WOMEN TO WATCH PROGRAM

Women to Watch is a biennial exhibition program developed specifically for the National Museum of Women in the Arts national and international outreach committees. Every two years, starting in 2008, an exhibition will be held at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C. that features emerging and underrepresented women artists from the states and countries in which the museum has outreach committees. The program is designed to increase the visibility of - and the critical response to - promising women artists who are deserving of national and international attention. Each exhibition will focus on a specific medium chosen by the museum's curators. The 2008 inaugural exhibition highlights photographic works.
 
Friends of the NMWA, UK are delighted that London based photographer Elisa Sighicelli, proposed by Friends of the NMWA, UK in late 2006, has been selected by the NMWA's Head Curator Susan Fisher Sterling for exhibition.
 

Elisa Sighicelli, born in Turin, in 1968, received her MFA from the Slade School of Fine Art in London, where she lives and works today. Sighicelli explores ordinary scenes and objects through video and photography, drawing special attention to light in both its literal and depicted forms. The two photographs selected for the exhibition “Women to Watch” are from a series she produced in Shanghai of lighted advertising billboards. The products that are ordinarily promoted on these enormous screens have been edited out, leaving an abstract pattern of neon light in a gridded rectangular frame. The contrast between the monumental, rectilinear images and the shadows of cheap, commercial products draws attention to the hollow, perfect ordinariness of the structure.

Sighicelli’s photographs, while produced in editions, are unique by virtue of the artist’s thoughtful placement of neon light bulbs behind the surface of each photograph. In this way, she alters the appearance of particular areas of the image, allowing light to become more or less illusionistic or real. The lightboxes give the works the quality of being both an object (the visible electrical cord stressing its functionality) and depicted image at the same time.

Elisa Sighicelli has exhibited in a wide variety of public institutions in countries ranging from her native Italy to Australia and Israel. This exhibition at the NMWA will be her first exposure in the United States at a major public venue.

Two photographs by Elisa Sighicelli.

Left: Untitled (Blue), 2006 Partially backlit C-print on lightbox,
35.4 x 48.4 x 2 in. (90 x 123 x 5 cm) SIGHI 2006.0002.

Right: Untitled (White), 2006 Partially backlit C-print on lightbox,
48 x 48 x 2.4 in. (122 x 122 x 6 cm) SIGHI 2006.0001


GAGOSIAN GALLERY
www.gagosian.com

The upcoming exhibition will run from March 14th to June 15th 2008, and will feature eleven artists from ten countries and US states. Elisa Sighicelli's work will join photographic pieces by Valerie Belin (France), Marita Gootee (Mississippi), Tarrah Krajnak (Vermont), Joan Meyers (New Mexico), Paulina Parra (Spain), Lissa Rivera (Massachusetts), Wilke Roig (Vermont), Zoe Strauss (Pennsylvania), Tricia Moreau Sweeney (Illinois), and Jin-me Yoon (Vancouver, BC) in Washington, D.C.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Please, contact us via e-mail at: nmwa.uk@gmail.com