamin, Eiko Fan, and Clarity Haynes, moderated by Brittany Webb, Curator of 20th Century Art at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Haynes’s figurative paintings, including Janie (2014), featured in the exhibition Taking Space: Contemporary Women Artists and the Politics of Scale, redefine beauty, gender, and sexuality. Eiko Fan, whose wooden sculpture representing motherhood, is also in Taking Space. Benjamin, whose monumental, site-specific banner Lilith in the New World (2023) will be on view starting September 15, discusses her transcultural and multicultural narratives as an Indian-American-Jewish artist.

In addition to the panel discussion, artist Eiko Fan will activate her wearable wooden sculpture in a brief performance with live jazz saxophone accompaniment.

6 p.m. Visit the special exhibitions, Taking Space: Contemporary Women Artists and the Politics of Scale and Siona Benjamin: Lilith in the New World, with a docent.

7 p.m. Panel discussion

This event is funded through the generous perpetual gift from the Julia Norton Babson Memorial Fund.

^{Siona Benjamin is a painter from Mumbai, now living in the US. She was awarded Fulbright Fellowships in 2011 and 2017. Her work has been featured in the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Philadelphia Inquirer, Jewish Week, Boston Globe, Art New England, ArtNews, Times of India, Jerusalem Post, and others. Her latest book is Growing up Jewish in India: From the Bene Israel to the Art of Siona Benjamin.}

^{Eiko Fan is a sculptor and performance artists who was born in Toyko. The medium of traditional solid sculpture was very important to her practice and she uses a chainsaw to create imagery related to the theme of motherhood. In addition to sculpture, Fan created a “Live Wood Sculpture” performance where slices of wood were made into costumes that dancers and her own family members brought to life. This performance was presented at a variety of venues. For over 35 years, Fan has worked with students with cerebral palsy and blindness to create art. Her motto is ‘Art is Food. Everybody Needs It’.}

^{Clarity Haynes is a New York-based queer feminist artist whose paintings explore themes of healing, self-determination and spirituality through a dual focus on the body and still life paintings of personal altars. Her long-standing Breast/Chest Portrait Project claims the torso as a site for portraiture, and her crowning paintings render birth in all of its bloody glory. She has received fellowships and honors from the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo and the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, among others.}

^{Brittany Webb (she, her, hers) is the inaugural Evelyn and Will Kaplan Curator of Twentieth-Century Art and the John Rhoden Collection at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA). Her most recent exhibition, Determined to Be: The Sculpture of John Rhoden, is on view at PAFA through April 7, 2024. She earned a PhD from Temple University and a BA from the University of Southern California.}