I DEAL, entry to the Tapestry Design Prize for Architects, 2021.

Collaboration with architect John de Manincor

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Employing fragments of images of women from art and architectural history, I DEAL engages with the specific social context of Phoenix—an architect-designed gallery directed and inhabited by art dealer, Judith Nielsen.

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Inspired by a photograph for the Financial Review of Nielsen in classical reclining pose, the design reveals that idealizations of women as saintly Madonna, wild Nature, or dangerous Temptress persist even in contemporary portraits of successful individuals. The homophones, Idol, Idle and Idyll, point to the slipperiness of such categories. Rejecting the passive role of muse, three accomplished female architects, in borrowed ‘nude’ costume, stare proudly at the viewer. High and low references and styles are sampled: sailor’s tattoos of Hawaii and pin up girls; Lichtenstein’s prints and paintings; the primitive hut frontispiece in Laugier’s Essay on Architecture (1755); Lely’s Venus and Cupid (1675); Fiorentino’s Musical Angel (1521); SANAA’s Serpentine Pavilion (2009); Perriand’s LC4 chaise (1928); Corbusier’s 1938 vandalization of Gray’s Villa E-1027; Hadid’s design for Melissa Shoes (2008), etc. While gender politics in art and architecture are a serious and timely topic, I DEAL, broaches these in a way that celebrates and acknowledges ambiguity, complexity, and women’s work in art, architecture, and design.