The best female sculptors you've never heard of
As we wait with baited breath for Rachel Whiteread's upcoming retrospective at Tate Britain, we round up five of the best female sculptors you've never heard of, but ultimately definitely should have
Born in Chicago and now based in Denver, Senga Nengudi is perhaps best known today as an active member of Studio Z, a collective of African-American artists working in Los Angeles during the Black Arts Movement.
More recently, however, Nengudi has exhibited her radical and abstract sand-filled, stretched and knotted nylon tights sculptures at London's prestigious White Cube Gallery and at Tate Modern.
On display in the closing room of Tate's current exhibition Soul of a Nation, Negundi's, Internal II 1977, is made from a pair of stretched 'flesh coloured' nylon tights, which eerily evokes a truncated spider's web. The questions evoked by Nengudi's sculptures are endless.
But when thinking of the symbolism associated with the sculpture and a spider's web, death trap, struggle, and supreme ruler come to mind. While Negundi's message may not be as extreme as this, the use of a 'flesh' pair of tights in this exhibition – once a standard western marker of femininity and professionalism – serves as a reminder that Black women do not conform to a white standard of beauty.
