Judy Chicago and Stanley Whitney will receive their first major exhibitions in China.
An arts foundation in Shanghai will put on a joint exhibition by Judy Chicago and Stanley Whitney, marking their first major exhibitions in China. The show, titled “Call and Response,” will be presented at the West Bund Art and Design Fair by the Longlati Foundation, a newly founded Shanghai-based organization dedicated to supporting emerging and under-recognized artists, which will open a physical space in the city’s bustling West Bund district next year.
“Call and Response” features 22 works by the artists, including Chicago’s EU 22 Earth Birth (1983) from her iconic “Birth Project” series, which features vivid, contorted visions of childbirth rendered in vibrant stitchwork and airbrushed fabric. Meanwhile, a number of new works figure into Whitney’s presentation, such as the geometric Listening to the Poets (2020) or the “No to Prison Life” series of works on paper, which debuted as part of an online exhibition at Lisson Gallery this past summer.
Launched by Singapore investor David Su and Chinese artist Chen Zihao, the Longlati Foundation was created in order to dedicate $450,000 a year to support the development of Chinese artists born after 1990. The organization’s planned physical space, set to open in May of 2021, will occupy some 7,500 square feet at the Art Tower in Shanghai’s West Bund arts district in two separate exhibition spaces, one of which will be dedicated specifically to showcasing works by female artists from around the world.
Chicago, who was named as one of Artsy’s Most Influential Artists of 2018, was set to receive the first retrospective of her work this past May at San Francisco’s de Young Museum, but the show has been delayed until the summer of 2021. According to Artsy data, both Chicago and Whitney have seen a steady rise in inquiries on the platform over the past five years, with both artists seeing a pronounced leap in demand from 2019 to 2020.
