Team:

Organizers: Maggie Tsang (MDes ULE 19), Katie Gourley (MUP 19)

Womxn in Design’s third annual International Womxn’s Week convenes a weeklong series of events that gathers members of the Harvard GSD community and beyond to celebrate and cultivate new ways of thinking about gender and power. In March 2019, International Womxn’s Week was focused around LABOR. We seek to push the notion of labor beyond the discourse of “equality in the workplace” and to examine and elevate marginal or under-recognized forms of work, particularly as they are entangled within gender, race, and power. We ask: How do we value work? Whose work is recognized and whose is rendered invisible? The design disciplines have historically fallen short on answering these questions and promoting ethical labor practices more broadly. In the wake of the “SAM list” and the #metoo movement, and in response to a resurgence of labor organizing led primarily by traditionally “feminine” sectors, it is due time to reframe what labor means within a design context. Weaving together wisdom and experiences from labor organizers, current practitioners, academic leaders, and students, this year’s International Womxn’s Week at the GSD reflects on the legacies of labor movements, the issues around labor in design, and the ways in which we can push for an expanded and more equitable field.

Dinner Party

Team: Ciara Stein (MLA I, MUP 21) with GSD students

An exhibit at 40 Kirkland Gallery to correspond with IWW.

Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party is  a widely celebrated artwork housed at the Brooklyn Museum in the  Elizabeth Sackler Center for Feminist Art. The piece consists of a large  banquet arranged in the shape of an open triangle. Thirty-nine  individualized place settings and sculpted plates are set  for ‘guests of honor’ and a further 999 names are inscribed in gold on  the surrounding porcelain tiles. Among those invited to the table are  ancient Greek poet Sappho, Queen Elizabeth I, Sojourner Truth, Susan B.  Anthony and Georgia O’Keeffe.

While Judy Chicago’s piece focuses on celebrating the role of women in Western civilization and uses  a language of vaginal imagery to do so, we invite you to interpret and challenge this to bring about an inclusive dinner party and  resulting archive. Moreover, the piece has been criticized for its essentialism, as such we challenge you to define who your dinner guest  is by applying your own values and definition of who a designer is.

See more at 40 Kirkland Gallery’s website.