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A photograph of a person in the desert holding a white umbrella. The umbrella has text around the edge that reads "End the arms race not the human race.”

Mary Kelly: To Witness the Future

Curated by

Al Miner

While pioneering and influential feminist artist Mary Kelly is best known for her 1970s conceptual art installations, Mary Kelly: To Witness The Future is the first exhibition to specifically explore her long engagement with activist movements. The exhibition brings together work made from 2005 to the present, including Kelly’s lint “paintings,” light box photographs, and video art. Visualizing the persistent impact of historical events on the nature of everyday life in the present, this work references women’s responses to key political issues in the North America and Europe starting in the 1960s and 1970s – issues that have taken on new resonance in light of current political shifts influencing the course of our own future.

Mary Kelly: To Witness The Future is organized by the Georgetown University Art Galleries, Washington, DC, with the support of Helaine Posner (C ’75). It is presented by the Art Gallery of Guelph with the generous assistance of the Office of the former University of Guelph Librarian, Rebecca Graham, as well as the Canada Council for the Arts and Ontario Arts Council.

Image: Mary Kelly, We don’t want to set the world on fire, detail, 2019, Duratrans print in LED light box, 172.4 x 115.25 x 7 cm. Courtesy of Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York.

Sponsors

The exhibition is presented by the Art Gallery of Guelph with the generous assistance of the Office of the former University Librarian, Rebecca Graham, University of Guelph, as well as the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and Ontario Arts Council.


Gallery

three lightbox photographs showing women with lights affixed to their bodies. In the leftmost photo they are standing still, and in the other two photos they are moving to make the lights appear blurred
Installation view
three red, gray, and and black framed "lint paintings" each showing a different "7 Days" magazine cover juxtaposed with an image of a detonated atomic bomb
Mary Kelly
Installation view
three lightbox photographs showing a woman holding an umbrella in the desert and two more artworks installed on a wall in the background
Installation view
three lightbox photographs showing a person holding an umbrella in the desert
Mary Kelly
Installation view
an installation view of Mary Kelly: To Witness the Future showing a black and white projection of a photo from a woman's march and a large multimedia artwork that reads "WORLD ON FIRE"
Installation view
a photo of a black and white video projection showing photos of a woman's march
Mary Kelly
WLM Demo Remix
a large-scale collage of close-ups of artworks assembled across a timeline with letters that read "WORLD ON FIRE"
Mary Kelly
World on Fire Timeline
a red "lint painting" and a gray "lint painting" each showing an altered magazine cover installed on a gallery wall
Mary Kelly
Installation view
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About the artist

Mary Kelly

American conceptual artist, feminist, educator, and writer Mary Kelly has contributed extensively to the discourse of feminism and postmodernism through her large-scale narrative installations and theoretical writings, often addressing questions of sexuality, identity and memory. Past exhibitions include retrospectives at Moderna Museet, Stockholm (2010), Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester (2011), and Centre for Contemporary Art, Warsaw (2008), as well as representation in the 2004 Whitney Biennial, the 2008 Biennale of Sydney, and Documenta 12, while her publications include Post-Partum Document (1983), Imaging Desire (1996), Rereading Post-Partum Document (1999), and Dialogue (2011). She was a recipient of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship in 2015. Currently the Judge Widney Professor at the USC Roski School of Art and Design of the University of Southern California, she was previously Professor of Art at the University of California, Los Angeles, where she was Head of Interdisciplinary Studio.


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