In an exhibition surveying Judy Chicago’s sixty-year career, the Nassima Landau Art Foundation presents early works from a private collection that preceded Chicago’s breakthrough, alongside drawings and textile pieces from the iconic installation The Dinner Party and works exploring the artist’s Jewish identity.
Focusing on Judy Chicago’s print-based works, the exhibition delves into the creative process of one of the most innovative artists of our time, her groundbreaking feminism, and her distinctive engagement with religion. It thus joins a wave of international retrospectives honoring Chicago in recent years, each exploring her multifaceted oeuvre from a different angle.
The exhibition displays works spanning from the 1960s to the present that have been shown internationally, along with reconceived versions of the entryway banners for The Dinner Party, which are making their debut here. The historical works are joined by three new textile pieces created especially for this Tel Aviv presentation as part of the project What If Women Ruled the World? For the first time, these banners include inscriptions in Hebrew and Arabic alongside English, inviting local communities to imagine and act for a better future. In addition to prints and textile works, video clips offer viewers a window into Chicago’s world, tracing key moments in her life and artistic journey.
Chicago has consistently set out to challenge the fundamental assumptions about what constitutes high art and who can create it. Each piece conveys her feminist, independent, and unapologetic voice. Works like The Dinner Party have transformed the way we view the past, restoring to the discourse the names and stories of women erased from history, while initiatives such as the Birth Project and Voices from the Song of Songs have brought the experiences and voices of women everywhere to the forefront.
Chicago’s innovative perspectives—rooted in Jewish values of ancestral connection, fierce politics, and loving spirituality—put Judaism and feminism at the center of the art discourse, linking them in ways not previously seen. Chicago’s fight against injustice is directed at all marginalized people as well as living creatures, and it is a radical call for humanity at large to imagine alternative realities and pursue social and political change.
The exhibition and project “Judy Chicago: What If Women Ruled the World?” are presented as part of a collaboration between the Nassima Landau Art Foundation and the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, in association with DMINTI.