Artist Loie Hollowell: On Art and the Female Body

Join artist Loie Hollowell and Hirshhorn curator Betsy Johnson to explore the ways in which art can reflect on the confluence between the spiritual and temporal nature of the female form.

Hollowell makes paintings that use vibrant, emotive colors and sacred geometric shapes to reflect on the powerful nature of the human body and, more specifically, the artist’s own experience of pregnancy, birth, and postpartum motherhood. To echo the weighty curves of ancient fertility figures, Hollowell attaches spherical forms to her canvases, turning paintings into sculptural objects. These forms often spiral and stretch, suggesting the cyclical nature of life-giving processes and the pressure and toll that are exerted on the female body during and after birth.

Hollowell’s Boob Wheel (2019) is on view in Put It This Way: (Re)Visions of the Hirshhorn Collection at the Museum through Fall 2023.