The Medea Insurrection: Radical Women Artists Behind the Iron Curtain @ Wende Museum in Los Angeles

Installation view of The Medea Insurrection: Radical Women Artists Behind the Iron Curtain, Wende Museum, Culver City, California. Courtesy of the Wende Museum. Photography: Dany Naierman.

Installation view of The Medea Insurrection: Radical Women Artists Behind the Iron Curtain, Wende Museum, Culver City, California. Courtesy of the Wende Museum. Photography: Dany Naierman.

Installation view of The Medea Insurrection: Radical Women Artists Behind the Iron Curtain, Wende Museum, Culver City, California. Courtesy of the Wende Museum. Photography: Dany Naierman.

Installation view of The Medea Insurrection: Radical Women Artists Behind the Iron Curtain, Wende Museum, Culver City, California. Courtesy of the Wende Museum. Photography: Dany Naierman.

Installation view of The Medea Insurrection: Radical Women Artists Behind the Iron Curtain, Wende Museum, Culver City, California. Courtesy of the Wende Museum. Photography: Dany Naierman.

Installation view of The Medea Insurrection: Radical Women Artists Behind the Iron Curtain, Wende Museum, Culver City, California. Courtesy of the Wende Museum. Photography: Dany Naierman.

Working under the radar of the authorities that defined acceptable art, radical women artists in the former Eastern Bloc challenged both socialist and bourgeois ideals and power, as well as a male-dominated canon. Their work was innovative, and the sheer act of making it was a risk. Yet even today, little is known about these courageous and critical artists.

The Medea Insurrection introduces viewers to multifaceted, multifarious work by artists including sculptor and textile artist Magdalena Abakanowicz (Poland); photographers Sibylle Bergemann (East Germany), Evelyn Richter (East Germany), Zofia Rydet (Poland), and Gundula Schulze-Eldowy (East Germany); mixed-media artists Orshi Drozdik (Hungary) and Anna Daučíková (Czechoslovakia); painter and graphic artist Angela Hampel (East Germany); sound and performance artist Katalin Ladik (Hungary); conceptual artist Natalia LL (Poland); and painter and graphic artist Karla Woisnitza (East Germany).

The Medea Insurrection is on view through April 5, 2020 at the Wende Museum 10808 Culver Boulevard. photographs by Dany Naierman courtesy of the museum.