RECLAMATION

The National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA) presents RECLAMATION: Recipes, Remedies, and Rituals, a new participatory exhibition featuring nine interdisciplinary artists. Conceived as a virtual experience that recontextualizes the traditional role of women in providing sustenance and healing, RECLAMATION also features content submitted by the public, interwoven with the artists’ work.

RECLAMATION is an evolving exhibition and ingredient archive that examines food as a creative medium for visual art and a connective tool for exploring intergenerational and intercultural experiences.

The exhibition centers around a kitchen table, the central domestic object for gatherings of family and friends. Nine artists will activate their own kitchen tables, sharing photographs, videos and stories about how they use this domestic object. These intimate glimpses into the artists’ homes simultaneously reveal a work of art and the process by which it is made.

Through a digital ingredient archive, developed in partnership with the Family Arts Museum and Ten-Fifteen Media, online visitors can participate in the exhibition by sharing recipes, anecdotes, photos and reflections related to food. Submissions will be layered with the artists’ work, creating a dynamic portal for exploring the interconnectedness of food and the communal nature of nourishing and curing the body. In this way, both artists and viewers will use those materials to honor women’s roles in the practices and traditions surrounding food.

The exhibition also features interviews and content from the Curative Collective, a group of partners that focus on food—from advocacy and social justice work, to healing and restorative self-care. These organizations help ensure that the exhibition reflects and serves their communities while sharing their arts and social change resources with NMWA’s audience. Examples of Curative Collective organizations are Black Magick Sisters, Dreaming Out Loud, Mutual Aid Apothecary, and STRŌB Apothecary, among others.