Hannah Wilke Super-t-Art, 1974 Twenty black and white photographs from a three-minute performance at The Kitchen, New York, November 1974 40 1/2 × 32 1/2 inches overall; each: 6 1/2 × 4 1/2 inches (16.5 × 11.4 cm) Hannah Wilke Collection & Archive, Los Angeles. Courtesy Alison Jacques, London.

Hannah Wilke, Intra-Venus Series #11, 1992

So Help Me Hannah, Photo by Hannah Wilke, 1978

Hannah Wilke: Intra-Venus Series #6, February 19, 1992, 1992-93, chromagenic print with overlaminate, 47 1/2 by 71 1/2 inches; at Ronald Feldman.

Born Arlene Hannah Butter; (March 7, 1940 – January 28, 1993) was an American painter, sculptor, photographer, video artist and performance artist. Wilke's work is known for exploring issues of feminism, sexuality and femininity.

She was born on March 7, 1940, in New York City to Jewish parents; her grandparents were Eastern European immigrants.

She taught art in several high schools for approximately 30 years and joined the faculty of the School of Visual Arts.

Hannah Wilke died in Houston, Texas, in 1993 from lymphoma. Her last work, Intra-Venus (1992–1993), is a posthumously published photographic record of her physical transformation and deterioration resulting from chemotherapy and bone marrow transplant. Via Wikipedia

#HannahWilke #Americanpainter, #sculptor #photographer #videoartist #feminism #sexuality #femininity #artherstory #womensart #palianshow #artbywomen #contemporaryart #contemporary #art #femaleartist

Hannah Wilke: Marxism and Art: Beware of Fascist Feminism,1977, poster on heavy stock paper, 11 1/2 by 9 inches; at Ronald Feldman.

hannah wilke

HANNAH WILKE Untitled c. early 1970s 3 painted terracotta sculptures 3 1/8 x 7 1/8 x 5 inches (7.9 x 18.1 x 12.7 cm) 2 5/8 x 6 3/4 x 5 1/2 inches (6.7 x 17.1 x 14 cm) 3 1/8 x 6 3/8 x 4 7/8 inches (7.9 x 16.2 x 12.4 cm)

Hannah Wilke, Intra-Venus (1992-93)

The Intra-Venus Series (1991-1993) by Hannah Wilke

A painter and sculptor born in the state of New York, America. Hannah Wilke was an all rounded artist, exploring and expressing the issues of female body autonomy, and sexuality, through a collective of mediums such as photography, sculpture, and performance to name a few. Wilke was one of the renowned artists who popularized the usage of vaginal imagery in her art. Her infamous works such as Oh So Help Me Hannah (1978), and SOS: Starification Object Series (1975), to name a few directly engages with the feminist issues in her community.

Notably one of Wilke’s most emotionally engaging works, Intra-Venus was Wilke’s last mark in the world before her death in 1993 due to the complications of Lymphoma cancer. For the last 2 years of her life, Wilke collaborated with her husband, Donald Goddard, where she compiled a series of video tapes, drawing, sculptures, along with her infamous pieces of performalist self-portraits, in capturing the later stages of her cancer journey and documenting how it transforms her physical and mental wellbeing in the most rawest way possible.

As she did with her previous works, Wilke commits and places herself as the subject matter, engaging with her audience regarding the unspoken and purposely outlooked realities that most women who are bitten with cancer rarely ever show. Audiences are revealed with the deteriorating and aging attributes of Wilke, as the cancer treatments transform her once attractive physical features into the portraits that we are seeing today. Though, this is the unspoken message Wilke achieves to emulate, where despite the unrecognizable and objectifying state of her physicalities that was due to the cancer treatments, the artist in her is still well alive and breathing. Wilke gestures this through her self-portraits, where she shows an amount of expressions, varied from her playfulness in a wrapped yellow scarf, to a calm and saint-like demeanor engulfed by a blue colored blanket. In the midst of these portraits, the audience couldn’t help but notice the honesty of these images, where despite Wilke’s pose and expressions that creates the impression of a performance, the visible existence of the IV and chemotherapy lines on her hands and chest depicts how she was regally experiencing intravenous treatments in real time. 

Wilke also manifests herself in the form of drawings, centralizing one feature on one paper, as a way to depict a specific part of her physical body purely through her own perspective. For Intra-Venus Hand No.9 (1991), Wilke uses bright colored gouache mixed with watercolors on a notebook paper. The edges of the hand and fingers are drawn in a rigid manner, portraying them to be thin with protruding knuckles with an IV drip hanging right below the wrist. However, Wilke portrays this hand to be alive as she places a shadow behind the fingers, as a way to depict them being raised in the air. The colors of red and yellow are used as the colors of vigor and life, emulating the notion that the owner of this hand is well and alive. 

Using the same element of watercolor, Intra-Venus No. 18 and 25 (1992), is a self portrait of none other than Wilke herself, drawn in two different stages of her cancer journey. For No. 18, it shows the thinning of Wilke’s hair. Here, despite the thick hair surrounding her temples and sides, the central region of her head is shown to be thinning, indicating the process of baldness as she is undergoing cancer treatment. This portrait sequence continues with No. 25 as Wilke’s head is covered with a scarf or hat, with strands of stringy hair protruding from the sides of her head cover. The change from neutral tones to minimal colors in No. 18 and 25 shows how the colors and liveliness of Wilke’s physical features are being drained out from her. Here, it depicts the contrast between Wilke’s depiction of her hands and her own facial features, indicating the dissociation and change that Wilke experienced throughout the period of her treatment. 

Her final years are recorded into the Intra-Venus tapes, where it depicts a wide array of emotions and interactions that Wilke experiences as she lives out the remaining years of her life. Recorded by her close friends and husband, Wilke can be seen in various forms, having conversations, laughing, eating, lying exhausted on the hospital bed after receiving chemotherapy, or just simply sitting on the toilet. These intimate and vulnerable moments convey Wilke’s gestures on the colorful attributes in life, where despite the harrowing cancer that is eating her inside and out, Wilke savors her life to the fullest. Here, Wilke purposefully gave her audience a bountiful insight towards her life, as a gesture to connect and let oneself be vulnerable through her art. 

Though controversial and was deemed narcissistic by the public through her visual representation of nudity and vaginal symbolism, her gesture to live life through art creates a comforting space for women. Wilke shows her female audience that they are not alone, by portraying her own female experience in the most vulnerable way as she can. Thus, the Intra-Venus Series is Hannah Wilke’s last mark to the world, reminding us that even when life drains you down to the very bone and leaves you in an obtuse state, our enigmatic personas will always linger because indeed the body will decay, however, our souls will forever live.

Hannah Wilke, “So Help Me Hannah” (1978)

Hannah Wilke The Artist in Her Studio, Chateau Marmont, Los Angeles, August 1970 Performalist Self-Portrait with Claes Oldenburg Hannah Wilke Collection & Archive, Los Angeles

Hannah Wilke, Untitled, 1970s. Red latex on plywood board.

Hannah Wilke, Gestures, 1974, detail from 30 minute video tape

Hannah Wilke: For your love I would give the stars above, 1960s, pastel and graphite on paper, 9 5/8 by 12 inches; at Ronald Feldman.

hannah wilke force of nature

Hannah Wilke (American, 1940–1993)

Untitled, 1965

Charcoal and ink on paper

From the book, The Sculptural Idea