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The Museums at Washington and Lee University is presenting “Impossible Garden: Dusk & Dawn,” an immersive art installation by Emma Steinkraus, assistant professor of art at W&L.
The exhibit will be on view through May 4 in the Watson Galleries.
Steinkraus creates colorful, imaginative paintings and installations about gender, mythmaking and the more-than-human world, and her exhibit pays tribute to more than 100 women artist-naturalists, expanding upon past versions of her “Impossible Garden” series.
The installation features two panoramic wallpapers that incorporate illustrations of flora, fauna and fungi made by women artists across the globe between the 16th and 19th centuries. Working in Adobe Photoshop, Steinkraus collaged their illustrations with her own hand-painted elements into a continuous landscape teeming with fruit trees, insects, mushrooms and small creatures.
“Impossible Garden: Dusk & Dawn” celebrates the achievements and ambitions of women artists who made art in overlooked genres, such as scientific illustration and botanical art. At the same time, the exhibition includes materials that invite viewers to grapple with histories of colonialism, slavery and gender oppression, as well as their enduring impact on the present.
Steinkraus’ work is represented by 1969 Gallery in New York City and has been included in recent exhibitions at the UNTITLED Art Fair (Miami), Sow & Tailor Gallery (Los Angeles), WOAW Gallery (Hong Kong, China), the StadtPalais Museum (Stuttgart, Germany) and Hashimoto Contemporary (Los Angeles). Recent awards include an Eliza Moore Fellowship at the Oak Spring Garden Foundation in 2020 and a Helen Frankenthaler Fellowship at the Vermont Studio Center in 2022. Her work has been on the cover of New American Paintings and featured in Artsy, Burnaway, BOOOOOOOM, Art Maze Magazine and Juxtapoz.
The installation is curated by Steinkraus and Nalleli Guillen, associate director of curatorial affairs at W&L, and is made possible with the support of Washington and Lee University and the Museum Art Fund.
The Museums at W&L are open to the public Wednesday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. To learn more about the 2024-2025 exhibitions, visit the Museums at W&L’s website: https://www.wlu.edu/arts/museums.
