Eve Fowler: Words doing as they want to do

Words doing as they want to do builds upon Eve Fowler’s decades of research and practice at the intersection of language, poetry, and visual art. Drawing on the artist’s sustained engagement with feminist texts and the visual potential of language, this exhibition presents a series of new paintings alongside a zine-style artist book.

Fowler’s approach to text-based visual work explores the materiality and rhythm of language through bold, abstract compositions. In parallel, an artist book collects photographs Fowler has taken over several decades in collaboration with other artists, filmmakers, and curators—a visual diary that sits at the intersection of personal archive and collective memory. The book offers accessibility and intimacy, serving as both a standalone work and a companion to the vibrant painted artworks.

While a Radcliffe fellow in 2018–2019, Fowler developed the 10-part film with it which it as if it is to be, which takes its title from Gertrude Stein's poetry and features women’s artmaking processes. Building on this, as well as further research and her long photographic practice, the exhibition provides an entree into the archive and to the lives of queer, trans, and women artists from the 20th century to today. Part intimate study and part feminist critique, Fowler’s new body of work shares personal histories while welcoming all.
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Eve Fowler: words doing as they want to do is organized by Meg Rotzel, curator of exhibitions at Harvard Radcliffe Institute, and is presented in collaboration with the Gordon Robichaux Gallery through a concurrent exhibition and publication.