Biography

Andrea Bowers is a lifelong activist whose work focuses on women’s rights, workers’ rights, immigration advocacy, civil rights, and climate justice. Working across mediums Bowers foregrounds the individual in her projects—focusing on men and women committed to activism. Through large scale drawings, photography, and video, she monumentalizes her subjects and draws on historical figures and imagery to situate contemporary movements within a legacy of struggle for equal rights.  

In the two-channel video work, Vows (Goldman, Emma, “Marriage and Love.” New York: Mother Earth Publishing Association, 1910), Bowers incorporates text from the radical political activist Emma Goldman’s essay, “Marriage and Love,” which theorizes marriage as an institution of capitalism, and one which is at odds with love. The text is recited by two women who are projected on facing nine foot screens. Wearing wedding dresses, the women exchange Goldman’s radical texts like vows. The work proposes a dialogue between contemporary women and Goldman across the span of 100 years, reflecting on the ongoing nature of the feminist struggle.  

This work is the first by Andrea Bowers to enter SJMA’s permanent collection.

Biography
Bowers was born in 1965 in Wilmington, Ohio and is based in Los Angeles. She received an MFA from California Institute of the Arts. Her work has been featured in solo exhibitions at the Wiener Secession, Vienna; The Power Plant, Toronto; Tang Museum, Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, New York; REDCAT, Los Angeles; Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie, Karlsruhe, Germany; and National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens, Greece. She was included in the 2014 Gwangju Biennial, Gwangju, South Korea and 2004 Whitney Biennial, New York. Her work has been included in group exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; New Museum, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco.. Bower’s work is held in major public collections including the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Museum of Modern Art, New York; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. (acquisitions meeting February 20, 2018)

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