VIDEO ARTIST TO SPEAK AT GALLERY OPENING

Maureen Connor, "Growing Older," 1999-2000, video installation. Collection of the artist.

Artist Maureen Connor will give a gallery talk on Friday, Feb. 6, at 4 p.m. in Carpenter B21, at the opening of an exhibition of her video installation, "Growing Older," in the Canaday Library Gallery. The exhibition of Connor's work is part of "Picturing Women," a multivenue, cross-media exhibition and education project focusing on historical representations of women and contemporary responses to them. Another of Connor's works is on display at the Library Company of Philadelphia, which has partnered with Bryn Mawr and the Rosenbach Museum & Library in the "Picturing Women" project.

"Growing Older" is included in "Picturing Women" under the thematic rubric of "Figuring," in a portion of the exhibition that examines 19th- and early-20th-century images and texts that identify women with flowers, exotic birds, domestic tools or misogynistic stereotypes. Connor's video installation appropriates and subverts these objectifying representational strategies. In a series of narrative vignettes, Connors presents representations of women who, seemingly burdened by their flower-like garb, ultimately dissolve. "Growing Older" prompts viewers to question the assumptions underlying the association of femininity with ephemeral phenomena in nature.

Connor began her career in the early 1970s as a sculptor and often incorporates sculptural elements into her work in video. Her work has been influential to a generation of feminist artists who probe social constructions of femininity and the ways women's identities are formed. She has exhibited widely at venues throughout the United States and Europe, including the prestigious Whitney Biennial.

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