In the typology of fairy tales, women are routinely reduced to caricatures of innocence or evil, either impossibly saintly and self-sacrificing or malevolent in ways that only the male sex would project. That said, fairy tales also provide a wealth of inspiration for art, and the work in Pixerina Witcherina transforms these polarities into whimsically abstracted visual yarns (the title is taken from an invented language used by Virginia Woolf to share secrets with her niece, and refers to this polarization of women’s roles as either pixies or witches.). These women embrace the power of myth while deconstructing it, re-imagining its pungency for our times. Pixerina Witcherina features work by Meghan Boody, Amy Cutler, Margi Geerlinks, Claudia Hart, Julie Heffeman, Julia Latané, Tracey Moffatt, Maria Porges, Amy Sillman, Elena Sisto, Karen Arm and Katharina Fritsch.

Text by: Maria Porges, Jan Susina, Maria Tatar, Bill Conger