Since the early 1990s, Patricia Cronin has been reflecting the world back at itself in her paintings, sculptures, and installations, asserting her own feminist, lesbian perspective, and unflinchingly critiquing gender, marriage, and political inequalities. Steeped in art history, and influenced by Philip Pearlstein and Lee Bontecou and the personal politics in the work of Joan Semmel and Carolee Schneemann, Cronin addresses lesbianism and female sexuality in her work. As she describes: “Besides reinvigorating traditional forms and injecting my specific contemporary political content, I think the main question all throughout my work—my career—has been: whose life has value? Whose body has value? And who decides?” Memorial to a Marriage (2002) exemplifies Cronin’s approach. Tender and daring, it is a gravestone showing herself and her partner, Deborah Kass, sleeping in loving embrace in bed—defiantly memorializing their illegalized love.