Chicago, Illinois - Woman Made Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of 'Cultural Memory: Transdiasporic Art Practices,' a group show with art in a variety of media by 23 women, and solo shows by Pritika Chowdhry and Crisanta de Guzman. The Artisan Gallery continues with its current 'Materiality' group exhibition.

Please join us at the artist reception on Friday, September 4 from 6 to 9 p.m., at 685 N. Milwaukee Avenue in Chicago. Works will be on display through Saturday, October 10, 2009.

In addition to group and solo exhibitions, Woman Made presents a poetry reading, 'Writing the Transdiasporic Experience' on Sunday, October 4, from 2 to 4 p.m. The event is hosted by WMG's Poetry Event Coordinator Nina Corwin.

Regular Gallery hours are Wednesday, Thursday and Friday from 12 to 7 p.m., and Saturday and Sunday from 12 to 4 p.m.

The artists in this show have each taken on subject matters that are difficult and perhaps even controversial, but their artistic practices show a critical engagement with their specific material and a commitment to building bridges across cultural and national barriers through the visual arts. The works reveal a broad range of engagements with memory - some are about collective memories of large-scale traumas, some are about familial or generational memories, and others are about individual memories. These acts of remembrance reference and create connections between the geopolitics of India, Korea, Latvia, Sri Lanka, Germany, America, Pakistan, Iran, Japan, and Trinidad, among others.

Juror Pritika Chowdhry was born and raised in India. She moved to the U.S. in 1999, worked as a computer engineer for several years, and then returned to school to earn her MFA in Ceramics and Sculpture from the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Chowdhry has founded the Partition Memorial Project, which exists as temporary art exhibits as well as a digital archive, www.partitionmemorialproject.org. She is the recipient of a Vilas International Travel Fellowship, an Edith and Sinaiko Frank Fellowship for a Woman in the Arts, a Wisconsin Arts Board grant, a City of Madison project grant, and a Dane County Commission grant. Chowdhry's works are in the "Erasing Borders 2009" traveling exhibit organized by the Indo-American Arts Council, and will be shown at the Queens Museum in New York City, the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts project space in NYC, the Visual Arts Center of New Jersey, the Dowd Fine Arts Gallery in SUNY-Cortland, and the Gallery at Penn College, Pennsylvania. Chowdry's solo show, "Remembering the Crooked Line," will be on exhibit concurrently.

Participating artists are Nandini Chirimar, Sun H. Choi, Anda Dubinskis, Frances Ferdinands, Karen Frostig, Sharon Harper, Katherine Harriott, Juarez Hawkins, Tehniyet Hussain, Shalalae Jamil, Naomi Kasumi, Susan Lenz, Judith G. Levy, Regina Mamou, Shaghayegh Mazloomi, Samanta Batra Mehta, Neli Ouzounova, Darlene Wesenberg Rzezotarski, Karina Schafer, Romy Scheroder, Pallavi Sharma, and Kari Souders.

The Artist Reception is on September 4 from 6 to 9 p.m., and works will be up through October 10, 2009.

Images: (top to bottom) Artworks by Katherine Harriott and Anda Dubinskis

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Woman Made Gallery is proud to present Pritika Chowdhry in her solo exhibition, "Remembering the Crooked Line," a multi-part installation functioning as an archive that references a series of cross-cultural motifs, from childhood memory, to the construction of identity, to the notion of physical, conceptual, collective and individual space. Chowdhry utilizes various metaphors to illustrate the ways in which history and and memory have shaped our understanding of who we are and where we come from.

In this body of work Chowdhry uses childhood games, specifically, Ring-a-Ring-a-Roses and kite flying, to engage with these large histories from a personal and individual place. "I think of maps as the skin of the nation, and clothing as the skin of the absent body. In each of these objects, I graft maps on these garments, which have been made to look and feel like skin," Chowdhry notes.

Exhibition Dates: Sept. 4 - Oct. 10, 2009
Artist's Reception: Sept. 4, 2009 - 6-9 p.m.

Image: 'Ring-a-Ring-a-Roses, Part I' (Detail View) - tassar and raw silk, goddess hair, hand embroidered, wax, by Pritika Chowdhry

An economist by training, de Guzman alludes to current issues like immigration, pollution, and the economic crisis. The sculptures are created out of non-traditional media and then photographed and combined with appropriated images in fictional, often surreal narratives. Her beginnings in sculpture have translated into a 2-D methodology of digital collage.

Exhibition Dates: Sept. 4 - Oct. 10, 2009
Artist's Reception: Sept. 4, 2009 - 6-9 p.m.

Image: 'Overhang' - color print, by Crisanta de Guzman

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Artisans whose work is included in this exhibition are Sarah C. Chapman, Anita Feng, Sandra Golbert, Dorothy Hughes, Mary Patton, Jessica Poser, Elizabeth Rhoads Read, Kelly Rush, Suzanne Shafer- Wilson, Peggy Skemp, and Momoko Usami.

Artisan Gallery Curator Margaret Denny is a Ph.D. Candidate at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She teaches at both Columbia College and the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her recent publications include essays in the anthology, The Spaces and Places of Fashion 1800-2007, and the Journal of Illinois History. Denny is a former Terra Foundation fellow and has worked at the Art Institute of Chicago and the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum.

Works will be on exhibit through October 10, 2009.

Image: 'Shell Pendant Necklaces,' by Sarah C. Chapman

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Join curator Nina Corwin and a group of poets for a special reading in conjunction with the current group and solo shows.

The reading takes place on October 4, 2009 from 2 to 4 p.m at Woman Made Gallery, 685 N. Milwaukee Ave., Chicago, IL 60642. The event is free to the public, and refreshments will be served.

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About Woman Made Gallery

Woman Made Gallery is a tax-exempt, not-for-profit organization founded in 1992. Its goal is to support women in the arts by providing opportunities, awareness, and advocacy. It specifically accomplishes this through monthly thematic exhibitions which raise public awareness and recognition of women's cultural contributions.

Woman Made Gallery is supported in part by grants from the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency; a CityArts Program II grant from the City of Chicago, Department of Cultural Affairs; the Arts Work Fund for Organizational Development, a donor-advised fund of the Chicago Community Foundation; the Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation; Foundation; the Efroymson Fund, a CICF Fund; a major anonymous donor; and the generosity of its members and contributors.