Kathryn Andrews
In fall 2024, in conjunction with the forthcoming United States presidential election, Los Angeles-based artist Kathryn Andrews will premiere a site-specific outdoor project on ICA LA’s 7th Street facade. With a conceptual practice grounded in gender theory, Andrews creates work that engages the aesthetics and technologies of Hollywood cinema, political propaganda, and art history to unearth the complex relationships between people, culture, and power that structure the violent fictions of our everyday lives.
Titled Victoria Woodhull, Belva Ann Lockwood, Abigail Scott Duniway […] (2020-Ongoing), Andrews’ work at ICA LA addresses gender disparity in the presidential electoral process. Featured within the work are the names of women who have run for U.S. president such as Shirley Chisholm, the first Black woman elected to Congress; Patsy Mink, the author of the nation’s Title IX civil rights law; and Gloria La Riva, the first Latinx woman to run for President in 1992. While honoring these historical figures who have challenged a political system designed for their failure, within Andrews’ artwork, this long list of women is overlaid atop the faces of widely recognizable men who have served as president—ranging from Dwight D. Eisenhower to Barack Obama to Joe Biden—a glaring juxtaposition that further underscores the extreme gender bias in American politics.
Chronicling the nearly 150 years of women vying for the presidential seat—beginning with Victoria Woodhull in 1872 before women had the right to vote—Kathryn Andrews’s work serves as an active record of the persistent and systemic sexism in American politics and a call for the urgent need for change. The project began in 2020 and reoccurs every four years with updated names and faces, displayed publicly until a woman is elected President. With the recent endorsements of Vice President Kamala Harris as the 2024 Democratic nominee, such a reality feels that much closer.
Kathryn Andrews (b. 1973, Alabama) is an artist based in Los Angeles working across the mediums of sculpture, printmaking, and performance. She received a BA from Duke University in 1995; an MFA from Art Center College of Design, Pasadena in 2003; and an MA in Clinical Psychology from Antioch University in 2023. As an extension of her artistic practice, Andrews is also the founder of The Judith Center, an organization that engages artists, activists, scientist from across disciplines in conversations and actions to advocate for gender equality. She has been the subject of solo exhibitions at the DePaul Art Museum, Chicago (2020), MSU Broad Art Museum, Michigan State University, East Lansing (2017); High Line, New York (2016); Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas (2016); the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (2015); Bass Museum of Art, Miami (2014); and Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Germany (2013). Andrews has also been included in numerous group exhibitions at institutions such as Kunstmuseum Thun, Switzerland; the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, Germany; Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, Durham, North Carolina; Yuz Museum, Shanghai; Aïshti Foundation, Beirut; Rubell Family Collection, Miami; Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing; and more. Her work is in the permanent collections of the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Germany; Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas; Nasher Museum of Art, Durham, North Carolina; and the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, among others.