How Women Artists Reclaim Power From Unease—See 5 Works From a New Show

So often, a work of art is meant to reflect beauty, the artist dexterously rendering something that is pleasing to the eye, recording it for posterity. But in “Uncanny” at the National Museum of Women in the Arts, there’s something downright anxiety-provoking about the work on view, all of which is slightly strange and unsettling, mixing the familiar and the unknown to an uncomfortable effect.

“This is a show about how women artists express their discomfort and unease about the world around them, reflecting on their lived experiences,” NMWA associate curator Orin Zahra said at the exhibition press preview.

“The exhibition name comes from Sigmund Freud,” she added. “He described the term ‘uncanny’ as a psychological experience of seeing something that was both familiar and foreign at the same time, something that we recognized was also something mysterious and alien. The two-sided nature of that is what provokes these feelings of discomfort and unease in us.”

In organizing the show, Zahra wanted to see how women artists had explored the concept—something she realized had not really been done in other exhibitions.

“There has been a lot of historical stereotypes about what women’s art looks like: pretty, ornate, or small,” she said. “It’s not necessarily weird, or cerebral, or irrational. This is a show that turns that on its head because you’re looking at those exact ideas through the women’s lens.”

That includes works that explores the ways in which the world can be an unsafe space for women—something that seems especially timely in Washington D.C. given the current political climate.

The exhibition features examples of 20th-century Surrealism by the likes of Leonora Carrington (1917–2011) and Meret Oppenheim (1913–1985), as well more contemporary works by established names including Laurie Simmons (1949–) and Gillian Wearing (b. 1963), and less well-known figures such as Fabiola Jean-Louis (b. 1978) and Sheida Soleimani (b. 1990).

We asked Zahra to tell us about five of the most uncanny works in “Uncanny.”

 

Julie Roberts (b. 1963), Sigmund Freud Study (1998)

The show’s Freud connection is most prominent in the work of Julie Roberts, who paints interior scenes on colorful, monochromatic backgrounds. Each work looks unassuming at first glance, but these are places where women have been harmed, be it physically, mentally, or emotionally.

That includes Roberts’s painting of Freud’s famous study, with the psychoanalyst’s chair and the couch for the patient, rendered in neat, precise detail against a field of mustard yellow.

“Julie is quite critical of those institutions that exercise control over women. And it was Freud who theorized about hysteria, and that it was a disorder that was found predominantly in women,” Zahra said. “As a result of his writings, a lot of women are put in mental asylums. Because he wrote that they were directly related to their reproductive organs, a lot of women were forced to have hysterectomies.”

 

Louise Bourgeois (1911–2010), Untitled (with Foot), 1989

You’d be forgiven for mistaking this pink marble sculpture by Louise Bourgeois for an abstract work, depending on the angle from which you approach the piece.

“I do recommend that you walk around. You have this really smooth, perfectly formed orb, this globe—this is not easy [to carve] by the way,” Zahra said. “And then you see this chubby baby leg sticking out from underneath that ball. On one hand, you have this tender flesh, something that feels cute and pudgy, and you have these feelings of tenderness towards it. And you’re suddenly shocked with that association that the baby may have gotten trampled under that heavy object.”

The somewhat disturbing work is likely inspired by Bourgeois’s own experiences with childbirth—which is often traumatic both physically and emotionally—and the challenges of motherhood.

“She felt quite ambivalent about the idea of childbirth. That in itself is, I think, was due to the defined expectations of women’s roles at that time,” Zahra added. “Bourgeois thought that she could never have children, and when she did, she suffered postpartum depression. She’s giving voice to these experiences that certainly her male counterparts were not exploring in their art.”

 

Stephanie Dinkins (b. 1964), Conversations With Bina48 (2014–)

A trio of short videos in the exhibition capture the artist Stephanie Dinkins’s conversations with Bina48, a chatbot with a human face based on a Black woman named Bina Aspen, the wife of the robot’s creator, Martine Rothblatt.

But Bina48’s conversations suggest that the chatbot likely has very little in common with the face she embodies—something the artist believes reflects the biases of the white men who programmed the robot.

“What Stephanie is pointing out is the kind of lack of diversity in the tech world, both gender and racial,” Zahra said. “Because when she’s asked questions like ‘who are your people’ or ‘what emotions do you feel,’ Bina48 is not able to talk about the Black experience or the experience of Black women in America, even though she’s modeled after a Black woman. When you have a homogeneous population in charge of developing technology that will be deployed everywhere all over the world, that becomes very problematic.”

 

Frida Orupabo (b. 1986), Labour II (2022)

The exhibition showcases a pair of work by Frida Orupabo, a Nigerian Norwegian artist who is gaining attention for her collages based on historical imagery.

“Frida mines colonial archives for imagery. She also looks at Renaissance paintings, at films. She goes through pornography to get different body parts,” Zahra said. “She might get an arm from one source, a leg from another, and then she pins them together and essentially Frankensteins a new being.”

It’s this use of familiar images in strange combinations that give Orupabo’s work its uncanny sense, her hybrid creatures literally held together by pins.

Her piece Labour II is a dark one on multiple levels, referring both to the historical experiences of enslaved women who would have their children stolen from them, having to care instead for white children, and to maternal mortality in the present day, which is statistically far more likely to impact Black mothers.

The work shows a naked Black woman lying down, as if just having given birth. Her baby, which has no arms or legs below the knees is perched on her stomach, and both turn their heads to meet the viewer’s gaze.

“Frida herself went through some difficulties and challenges postpartum and through the labor process in the modern medical system,” Zahra said. “She says that by staring back at the viewer, it is her way of refusing to be made into an object.”

 

Remedios Varo (1908–1963), Tejido espacio-tiempo (Weaving of Space and Time), 1954

Spanish Mexican painter Remedios Varo had her own unique take on the Surrealist trope of the woman as an inanimate object—rather than dehumanizing the female form, Varo was thinking more broadly about humankind, and how we can all be cogs in the machine.

Both the man and woman in Tejido espacio-tiempo (Weaving of Space and Time) have wheels and gears where their bodies should be, and are encircled in a kind of woven basket themselves.

“Varo was part of this generation that escaping the fascism and totalitarianism in Europe,” Zahra said. “They were really leaning into the irrational as a way to offset what they thought was responsible for all the war and violence that they were seeing.”

“Uncanny” is on view at the National Museum of Women in the Arts, 1250 New York Avenue, NW, Washington, D.C., February 28–August 10, 2025.