Making Their Mark: Works from the Shah Garg Collection considers the historical contributions of, formal and material breakthroughs by, and intergenerational relationships fostered among women artists over the last eight decades. Assembling seventy-nine works made by sixty-nine different artists between 1946 and today, the exhibition focuses on the myriad ways in which women explored, expanded, and interrogated the boundaries of abstract art to spark conversations about representation, identity, and power. Sculpture, painting, installation, textiles, pottery, and mixed media works all converge to present the rich and interwoven stories of twentieth and twenty-first century abstraction as told by women creators. 

The exhibition spotlights the oft-overlooked accomplishments and correspondences of women artists across time and space. It asks us to consider an art history defined by its openness to sympathies and attractions rather than by exclusion or hierarchy. Pioneering examples of post-war abstraction—including early works by Janet Sobel, Judy Chicago, and Mary Corse—are shown alongside compositions by leading contemporary artists such as Julie Mehretu, Lorna Simpson, and Aria Dean to reconsider the presumed “purity” of non-objective forms. Paintings and mixed media works by Christina Quarles, Tschabalala Self, and Firelei Báez blur the boundaries between abstraction and figuration, complicating traditional standards of portraiture, beauty, and taste.  

Many works featured in Making Their Mark resist traditional siloing, stitching together the once distinct factions of art and craft, “major” and “minor” arts. Unburdened by obsolete categorization, these objects freely communicate the personal, political, and innovative visions of their creators. Connections between the handmade and digital emerge in the various forms of piecework employed in Faith Ringgold’s quilts, Howardena Pindell’s collages, and the pixelated, hypermediated canvases made by Jacqueline Humphries and Anicka Yi. Works by the Freedom Quilting Bee, Françoise Grossen, and Sheila Hicks explore irregular geometries and eccentric abstractions via fabric and fiber. 

Featuring a diverse selection of artists and mediums, Making Their Mark demonstrates the countless ways women creators have interpreted and applied the principles of abstraction in their work throughout the later twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.