About Artwork

This portfolio is based on paintings included in the artist’s exhibition WOMEN Words, Phrases, and Stories from January – May 2016 at the FLAG Foundation, New York.

The exhibition marks the first comprehensive presentation of 1,000 intimately-scaled, hand-painted works, each of which features a word or words used to describe women. Ranging from flirtatious to derogatory – with the four most used words being Mother, Slut, Bitch, Cunt – WOMEN Words emanates from Tompkins’s career-long commitment to challenge the representation of female identity, the politics of pleasure, and the role of sexuality in contemporary culture.

– Maureen Sullivan