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DETROIT -
The Museum of New Art (MONA) is proud
to present the exhibition Francesca Woodman - Do I Still
Exist If You Don't See Me? which will showcase 30 of
Woodman's photographs from October 20 through December 6.
Francesca Woodman was,
despite her short life, quite a remarkably influential and important
artist. Without her ground-breaking work there would not have been a
Cindy Sherman, a Sam Taylor-Wood, or a Tracey Emin.
Appearing in most of her photographs, her work concentrated mainly
on her own body and her surroundings. And at times the two would
seem to merge into one. Woodman often used long-term and double
exposure so that she could actively participate in the film's image.
Brought up in a family of artists, Francesca Woodman (born in 1958
in Denver, Colorado) took an interest in photography from a very
early age and was only thirteen when her first works were made.
As a student at the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence
between 1975 and 1979, she was accepted into the Honors Program
which enabled her to spend a year at the school’s campus in the
sumptuous Palazzo Cenci in Rome.
During that year (1977-78), Francesca frequented the Maldoror
bookshop-gallery, which specialized in art books on Surrealism and
Futurism. It was here that her first one-woman show was held. And
where she also met the young generation of the Roman Trans-avantgarde.
After returning to the United States and completing her studies at
Providence, Francesca Woodman moved to New York, where she embarked
on more ambitious projects, making large blueprints on blue or brown
paper as well as designing several books of her own photographs.
Some Disordered Interior Geometries, the only one of her books to be
published in her lifetime, came out in January 1981. She took her
life that same month jumping from her New York apartment at the age
of 22. - A. G. Lopez.
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