Faith Wilding (b. 1943) is a foundational feminist artist of Womanhouse fame. She grew up in a forest surrounded by nature, an experience that laid the groundwork for her work’s environmentalism. Starting in the 1970s, her drawings—which often combine imagery from illuminated manuscripts and botanical illustrations—transported that wisdom to galleries in urban centers. At these shows, viewers largely cut off from nature’s magic were prompted to marvel at its beauty and appreciate its life-sustaining work.
Her current show at Anat Ebgi gallery in New York, “Faith Wilding: Inside, Outside, Alive in the Shell,” is on view through March 1. It surveys 50 years of her art, spanning everything from difficult work confronting feminist issues, as in Raped Dress (Battle Dresses), 1993–94, to more decorative pieces inspiring viewers to appreciate natural marvels. Combining political commentary with unabashed aesthetic pleasure, Wilding’s oeuvre both models new worlds and mounts critiques of the existing order of things. Her work stands apart from that of her contemporaries for demonstrating what the artist is fighting against, but also what she is for. Below, the artist walks us through her show and reflects on her career.
The show opens with Bird of Paradise: Virgin Goddess, a gold leaf painting from 1978. It shows a plant bursting forth from its bud. The plant is drawn in pencil: it’s the goddess of nature, the goddess of life. But it’s surrounded in gold leaf, which has historically been reserved for religious works. I used gold leaf here to emphasize how incredibly important nature is.
I made this work at time when feminists were reminding the world how mainstream religion had forgotten that so many cultures worshipped goddesses. Bringing goddesses back was very much a feminist protest.
Back then, in the ’70s, we were forming all these feminist groups. I was in Los Angeles, and we were doing Womanhouse [a formative 1972 project by a group of feminist artists that involved taking over a domestic home and turning it into an exhibition space]. There, I made Waiting, the piece I’m most famous for. One day I was having dinner with Judy Chicago and Arlene Raven, and I said that I wanted to do something about waiting, about the ways that women are asked to wait for things rather than take the lead. So, we hosted a workshop where we went around in a circle and asked different women: What have you had to wait for? What did it feel like? From those conversations, I wrote and performed a poem. People cried. It had a lot of power. [A video is on view in the show.]
Faith Wilding: Ancient Patterns, 2024.
Courtesy Anat Ebgi
As a child, I was always drawing. I still do. At Womanhouse, though, I got to do things I’d never done before, like crochet a whole room—that was pretty awesome—and my first performance.
At the same time that we were doing Womanhouse, the destruction of nature was coming up as a political issue. My work was connecting what was happening to nature with what’s happening to women. Women are specially connected to nature through reproduction and care, and in some ways, it’s our job to protect and nurture it.
I grew up in a commune in the middle of a forest in Paraguay. We were incredibly reliant on nature and plants; that made me very alert to the importance of protecting it.
In the commune, I started reading Hildegard von Bingen at a young age. I found her books on my parents’ shelves. She was 12th century nun who, in her time, wrote about female life-giving power and the goddess of nature. Her language was so sensual; she even wrote about female orgasm. I read everything I could find on her, and even made the pilgrimage to her convent [in Disibodenberg, Germany], where nuns still talk about her. She was an early feminist naturist, writing in the 12th century about the destruction that human life was having on nature. She had a big influence on me; Hildegard and I, from 1986, imagines us together.
I’m always stealing from illuminated manuscripts. In Paraguay, I studied manuscripts in reproduction. Then, I started traveling and, in 1961, moved to the United States. I visited a lot of convents, exhibitions, and archives. I wanted to figure out how they made patterns and edges. I noticed manuscripts have a lot of plants in them. And you know, it’s all very decorative. So, I don’t apologize for decoration anymore.
I’ve always been into beauty, really. As a child, I made art in order to make beautiful things. I just wanted to make the most beautiful flower I could for my mommy!
Faith Wilding: Leaf Series: Emerging, 1976–78.
Courtesy Anat Ebgi
But as André Breton would say, “Beauty must be convulsive, or not at all.” It can overwhelm us—as nature often does. Growing up in South America, oh my god was nature overwhelming. In my drawings, I want people to notice and admire things that they don’t ordinarily, like a leaf. Leaves can be so amazing up close. That’s why I made them big in works like “Leaf Series” [1976–78]. My work is all about nature and beauty, and putting those two together. I always say that I use beauty as a terrorist tactic.
The most recent works in the show include Forest in Flames, Paraguay’s Last Trees [2020] and When the Trees Died [2024], because that’s what’s happening now. It’s terrifying. Without trees, there’s no oxygen. Not enough people realize what trees do, and how incredibly important they are. Trees were worshiped in the old times. They were sacred. —As told to Emily Watlington
