Arlington Arts Center, Arlington, VA 1991
HERS: Inside/Outside is a collaborative, interactive installation developed with Menucha across three iterations from 1981 until 1994. The work began as part of Women’s Tools, a juried exhibition selected by May Stevens at the Washington Women’s Art Center, and evolved into a more structurally defined, participatory environment addressing the lived experience of women.
By 1991, the presentation at Arlington Arts Center in an exhibition focused on photography and new media curated by Philip Brookman, the collaboration incorporated a 50-minute audio component of women of varying ages reflecting on the experience of being female. The work established a spatial and psychological distinction between exterior and interior: offering an enclosing, womb-like structure which viewers physically entered. Inside, a single elaborate fan chair and a journal invited participants to sit, listen to the recordings, and write—shifting the work from observation to introspection and contribution.
The final iteration of HERS which was presented at the University of Maryland under the sponsorship of PANDORA, expanded this framework while maintaining the core structure of participation and reflection. Audience responses were notably strong; the work elicited sustained engagement and personal testimony, even as critical reception remained ambivalent.
Across its iterations, HERS: Inside/Outside investigates the formation of identity at the intersection of internal experience and external social construction. The work positions the body as both site and subject—psychological, cultural, and political—while anticipating concerns with participation, voice, and embodied perception that continue to inform my current practice.
Add audio file from Hers, 1991, 1993.
