ABOUT THE ARTISTS
ABOUT THE ORGANIZERS
Hilma’s Ghost, a feminist artist collective, was co-founded by Brooklyn-based artists Dannielle Tegeder and Sharmistha Ray in 2020. The collective seeks to address existing art historical gaps by cultivating a global network of women, nonbinary, and trans practitioners whose work addresses spirituality. Hilma af Klint’s groundbreaking exhibition at the Guggenheim in 2018 served as a reckoning for art history’s blindspots, especially for women artists considered too ‘mystical’ for the conservative art world. Named after af Klint, Hilma’s Ghost believes that western heteropatriarchal societies maintain a false binary between spirituality and science. This bias serves to overlook womxn artists whose explorations of ancient and pre-modern knowledge systems is a source of personal strength and aesthetic innovation. Hilma’s Ghost acts as a restorative project that uplifts these voices and makes them visible.
Hilma’s Ghost has run online programs and free public workshops since their launch in 2020. These programs have attracted hundreds of artists and other spiritual practitioners from across the globe onto their unique platform on subjects ranging from shamanism, automatic drawing, to sigil making. In 2021, Hilma’s Ghost had their first artistic collaboration with ABSTRACT FUTURES TAROT, which was shown at The Armory Show from September 9-12, 2021. The project which consisted of 5 paintings, 78 drawings, and an original Tarot deck, was highlighted by Will Heinrich as one of the exhibitions to see in the rundown of the art fair for The New York Times. Cosmic Geometries at EFA Project Space is the collective’s first curatorial project. Learn more about Hilma’s Ghost at the website www.hilmasghost.com and follow them on Instagram @hilmasghost where they profile living womxn artists and announce new programming.
Sharmistha Ray is an artist, art critic, and educator based in Brooklyn, New York. For two decades, their work has explored subjective experience through the lens of queerness, language, and memory. Ray’s core practice consists of drawing, but also includes painting, sculpture, video installation, and photography. They have exhibited their work in solo exhibitions in Mumbai, New York, and Singapore, and shown in group exhibitions and art fairs in the U.S. and abroad. They are the recipient of a Joan Mitchell MFA Grant, and received their MFA in Painting from Pratt Institute. Currently, they teach in the MFA programs at Parsons School of Design and School of Art at Carnegie Mellon University. www.sharmistharay.com
Dannielle Tegeder is an artist and professor at The City University of New York at Lehman College. For the past fifteen years, her work has explored abstraction through the lens of systems, architecture, and utopianism. While the core of her practice is paintings and drawings, she also works in large-scale installation, mobiles, video, sound, and animation and has done a number of collaborations with composers, dancers, and writers. In March 2020 Tegeder founded The Pandemic Salon, a community-centric project intended to dismantle the hierarchical structures of institutional discussion, which showcases topics related to the pandemic by bringing together creative minds in an informal, online environment that has connected over 600 participants from 40 countries. www.dannielletegeder.com