From its debut as a 2020 commission at DePaul Art Museum in Chicago leading up to that year’s US presidential election to its presentation on BAMPFA’s Outdoor Screen in anticipation of the upcoming 2024 presidential election, Los Angeles–based artist Kathryn Andrews’s work Victoria Woodhull, Belva Ann Lockwood, Abigail Scott Duniway [ . . . ] (2020–ongoing) addresses the gender disparity among US presidents. Chronicling nearly 150 years of women vying for the presidential seat, Andrews’s work serves as an active record of the persistent and systemic sexism in American politics and a call for the urgent need for change.
Animated for the first time for BAMPFA’s presentation, the video features the names of women who have run for US president scrolling across the faces of iconic men who have served as president, such as John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and Barack Obama. The work features all women candidates, from Victoria Woodhull, a suffragette leader and the first woman to run for president; Shirley Chisholm, the first African American woman to run for president; and actress Gracie Allen, whose publicity stunt turned into a real campaign; to more recent contenders such as Elizabeth Warren, Jill Stein, Hilary Clinton, and Kamala Harris.
The project will be displayed publicly in election years until a woman becomes president of the United States. Depending on this year’s election results, the project will close the day after the first woman becomes president of the United States or a month later, on December 6, 2024, to signal the ongoing gender gap. Another version of this project is on view this fall at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles.
