Collaboration

Throughout Judy Chicago’s career, she has alternated between working as an individual and on collaborative projects. Judy Chicago has long advocated and practiced collaborative creation as a cornerstone of feminist art practice. As an advocate against the traditional, male-dominated structures of the art world, she opposes the notion that an artist must work in isolation. Among other concerns, she points to the need to overcome the historical isolation faced by women as a reason to work together. She creates projects with one or two other artists, or, as in the case of The Dinner Party, as many as 400 others. She engaged in an eight-year collaboration with photographer Donald Woodman, her husband, to develop what is believed to be one of contemporary art’s most ambitious representations of the Holocaust (Holocaust Project, 1984-1992). For Birth Project (1980-1985), which resulted in 85 pieces, some 150 volunteer artists contributed needlework to create a series that depicted women’s perspectives on childbirth.