Hangar Art Co. unveiled a rare exhibit last week with Women Taking Up Space, a show inspired by Mexican artist Cesar Cruz’s aim “to comfort the disturbed and to disturb the comfortable.”
The show will remain up at the downtown Bloomington gallery through the end of the month.
“It grew out of some conversations last fall,” said Lori Laughlin, a Bloomington artist who organized the group show and has her own paintings on display as well.
Laughlin paints with Plein Air of McLean County on Tuesday nights—an approach to artmaking that, in good weather, is done outside, or en plein air. The group’s conversations naturally veered toward the presidential election and Laughlin said she and other women felt “spurred to action.”
“There are certain things in life that we can control and other things that are beyond our control, and as artists, we can express ourselves,” Laughlin said.
Women Taking Up Space features work from Jenni Bateman, Deana Moore Schoolcraft, Cindy Lawson Flynn, Jane Reed Wilson, Cathie Haab, Kristine Stayton, Basha Ontiveros and Laughlin. Many are amateur artists.
Among Wilson’s paintings is Flowers are Lovely But I’d Prefer a Revolution, a portrait of a seated woman surrounded by daisies and carnations. Wilson is a retired therapist; the show’s title was her idea.
“I worked with a lot of women who had experienced domestic violence and sexual assault,” she said. “They were often, I think, led to believe that maybe their stories weren’t believed, or that they weren’t important enough for others to get involved and really help them or care about what had happened to them. That, to me, felt like a really important message to send with this show—that we often don’t feel like we have the right to be in places where we should be having a voice.”
Perhaps symbolically, the group took the idea to the biggest gallery in town. The enormous Hangar Art Co. doesn’t typically host exhibits, primarily housing a collection of works from resident artists.
“Bringing it here and asking Santino [Lamancusa, owner of Hangar Art Co.] about it seemed like a natural fit since he has bigger space and we thought he might be open to something that’s a little more political,” Wilson said.
On a partition wall separating the exhibit space from the rest of the gallery hangs a self-portrait of each of the artists.
“Everybody deserves to have a voice, and your voice can be artwork hanging on the wall,” Laughlin said. “I think to have the courage to speak up and put the artwork out there and have it viewed by the public and say, ‘This is what I feel; this is how I feel,’ is personally empowering.”
Paintings depict images of real and imagined women, many in nature. Other multimedia works sit on pedestals throughout the space—fitting as much work as possible in the gallery.
“We each found subjects and mediums that were meaningful to us in expressing that—whether it was a painting, a collage, a sculpture, a silk work, quilting—it was phenomenal to see,” Laughlin said.
One of Laughlin’s paintings, Giselle, is a portrait of Gisèle Pelicot, whose ex-husband is serving a 20-year sentence for drugging and raping her, inviting dozens of men to abuse her for nearly a decade. Pelicot demanded her trial be public, changing the false narrative that victims of sexual assault should feel shame. A QR code takes viewers to a Time article about her story.
Laughlin hopes it, and each of the works in the show, is a conversation starter.
“As the artist, you create the work and you begin the story,” Laughlin said. “And then the viewer—the person who’s taking it in—finishes the sentence or completes the story or looks at it and interprets it in a certain way. There’s power in that, too, and there’s community building in that.”
Women Taking Up Space runs through the end of May at Hangar Art Co., 105 W. Jefferson St., Bloomington. The gallery is free to visit. thehangarartco.com.
