IN YOUR FACE:
Barbara DeGenevieve, Artist & Educator

September 13–December 7, 2024
SAIC Galleries, 33 E. Washington St.

This major retrospective honoring Chicago artist and former SAIC Professor Barbara DeGenevieve (1947–2014) marks the 10th anniversary of her death and seeks to present the many important and timely themes and strategies that her art engendered. Curated by her SAIC colleague Associate Professor Alan Labb, with support from Professor Lisa Wainwright, this exhibition, the related symposium, the student presentation, and the accompanying website explore DeGenevieve’s artistic legacy of thoughtful and provocative work and her spectacular teaching career that influenced peers and students alike. 

Despite facing challenges, including the revocation of a National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Fellowship Award in 1994, DeGenevieve embraced the label “transgressive artist” and fearlessly made work focused on sexuality, gender, pornography, censorship, race, class, and representation. Her projects often operated within the context of female desire but also tackled issues of power relations, notions of propriety, and aspects of political correctness. She knowingly worked at the edge of boundaries to systematically interrogate complex concerns and encourage herself, her students, and her audience to question the status quo. As she stated, “All of my work is intended to present questions, not answers. And it’s in the questions that it presents that I believe the art is created.”

In Your Face showcases a diverse array of DeGenevieve’s surviving photography, videos, and installations. The exhibition, developed over a five-year period, required extensive research, close analysis of her entire estate and archive, detailed cataloging of objects, and numerous conversations with colleagues, students, artists, and administrators who knew her. For the first time, the public is offered a comprehensive view of DeGenevieve’s artistic and academic practices. Her work often challenged conventional gallery etiquette, leading to her being overlooked within mainstream art venues. Nevertheless, her artistic vision and intellectual rigor have left an indelible mark on the field of art—challenging norms, provoking critical inquiry, and expanding the parameters of photographic discourse.

In addition to DeGenevieve’s main body of work, the exhibition includes a resource library in the street-level gallery, providing access to additional video works, selections from her vast book collection, interviews, articles, lectures, proof sheets, and other materials related to her life and art. In this exhibition, you will also find work by other significant artists of DeGenevieve’s generation who similarly faced censorship by the NEA, serving as an artistic context for her contemporaneous practice. A student exhibition of works responding to DeGenevieve’s legendary assignment prompts opens on November 8.

EXHIBITION GALLERY GUIDE HERE 

ILLUSTRATED EXHIBITION CHECKLIST HERE 

Aimee Beaubien, Hold Fast, 2024

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About the Curators

Alan Labb is a lens-based visual artist currently working in Chicago, IL. While earlier work focused on the dynamics between autobiography, body image, and gender, his recent work focuses on environmental justice and explores historical contextualization through site-specific projects and installations. Labb was the chair of the Photography Department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago from 2018-2024. From 2017-2021, he served as a Distinguished Visiting  Professor at the Tokyo University of the Arts. Labb’s work has been exhibited at the Setouchi Triennale (Kagawa, Japan), SF Camerawork (San Francisco, CA), Schneider Gallery (Chicago, IL), Contemporary Art Gallery (Storrs, CT), Avu Academy of Fine Arts (Prague), Temple Art Gallery (Philadelphia, PA), and Bridge Center of Contemporary Art (El Paso, TX). His work has been featured in numerous publications, including SF Camerawork Quarterly, Luna Cornea Quarterly, AfterImage, and Hyphen Magazine. His work is in the permanent collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Joan Flasch Artist Book Collection, and the University of New Mexico Art Museum.

Lisa Wainwright is a professor in SAIC’s Department of Art History, Theory and Criticism. She previously served as the Dean of Faculty and Vice President of Academic Affairs at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. For the past 15 years, Lisa has held major leadership roles for the institution including Dean of the renowned Graduate Program.

Wainwright has authored numerous articles in books and international professional journals, as well as developed an extensive list of exhibition catalogues. She has lectured on topics from Rauschenberg and the history of the found object in art, to Contemporary Art and the rise of a neo-decadent movement at the turn of the 20th century, and has curated multiple exhibitions.

Lisa Wainwright received her Bachelor of Arts, cum laude, from Vanderbilt University and earned both a Masters and a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois.

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