| Pretty Tough: Contemporary Storytelling presents the work of nine internationally and culturally diverse women, who although formally distinct, all reclaim storytelling and vintage techniques as strategies to address contemporary discourses on warfare, the environment, and female struggles. The artists focus on narrative representation and figuration. Their fairytale-like depictions are in reality reflections of underlying conflicts, played out through refined, delicate, and meticulous work that is highly labor-intensive. |  |
Mónica Ramírez-Montagut
Pretty Tough: Contemporary Storytelling presents the work of nine internationally and culturally diverse women, who although formally distinct, all reclaim storytelling and vintage techniques as strategies to address contemporary discourses on warfare, the environment, and female struggles. The artists focus on narrative representation and figuration. Their fairytale-like depictions are in reality reflections of underlying conflicts, played out through refined, delicate, and meticulous work that is highly labor-intensive.
All the artists in this exhibition use traditional or vintage techniques that are essential to the success of their concepts. By engaging traditional modes of expression, their work holds a vast universal appeal while addressing less agreeable issues that are of great relevance in today’s society. This highly stylized and crafted work—pretty—offers profound assessments of our contemporary world—tough. And relying on storytelling and updated techniques is a subversive strategy that permeates the public sphere more efficiently than any confrontational discourse.
