In the recent history of feminist art in North America, fraught as it is with controversy, tension, and cognizant dissent, artist Judy Chicago has gained a reputation as a maverick. She is represented in the pages of canonical art history largely by her controversial project, The Dinner Party. At the time of its debut in 1979, many critics and even fellow feminist artists objected to the heavy-handed imagery (vaginas on plates) and the universal representation of female experience; critiques that Chicago has received throughout much of her artistic career. This monumental work in ceramic, needlework and other craft celebrates female achievement with decorative place settings around a large triangular banquet table. Now on permanent display at the Brooklyn Museum's Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, The Dinner Party is a testament to Chicago's controversial contributions to feminist and post-modernist art. If Women Ruled the World: Judy Chicago in Thread is a collaboration between Toronto's Textile Museum of Canada and the Art Gallery of Calgary to bring together the first ever survey of Chicago's needle and textile art. Curated by Toronto-based artist and curator Allyson Mitchell, it is an ambitious attempt to provide a broader perspective on Chicago's life and work and to situate it within the context of second-wave and contemporary feminist art.

The galleries of the Art Gallery of Calgary are well-suited to the display of Chicago's monumental tapestries and textiles works. The large space and open-concept floor plan of the first floor allow her expansive tapestries room to breathe and to be in dialogue with works on the other floors. Characteristic of Chicago's oeuvre, the works gathered in this show are simultaneously celebrations of the joy and lamentations of the agony of femininity and humanity.

Judy Chicago, The Creation, 1984. Collection: Audrey and Robert Cowan. Photo copyright Donald Woodman.

Not skilled in needlework herself, Chicago relies upon groups of hired women to complete many of her projects, not only for their skills but for their personal experiences and knowledge.1 Marianne Elder, Senior Art Curator at The Art Gallery of Calgary states that the show "looks beyond the relationship of these works to Judy Chicago's legacy as a feminist artist...[to] the manner in which her desire to engage viewers in ideas of equality and community have changed and progressed."2 In keeping with this impetus, the Interpretive Centre on the mezzanine level of the gallery focuses on Chicago's technique of collaboration and cooperation. The space displays information about Chicago's desire to foster and sustain a community of women artists and cultural producers. The foundation of these communities is the desire to convey important social messages through images. Together these communities reveal conviction, faith, and sense of purpose in realizing such painstaking and time consuming projects as Chicago's textile works.

Judy Chicago, Earth Birth, 1983. Collection: Through The Flower. Photo copyright Donald Woodman.

Perhaps the most transparent collaborative process is found in the works in the Top Gallery. The labels credit each artist, describing their contribution to the work in detail. All from the late 1990s and 2000, these works address a wide range of themes; racism, religious conflict, globalization, famine, poverty, healthcare, the environment, family. However, the Top Gallery feels like an afterthought; tacked on to the more cohesive display of monumental tapestries downstairs. The works here feel a bit marooned at the top of two flights of stairs, separated from the three open-concept floors below by a closed staircase. As a case in point, I overheard one misled viewer brush them off, commenting to his companion that, "These aren't her works," before heading back downstairs. The Top Gallery also houses the accompanying group exhibition, She Will Always be Younger than Us. This show of new feminist work articulates a dialogue between young female artists and feminist foremothers such as Chicago. It is an appropriate yet underemphasized counterpoint to the monumental solo retrospective. The works that fill the top floor, She Will Always be Younger than Us and Chicago's later works, are somewhat removed from the experience of the works in the three larger galleries below; the overall impression conveyed by these three more prominent spaces is the monumentality of the artist-genius, albeit reworked in vaginal and feminist iconography. The monumentality of the main spaces seems to overpower curatorial intentions -best articulated in the Top Gallery- to provide a broader perspective on Chicago's collaborations and feminist community.

Judy Chicago, Birth Tear, 1982. Collection: The Albuquerque Museum. Photo: Through The Flower Archives.

Granted, as curator Allyson Mitchell points out, needlework is traditionally used to teach girls to think small, "Chicago's work turns this sentiment on its head, reorienting craft as a means to imagine other worlds, to foster dialogue and to engender community among its practitioners."3 Although daunting, perhaps it is not too much to ask of viewers to explore the quiet corners and nuances of Chicago's monumental vaginas and goddesses; and the initimacy of the Top Gallery. The feminists of the 1970's took the credo of core femininity as a reaction against a history of male iconography. While such universalizing has since come under attack in favour of more carefully nuanced understandings of the body and sexuality, as I sat in a quiet, meditative corner of the gallery contemplating Chicago's "Birth Tear/Tear" (1985) I began to see the power of starting from personal experience and trauma as a means to reach out to all those who are suffering; to be a voice for all those who have been silenced. It is in such quiet corners, including the documentaries on Chicago's life and work, that the show succeeds in deconstructing the conception of Chicago's work as essentializing. Such spaces cast light on her life and worldview and trace the evolution of Chicago's vision over a 40-year career that is well worth celebrating.

1. Allyson Mitchell, "A Call to Arms," In Exh Cat. When Women Rule The World: Judy Chicago in Thread, Toronto, Textile Museum of Canada; Calgary, Art Gallery of Calgary. 2009: 16.
2. Marianne Elder, Senior Art Curator, The Art Gallery of Calgary, "If Women Ruled the World: Judy Chicago in Thread," Exhibition Catalogue insert, When Women Rule The World: Judy Chicago in Thread, Toronto, Textile Museum of Canada; Calgary, Art Gallery of Calgary: 2009.
3. Mitchell, 2009: 18.