Join this participatory artwork, support gender equality and create change
What If Women Ruled the World?
Please select one or more questions below and submit your answers to participate.
Click on banners above to answer & participate in this collaborative project.
Overview Of The Work
Recognizing a passion among those who value equality, inclusively and diversity to come together to make their voices heard, Judy Chicago took her ‘What If Women Ruled the World’ banners, which were created in collaboration with Maria Grazia Chiuri of DIOR, as the impetus for a new revolutionary call-and-response to invite allies all around the world to share ideas and create a global community supporting gender rights.
The participatory project invites individuals globally to congregate, virtually and physically, to share their ideas and create a global community. Artist and activist Nadya Tolokonnikova, a founder of Pussy Riot, was the first to answer all 11 questions during a call to action at the ICA Miami in December 2022. Judy Chicago stated: “As we watch the gains of the last 50 years being pushed back, Nadya and I have come together to invite people all over the world to think collectively about how to reclaim our world, our humanity, and our planet”.
Thousands of global responses have been ‘digitally threaded’ together to create Judy Chicago’s Monumental ‘What if Women Ruled the World’ Participatory Quilt, demonstrating the power of her collaborative and transformative practice as she continues to inspire future generations.
This is more than a quilt; it is a global dialogue, a historical canvas, and a dynamic testament to the collective spirit of our time, manifested through the visionary lens of Judy Chicago.
The Making of the Quilt
Individuals have gathered in Argentina, Mexico, Miami, New York, LA and Paris to respond to Judy's thought-provoking work, demonstrating the power of Chicago’s collaborative and transformative practice as she continues to inspire future generations. The global answers have been ‘digitally threaded’ together to create Judy Chicago’s monumental ‘What if Women Ruled the World’ Participatory Quilt on view. Judy invites you to collaborate with her by submitting your response to her ‘What If Women Ruled the World’ banners and to collectively imagine an equitable future.
Miami December 2022
Mexico City February 2023
Los Angeles March 2023
Paris May 2023
New York City August 2023
Judy Chicago’s “What If Women Ruled the World?” Participatory Quilt featuring Nadya Tolokonnikova
Judy Chicago’s “What If Women Ruled the World?” Participatory Quilt featuring Nadya Tolokonnikova was on view in the exhibition “Herstory”, the first comprehensive New York Museum survey of Judy Chicago’s work, curated by Massimiliano Gioni. “Herstory” which was on view at the New Museum from 10/12/2023 – 03/03/2024 spanned Chicago’s sixty-year career and encompasses the breadth of the artist’s work, across painting, sculpture, installation, drawing, textiles, photography, stained glass, needlework and printmaking. Find out more information about the New Museum exhibition here.
Judy Chicago’s “What If Women Ruled the World? Participatory Quilt will be on view for the forthcoming exhibition ‘Judy Chicago: Revelations’ at the Serpentine Gallery North opening on 23 May 2024.
Judy Chicago: Revelations charts the full arc of Chicago’s career with a specific focus on drawing, highlighting rarely seen works. Several immersive, multi-media elements including an AR app, DMINTI’s video recording booth, and other audio-visual components, set this show apart from previous surveys of Chicago’s work. With never-before-seen sketchbooks, films and slides, video interviews of participations from The Dinner Party sketchbooks, films and slides, video interview of participants from The Dinner Party (1974 -79), audio recordings, and guided tour of The Dinner Party by Chicago herself, this novel approach to exhibition Chicago’s work makes the artist’s presence felt throughout the gallery. Find out more about the Serpentine exhibition here, and download the press release here.
Judy Chicago, 2021
Photo © Donald Woodman/Artists Rights Society, New York
Judy Chicago
Judy Chicago (born Judith Sylvia Cohen, 1939, Chicago, Il) is one of the most influential artists of our century, an author, feminist, educator and intellectual, and a 2022 inductee into the National Women’s Hall of Fame. Over the course of her six-decade career, social and environmental justice have been the driving force behind some of her most important projects as she continues to fight for equality in the art world for women and other marginalized artists and the protection of all living creatures.
Over the years, male curators, and critics, who favored artwork created in the vein of the male-centered art historical canon, often overlooked her work. Rather than backing down, Chicago took on the challenge of changing these attitudes in the art world through the founding of the first Feminist Art Program at Fresno State, CA; the creation of her epic work, The Dinner Party, which sought to counter the erasure of women’s history; and the development of a K-12 “Dinner Party” curriculum. In subsequent projects and bodies of work, she has addressed the prescient issues of birth and creation in the Birth Project, the construct of masculinity in PowerPlay, the horrors of genocide in the Holocaust Project, and most recently, the subject of mortality and its relation to the destruction of our planet in The End: A Meditation on Death and Extinction.
Chicago took the fashion world by storm with her collaboration with Dior and its creative director Maria Grazia Chiuri for the Spring 2020 haute couture show in Paris. Chicago’s career retrospective opened to rave reviews in August 2021 at the de Young Museum in San Francisco. In celebration of her retrospective, Chicago unveiled her largest Smoke Sculpture to date, Forever de Young, seen by more than 35,000 people worldwide.
The author of fifteen books, Chicago wrote her definitive memoir, The Flowering, published in July 2021 by Thames & Hudson and cited as one of the best books of the year. The award-winning newsmagazine show CBS Sunday Morning recently profiled Chicago.
Nadya Tolokonnikova
Nadya Tolokonnikova
Nadya Tolokonnikova (born November 7, 1989, Norilsk, Siberia, Russia) is a conceptual artist, musician, author, activist and the founding member of Pussy Riot, a global feminist protest art movement. Today, hundreds of people identify as a part of the Pussy Riot community. Pussy Riot joined the NFT community in early 2021, co-founder of UnicornDAO, instrumental in raising over $7m with UkraineDAO, a PleasrDAO member, and a supporter of a stronger female representation in the NFT space.
Tolokonnikova attended Moscow University and received an Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts Degree from Rhode Island School of Design, 2019. She has had numerous museum and gallery exhibitions worldwide, including: “Empowerment”, Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Germany, 2022-2023; “Inside Pussy Riot”, Saatchi Gallery, London, U.K, 2017; “Zero Tolerance,” MoMA, New York, 2014; “Take Liberty”, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Oslo, Norway, 2014; and collaborations and public projects including a performance for Banksy’s “Dismaland” exhibition, 2015; “Speech Itself – Pen America” with Jenny Holzer, Rockefeller Center, NY, 2022.
Nadya Tolokonnikova has an extensive and ongoing history of political activism, for which she was sentenced in 2012 to 2 years’ imprisonment following an anti-Putin performance. After activating a hunger strike protesting savage prison conditions, she was sent to a Siberian penal colony, where she maintained her artistic activity and toured the Siberian labor camps with her prison punk band. In 2018, she published the book “Read & Riot: A Pussy Riot Guide to Activism.” Co-founder of independent news service and media outlet, Mediazona, she has spoken before the US Congress, British Parliament, European Parliament, and appeared as herself on season 3 of the television show House of Cards. Awards include Time magazine, Women of the Year, 2012; LennonOno Grant for Peace, 2012; The Guardian, Best Art of the 21st Century, for 2012 The Punk Prayer political art piece, in 2019; OutRight Action International Outstanding Award for her effort raising $7M in donation for Ukraine with the NFT Project Ukraine DAO, 2022.
Pussy Riot stands for gender fluidity, inclusivity, matriarchy, love, laughter, decentralization, anarchy, and anti-authoritarianism.
FAQ
What is the project?
Judy Chicago invites all who share feminist values to come together and make their voices heard at this urgent time for gender rights.
This project took Chicago’s inspiring ‘What If Women Ruled the World’ banners, which were created in collaboration with Maria Grazia Chiuri for the Dior Spring Summer 2020 Haute Couture show, as its source for a new revolutionary call-and-response.
Judy Chicago invites you to respond to one or more of her 11 questions posed on her banners, and collectively work towards a more equitable future. Written messages and visual images submitted here will be reviewed and selected.
What happens with the selected responses?
Selected responses will be included in Judy Chicago’s ‘What if Women Ruled the World” participatory work.
What is DMINTI?
DMINTI is an organization that partners with artists and institutions to produce, present and position innovative work and experiences at the intersection of art and technology.
ABOUT DMINTI
DMINTI partners with leading artists and cultural luminaries to best express their vision through the most advanced digital technology and Web3 resources. In DMINTI’s metaverse, innovative programs such as Metaverse Mondays connect artists and cultural institutions to global and multi-generational audiences. DMINTI is dedicated to strong educational initiatives and has become a leader offering live cultural, highly curated experiences in the metaverse.
DMINTI has produced projects with artists: Ricci Albenda, Sarah Meyohas, Brendan Murphy, and David Salle; new projects for fall 2022 with Josephine Meckseper and a collaboration by Judy Chicago and Nadya Tolokonnikova.
DMINTI Founders: Shalom Meckenzie, Jennifer Stockman, Dominique Lévy, Christopher Jones, Carola Jain. Advisors & Partners: Hani Rashid, Mark Lemley, Franklin Leonard, Ran Neuner.
The Above Film is
ABOUT DANAE
Created by art historians and blockchain experts, DANAE.IO is a digital art platform which offers unique solution based on the best of both the contemporary art and crypto worlds. Guided by the vision that artistic value, rarity and curation help define future of art and culture within Web3 experiences.
DANAE.IO believes that Web3 offers a whole new range of possibilities for the evolution of art.
Just as contemporary art represents a new paradigm in art, the transition from WEB2 to WEB3 opens up a palette of expressions and emotions that have never been explored before.
Therefore, DANAE.IO aims to connect the world of WEB2 to WEB3 in order to explore new horizons and enable art market professionals to have new experiences. That’s why DANAE.IO’s project is designed to be inclusive. Art has always been a means to observe the evolution of humanity through artworks. The use of blockchain technology in art is its latest evolution.
To learn more about DANAE, click here.
