A fist-sized lump of clay, tied up with red string. A scatter of white pebbles on the floor and an arrangement of sewn-together scraps of textile dangling from the ceiling. Paintings that have been left to decay underground and a single vertical line, drawn in Indian ink, down the middle of an otherwise empty piece of paper. The isolated line, by Brazilian artist Maria Laet, thickens erratically as it descends. As if it were a test, you can’t always tell the slight from the significant in Women’s Work Is Never Done, an exhibition of friendships and affinities, jostling collisions and alarming swerves.
Revisiting a number of earlier projects mounted by Belgian curator Catherine de Zegher, Women’s Work Is Never Done begins with a number of artists who appeared in her 1996 exhibition Inside the Visible, which spanned 60 years and featured over 250 works by 37 women from around the world. Inside the Visible was a show whose works were made “in, of, and from the feminine”. So it is with her later projects, as she revisits a number of artists from that show and her subsequent focusing on drawing and eco-feminism, all of which stress the relational aspects of art making: De Zegher talks about “the way one handles materials, with respect and interaction, and the way we connect with people in society”.
