The National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA) presents New Worlds: Women to Watch 2024, the largest edition of the museum’s longstanding series featuring international emerging artists. The exhibition opened April 14 and highlights the work of 28 visionary artists who imagine alternate realities. With perspectives that shift across geographies, cultural viewpoints and mediums, the artists inspire viewers to envision different futures. New Worlds: Women to Watch 2024 is on view through August 11, 2024.
During the past few years, artists have seen the world transformed by a global pandemic, political division, climate change and advocacy for social reform. Their responses to these extraordinary times—in paintings, sculpture, photography, installation, video and textiles—highlight their visions for creating or re-creating a new world, whether exploring facets of the past, present or future. The exhibition will be accompanied by performances and artist talks, to be announced in the coming months.
New Worlds: Women to Watch 2024 opens at National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C.
“The artists in New Worlds, many who have created work specifically for this exhibition, are being recognized for challenging today’s status quo, encouraging us to see issues from multiple viewpoints and envisioning different futures than most of the rest of us can possibly imagine,” said NMWA Director Susan Fisher Sterling.
Some artists consider how public and private spaces are gendered, offering alternatives to the status quo. Others explore the idea of place itself, addressing the movement of people across geographies, generations and even planes of existence. Several artists use digital strategies to probe topics such as environmental values, bioethics and artificial intelligence. Artists also look to the power of communities to shape identity or question the nature of time, tradition and collective memory.
New Worlds: Women to Watch 2024 catalog, featuring Which End is Up? detail on cover.
Artist Aimée Papazian with her piece, Which End is Up?, exhibited in New Worlds: Women to Watch 2024 at the National Museum of Women in Arts in Washington, D.C.
Which End is Up? gallery label
The Arkansas Committee of the National Museum of Women in the Arts (ACNMWA) is represented in the exhibition by Aimée Papazian, with Which End is Up? This piece was part of the Arkansas Women to Watch 2023: New Worlds exhibition that toured the state in 2023.
(Left to right) Artist Aimée Papazian with Marilynn Porter, Demara Titzer and Mary Harding Talbot, members of the Arkansas Committee of the National Museum of Women in the Arts, at an event during the National Museum of Women in the Arts Committee Conference in Washington, D.C.
“Our Arkansas Women to Watch 2023: New Worlds tour presents a short list of Arkansas women artists around the state, introducing them in cities where they haven’t been shown. The Women’s Museum in Washington, D.C. then includes one of the artists in its internationally celebrated Women to Watch exhibition,” said ACNMWA President MaryRoss Taylor. “This year, our artist, Aimée Papazian, is featured on the cover of the exhibition catalog and it’s her first museum show, a huge milestone! Being nominated by our invited curator and highlighted by an internationally recognized museum helps Arkansas artists compete for grants, galleries and jobs.”
Presented every three years, the Women to Watch series is a dynamic collaboration between the museum and its global network of outreach committees. The national and international committees participating in New Worlds worked with curators in their regions to create shortlists of artists. From this list, NMWA curators selected the artists and works to exhibit at the museum. The second major exhibition after NMWA’s reopening from a transformative multi-year renovation, New Worlds will immerse visitors in the museum’s renewed gallery spaces. The exhibition features seven works created specifically for NMWA, including several site-specific installations.
Which End is Up?
Representing the museum’s outreach committees, New Worlds features works by Irina Kirchuk (Argentina), Saskia Jordá (Arizona), Aimée Papazian (Arkansas), Nicki Green (Northern California), April Banks (Southern California), Meryl McMaster (Canada), Francisca Rojas Pohlhammer (Chile), Ana María Hernando (Colorado), Randa Maroufi (France), Marianna Dixon Williams (Georgia), Sophia Pompéry (Germany), Rajyashri Goody (India), Hannan Abu-Hussein (Israel), Irene Fenara (Italy), Ai Hasegawa (Japan), Mona Cliff/HanukGahNé (Spotted Cloud) (Greater Kansas City Area), Daniela Rivera (Massachusetts), SHAN Wallace (Mid-Atlantic Region), Alexis McGrigg (Mississippi), Eliza Naranjo Morse (New Mexico), Amanda Phingbodhipakkiya (New York), Migiwa Orimo (Ohio), Graciela Arias Salazar (Peru), Marina Vargas (Spain), Arely Morales (Texas), Noémie Goudal (U.K.), Molly Vaughan (Washington) and Sarah Ortegon HighWalking (Wyoming).
“We thank Aimée for sharing her singular vision with NMWA and its visitors and thank the Arkansas Committee for connecting us to a wonderfully talented and exciting ‘new’ artist!” said Kathryn Wat, Deputy Director for Art, Programs and Public Engagement/Chief Curator at the National Museum of Women in the Arts.
Artist Aimée Papazian
Artist statement from Aimée Papazian about her piece in New Worlds: Women to Watch 2024 at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C.
As the fabric of the world unravels, Which End is Up? offers an escapist alternate land using elements borrowed from maps and architectural models. Built of ceramic, wood, and wire, this landscape of islands whose contours are shaded in common “neutrals” of house paint forms a backdrop rounded out by soft white houses, green forests, and puffy clouds. Ghostly migrating cars (cast from childhood toys and jewelry charms) stand in for herds, schools, and flocks of animals. The panels themselves can be shuffled in different variations and will still match up, creating a self-contained world where there is no way out. The surface whimsy of this piece masks a land where mass-produced machines have displaced almost all the animals, which begs the question: what is the cost of this calm suburban landscape with its many “neutral” shades of white, and who pays it?
Founded in 1989 and celebrating its 35th year, ACNMWA is a nonprofit volunteer organization that highlights the accomplishments of Arkansas women artists and shares the groundbreaking work of the National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA) in Washington, D.C., with a statewide audience. For more information, visit acnmwa.org. For more information on NMWA, visit nmwa.org.