Hannah Wilke. This item is unavailable.Hannah Wilke

Hannah Wilke's artwork, like her life, frames a heroic story about formal invention and social activism, personal loyalties and individual freedom, and, above all, breathtaking risk. A defining presence in the emerging community of women artists in the 1960's and '70's, Wilke developed a unique and controversial visual language in response to her own and women's experience. An unapologetic individualist, she celebrated her relationships with men as well as women and frankly explored the pleasures of sexuality. Using a wide range of non-traditional mediums, including latex and chewing gum as well as photography and film, she irreverently paid tribute to predecessors from Marcel Duchamp to David Smith. Focusing on the body as instrument and object of visual expression, Wilke made her art an unremitting self-exploration-without false modesty (when her naked body was an uncomplicated delight to behold) or shame (when it was mercilessly blighted by cancer). Wilke's art is inseparable from Wilke the person-bold, sometimes outrageous and, ultimately, heartbreakingly courageous.

Nancy Princenthal, a New York-based art critic and lecturer, and Senior Editor at Art in America, has been writing about contemporary art for 25 years. She is a co-author of After the Revolution (Prestel).