‘Women Pullling at the Threads of Social Discourse’ Opens at Jewish Museum Milwaukee

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Prejudice is woven into the fabric of society. That’s the underlying message of “Women Pulling at the Threads of Social Discourse,” the fibrous new exhibition at Jewish Museum Milwaukee (JMM). At the surface level, the exhibit’s agenda is “to debunk the misconceptions surrounding fiber arts, relegated as ‘easy women’s work,’ a craft, not a fine art form,” says Molly Dubin, the museum’s curator.

“Women Pulling at the Threads” consists of dozens of woven and sewn artifacts by female artists. “We have two men in the exhibit—we didn’t want to be exclusionary!” Dubin says. The Justice Bells, a set of three large hanging lampshades fashioned to resemble the Liberty Bell (or the restrictive hoop skirts once worn by women) was made a sister-brother duo, Cuban Americans Alina Rodriguez Rojo and Damian Rojo. The cloth is covered in cryptic references to 1920s America—including the dollar bill’s all-seeing eye—at the time when women gained the right to vote. The other male contributor, Israeli American Jac Lahav, produced Sojourner, a portrait in velvet, acrylic and felt of Sojourner Truth, the Black Abolitionist.

“Women Pulling at the Threads” is an almost entirely original exhibit created by JMM in collaboration with the Contemporary Art Modern Project (CAMP), a Miami-based organization focused on emerging and mid-level artists. Nothing in “Women Pulling at the Threads” is older than 2019 and the oldest pieces were produced for a CAMP exhibit intended for the 2020 centennial of women gaining voting rights in the U.S. To expand and localize the exhibit, JMM “put out a call to Midwest fiber artists,” Dubin says. The majority of artists accepted were from Wisconsin, including many from Milwaukee.

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The exhibit at JMM marks the first time most of the pieces have been displayed. They range in style, material and subject. Blunt messages shared the walls with subtlety. Representational pieces include Abigail Engstrand’s Glacial Justice, (the title expressing the slow pace of change) gathers wool, cotton, silk and other materials to form portraits of prominent women such as Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Greta Thunberg and Katanji Brown Jackson. By contrast, Sooo-z Mastropietro’s Spinsters is abstract expressionism, the fiber analog to a drip painting, comprehensible through its title, an ironic reference to the old term for unmarried women, given nothing to do but knit and reflect.

Many of the works in “Women Pulling at the Threads,” produced during the past year, are reactions to the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision. Coat hangers are in evidence. However, other current topics are taken up. Judy Zoelzer Levine’s Life in Limbo is a quilt of cotton, linen, wool and synthetic fibers depicting migrants’ journey, many of them downtrodden in aspect. Stitching along the quilt’s bottom spells out the unhappy reasons for their journey, including Persecution, Poverty, Climate, Famine, Hunger, Disease, Flooding and Dictatorship. Judy Dubrosky’s Privacy Sweater is three dimensional—a woman’s effigy clad in a sweater of many colors juts out from a gray fiber backdrop adorned with looming black cameras. The theme is surveillance, the implication that AI could track the movement of women seeking abortions across state lines.

Privacy Sweater is composed from pieces of many sweaters, machine and hand made. “Many of the artists were interested in repurposing materials, including clothes that have their own history, objects imbued with their own story, made part of a contemporary conversation,” Dubin says.

Perhaps the most striking artwork in “Women Pulling at the Threads” is the largest. Shelly McCoy’s Allegory of Sisterhood II: What If stretches from nearly ceiling to floor in the museum’s great hall. The installation is sewn in part from secondhand red and white skirts with a selection of white brasiers against a blue field, forming a humorous rendition of the American flag.

The issues addressed in much of “Women Pulling at the Threads” are “fundamental to the topics we’ve always explored, giving voice to underheard groups” Dubin says, referring to JMM’s programming history.

“Women Pulling at the Threads of Social Discourse” runs Sept. 8-Dec. 31 at Jewish Museum Milwaukee, 1360 N. Prospect Ave. The exhibit will be accompanied by many special events and discussions. For more, visit jewishmuseummilwaukee.org.