Reimagining the Distaff Toolkit

Each work in Reimagining the Distaff Toolkit has, at its visible core, a tool that was important for women’s domestic labor in the past. These tools, when re-contextualized as contemporary works of art, open a dialogue between the past and present. The tools that once facilitated hard, repetitive, and often unpaid women’s labor are reborn as the Distaff* artists have taken the re-purposed objects and transformed them into something that pays tribute to the past while encouraging a critical analysis of society and culture from various histories.

* The distaff is a tool attached to a spinning wheel, designed to hold unspun fibers. Over time, “distaff” came to refer to matters and objects in the domestic or women’s sphere, and then, to women, generally.

This exhibition was curated by Rickie Solinger and includes the following artists: Lisa Alvarado, Kim Anno, Tiffany Besonen, Mary Jo Bole, Barbara Leoff Burge, Carol Ann Carter, Colin Chase, Tom Cohen, Dave Cole, Léonie Guyer, Karen Hendrickson, Judy Hoyt, Mildred Johnson, Tatana Kellner, Tracy Krumm, Lisa Link, Sallie McCorkle, Debra Priestly, Larry Ruhl, Betye Saar, Alison Saar, Eliśka Smiley, Laura Splan, Allen Topolski, Gail Tremblay, Marie Watt, and Flo Oy Wong.