Women’s History Month is so much more than an obtuse and lackluster marketing show of support for women it sometimes feels in our inboxes. Instead, this month is an opportunity for reflection and purposeful homage to the women who paved the way to everyday freedoms and continue to do so. If nothing else, the motive behind the International Women’s Day is to celebrate and remember—to celebrate womanhood, societal progress and the intricate lives we’ve created for ourselves, and to remember the women who succeeded and created despite setbacks.
While this type of introspection and admiration for half of the world’s population shouldn’t be limited to just one day or even one month per year, we’ll willingly take the opportunity to celebrate brilliant women and the creations they’ve birthed into existence. Here, we’ve compiled a diverse assemblage of some of the world’s most influential artists, musicians, writers, actors and curators. Revisit their stories from the pages of Cultured.
Faith Ringgold’s Lifetime Harnessing Black Power and Women’s Liberation
91-year-old painter Faith Ringgold’s legacy is one of constructing and mobilizing power and the movement for liberation. Even in her earliest work, including “The Feminist Series”and “American People Series,” the artist confronts race relations and the absence of Black women’s voices from 1960s politics and society.
Her life’s work, which ranges from paintings to quilts to sculpture, is currently on display at the New Museum in New York. Her work was often inspired by the writing of Bell Hooks and James Baldwin as well as the scenes from growing up during the tail end of the Harlem Renaissance.
Amanda Gorman Has a Way with Words
At just 24 years old, Amanda Gorman has earned a wide range of titles: inaugural poet, first youth poet laureate, Harvard graduate, author and public speaker. In 2018, Alix Browne spoke with her for Cultured about her prolific yet just begun career. Her words have certainly stuck with us since then.
In her poem, “Making Mountains as We Run,” Gorman writes, “When the mind is free/ When we take another look/ We see that the books are open/ The silence of a blank page broken/ By truth being shared, written, spoken…”
Simone Leigh Takes on The Guggenheim
Simone Leigh was the first Black artist to win the Guggenheim’s Hugo Boss Prize and will be representing the United States at this year’s Venice Biennale, accolades that culminate a decade of successes for a talent who has acknowledged and uplifted the Black female experience throughout her career. For Cultured, Elizabeth Karp-Evans spoke with Leigh about her 2019 Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation exhibit, “Loophole of Retreat,” which takes its title from a chapter in Harriet Jacob’s 1861 memoir Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl.
“If you consider the state of black women to be de facto some form of incarceration, the point of view of ‘Loophole of Retreat’ is one of the best examples of a quality of blackness,” said Leigh to Karp-Evans. “Maybe you could call it make-a-way-out-of no-way-ism.”
On Her Order: Denise Scott Brown
At 90 years old, Denise Scott Brown is an architecture icon. The Zambia-born, South Africa-raised, Philadelphia-based architect, urban planner and theorist has received a slew of major awards in the predominantly male profession fighting through the industry’s sexism to receive individual recognition for her work, separate from her equally brilliant husband.
“It would be a disservice to the breadth and complexity of Scott Brown’s ideas and projects to credit her chiefly as an instigator of architecture’s gender debate—all along she’s been a prolific writer, designer and pedagogue just as well,” wrote Anna Kats in Cultured’s Fall 2019 issue. And she’s been an inspiration to many in the field today.
Art & Science with Anicka Yi
Widely known for sculpting scents and incorporating funghi, microbiology and the sciences into her work, experimental artist Anicka Yi was awarded the Guggenheim’s Hugo Boss Prize in 2016 and spoke with writer Daniel Kunitz about her subsequent exhibit at the museum the following year. For “Life is Cheap,” Yi worked with a team of molecular biologists and chemists to create art that combines nature with technological forces to help us rework our assumptions about race, gender and class.
“A lot of my work incorporates pretty volatile and unstable materials,” she explained, “and it doesn’t always manifest the way it starts out.”
Broad City's Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer Bring the Art World Back to Earth
Writers, actors and producers Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer created the hit show Broad City as a realistic, refreshing and certainly hilarious account of being a post-grad artist trying to scrounge up a living in New York City. Instead of glorifying the art world, the show gave viewers an appreciation of artists trying to make it work, despite it all.
“The pursuit of art on the show for my character is so similar to my pursuit of art in real life,” Jacobson said in Cultured in 2019. “The art and film worlds are such daunting environments in which to try to make it. I think part of the reason people liked Broad City is because it was this meta-experience of the characters being sincere, and we are.”
Youth Collective Brujas Is Changing the Game
Brujas is a feminist, skate, streetwear brand hailing from Washington Heights, Manhattan. It was started by New York natives Gil and Sheyla Grullon with the goal to break down white, male, cis, patriarchal culture at skate parks and make space for diverse women.
“Their immersive universe consists of fashion lines, parties like the LGBTQ-inclusive Sucia, followed by Anti Prom and Winter Informal,” Jasmin Hernandez wrote of Brujas for Cultured in 2018. The collective offers streetwear with monumental social purpose: for every hoodie, t-shirt, pair of socks or sweatpants that is purchased, the brand reciprocates with culture, social activism and ethical enrichment.
Mary J. Blige Proves Staying in Power Is All About Reinvention, Self-Possession and a Little Two-Step
Artist, songwriter, actress, producer and newly-minted wine entrepreneur Mary J. Blige has never let her childhood define her. Though she grew up in the Schlobohm projects of Yonkers, New York, where she endured abuse and a broken family, the creative went on to be signed by Uptown Records at a ripe age of eighteen and mentored by Sean Jean Combs. She entered the cultural scene in 1992 as a soulful tomboy with platinum locks and combat boots, Blige’s trailblazing debut What’s the 411? changed hip-hop, as she melded beats with earnest, raw lyrics.
“This amalgamation of the raw and vulnerable would become her oeuvre; like a pained but streetwise Nina Simone, Blige swiftly entered into the pantheon of moody chanteuses who could pull on one’s heartstrings with just a few notes,” wrote Marjon Carlos for Cultured’s fall 2020 issue.
Robin Givhan Reset the Boundaries of Fashion Writing
When storied fashion writer Robin Givhan’s name is brought up in conversation, it’s whispered with a revered sense of respect and admiration, as if her watchful, curious spirit is with you in the room. Givhan has been writing about the meaning of appearances, aesthetics and fashion, especially in the political sphere, for over 25 years, giving her audience a layered and detailed look into the art of people-watching.
“If you are offering up an opinion, the greatest gift that you can give to readers is, as they used to say in math class, to show your work,” said Givhan to writer Eugenie Dalland for Cultured in 2020. They’re words this journalist certainly takes to heart.
Hula Hooping in a Black Dress: Personal Reflections on Isabel Toledo
In 2019, writer Eugenie Dalland memorialized the life and death of Cuban-American fashion designer Isabel Toledo with a song-like, lyrical ode in Cultured. Toledo was largely an outsider, not prone to people-pleasing or showing other-worldly runway designs. She did, however, design Michelle Obama’s 2009 inauguration dress, describing the color as one of hopefulness.
“The reason she remained true to her own vision was not out of self-preservation. It was born of an unrelenting commitment and a blind, sacred devotion to design,” wrote Dalland of Toledo. “Her example was that of the revolutionary: go against the grain. Do not give up. Do not cave in. Have a vision and make no sacrifices in its pursuit.”
