Working in a range of media throughout her brief life, Hannah Wilke was a seminal artist in the early days of feminist art and beyond. Her work challenged and reinvented notions of beauty, the female form, self-portraiture, and gender. After being diagnosed with lymphoma in 1987, she began a series of colorful self-portraits titled B.C. (Before Cancer). With gestural brushstrokes that barely coalesce into a face, these works bear evidence of an artist whose understanding of her body—the subject and image in much of her work—was tragically at war with disease. Solo exhibitions of Wilke’s work include Hannah Wilke: Starification Photographs and Videotapes, Fine Arts Gallery, University of California, Irvine; Hannah Wilke: A Retrospective, University of Missouri; and Hannah Wilke: Gestures, Neuberger Museum of Art, New York. Her work is in major museum and foundation collections including Tate Modern, London; Centre Pompidou, Paris; MoMA, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; LACMA, Los Angeles; Princeton University Art Museum; and Coleccion Jumex, Mexico City.
