June 6 – 30, 2019
In response to the long history of silencing of women and girls, Whitney Bradshaw makes portraits of women screaming. Through this social practice project of her design, Bradshaw provides women space where they can practice speaking up and out for themselves and each other. She also provides a space for them to be heard supported, encouraged, and celebrated.
Bradshaw began this project on the night of the Women’s March in 2018. Since then she has photographed over 300 women. In the upcoming exhibition opening here at The Show Gallery on the evening of June 7, approximately 160 of Bradshaw’s Outcry portraits will be installed. About 45 of which were made during two scream sessions as Bradshaw calls them that she held at The Show Gallery Lowertown on April 6 and 7 of this year.
Bradshaw intentionally invites diverse groups of women who don’t know one another to her studio for a gathering, emphasizing community building while encouraging each participant to support one another, as they bravely let out feelings that have been silenced or dismissed in our culture. These scream sessions are empowering, therapeutic, and fun.
The resulting portraits ask viewers to contemplate difficult issues related to sexism, power, race, and representation while demanding that women be heard and believed.
It’s important to Bradshaw that a very diverse group of women are represented in the Outcry. Bradshaw says she does this “not only, to give voice to as many women as possible but also to ensure that when a woman views the project she can see someone like her in it. Likewise, when men view it they can see their mothers, daughters, sisters, nieces, etc. “
Outcry challenges stereotypes around women and femininity, while celebrating their resilience and insisting on a reconsideration of beauty and power. Bradshaw says, “When seen together these intimate representations of individual power and expression become a monumental act of collective resistance.”