About
Shrine For Girls is a series of site-specific sculptural installations in different cities around the world created by artist Patricia Cronin, reflecting on the global plight of exploited women and girls. Originally conceived for the 2015 Venice Biennale in Venice, Italy, the show continues on an international tour including the United States, India, Ireland and Nigeria.
Exhibition
Shrine For Girls (Dublin), aprons, framed photograph and wood crate (Detail)
Patricia Cronin
Shrine For Girls,
Dublin
The LAB Gallery
Foley Street
Dublin 1
Ireland
Opening: June 16, 2017 (Bloomsday), 6-8pm June 16 � August 20, 2017
The LAB Gallery is pleased to present, Shrine For Girls, Dublin, the first solo exhibition in Ireland of New York artist Patricia Croinin. One of the critically acclaimed highlights of the 2015 Venice Biennale, this site-specific installation is a meditation on the global plight of exploited girls and women.
Moving from the sacred altars and architecture of Venice�s sixteenth-century Chiesa di San Gallo to the secular urban gallery context of The LAB, in the heart of Joyce's Nighttown and built in the shadow of the last Magdalene Laundry to close in Ireland in 1996, Cronin gathers hundreds of articles of women�s and girls� clothing from around the world to represent three specific tragedies.
Brightly-colored saris symbolize two Indian cousins who were gang-raped and lynched in 2014; somber hijabs signify 276 Nigerian Chibok schoolgirls who were kidnapped by the terrorist group Boko Haram in 2014 (109 of which are still missing); and pale aprons symbolize those worn by �fallen women� in forced labour at the Magdalene Asylums and Laundries in Ireland, the United Kingdom, Europe and the United States to act as relics of these young martyrs.
Shrines, part of every major religion�s practice, provide a space for contemplation, petition and rituals of remembrance. In this exhibition, Cronin presents the three original fabric sculptures, here piled on top of their shipping crates to also address human trafficking and act as a metaphor of who or what is valued in our culture. Returning to the neighbourhood where the weight of history inevitably overlays the interpretation of the contemporary, in the historic Monto, Cronin reminds us that we are all complicit in allowing violent abuses of women�s rights to become invisible in our society. The histories of the Magdalene Laundries are only starting to be heard.
Small photographs of each tragedy accompany the sculpture and a new series of oil portrait paintings, exhibitied for the first time, place a human face on tragedy and draw our attention away from statistics to the magnitude of the individual loss and unrealized human potential. Cronin asks: �What is the role of contemporary art in our 24-hour news cycle society? What can an artist do if they are not a politician, an NGO nor a philanthropist? Hopefully the artist looks out, keenly observes the world, reflects, and responds in a way that shakes us out of our numbness. We cannot be silent.�
Patricia Cronin�s work examines issues of gender, sexuality and social justice and has been exhibited widely in the U.S. and internationally. Shrine For Girls, Venice, curated by Ludovico Pratesi, premiered as a solo Collateral Event of the 56th Venice Biennale then traveled to The FLAG Art Foundation, New York, NY. Other solo exhibitions were presented at the Capitoline Museum�s Centrale Montemartini Museum, and the American Academy in Rome Art Gallery, both in Rome, Italy; Newcomb Art Museum, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA; Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY and her acclaimed sculpture �Memorial To A Marriage� is permanently installed in Woodlawn Cemetery, Bronx, NY.
Cronin is the recipient of numerous awards including: the Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome, Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Grant, two Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grants and a Civitella Ranieri Fellowship. Her works are in numerous museum collections, including the National Gallery of Art and Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, both in Washington, DC, Perez Art Museum Miami, FL and Gallery of Modern Art and Kelvingrove Museum, both in Glasgow, Scotland. She is the author of Harriet Hosmer: Lost and Found, A Catalogue Raisonn� and The Zenobia Scandal: A Meditation on Male Jealousy and is Professor of Art at Brooklyn College of The City University of New York. www.patriciacronin.net
The LAB Gallery is a platform for Irish arts practice, showcasing emerging artists, encouraging risk taking and collaboration while developing innovative learning and research programmes. The LAB and the LAB Gallery are programmes of the City Arts Office a section of Dublin City Council providing a citywide service developing the Arts in Dublin through partnership and collaboration. In addition to Dublin City Council, the LAB Gallery is supported by the Arts Council.
The exhibition is accompanied by a new text by Dr. Tina Kinsella. You can download the PDF here.
Special events include a curator and artist�s floor talk in the gallery on 16th June at 5pm and a panel discussion with Patricia�s Cronin, Michelle Browne, Louise Lowe and Dr. Tina Kinsella on 17th June.
Generous support came from the Arcadia Foundation, the Tow Faculty Travel Fellowship from The Tow Foundation and the Dean�s Office of the School of Visual, Media and Performing Arts at Brooklyn College of The City University of New York.
Images
Shrine For Girls, The LAB Gallery, Dublin, Installation View
Shrine For Girls, The LAB Gallery, Dublin, Installation View
Shrine For Girls, The LAB Gallery, Dublin, Installation View
Shrine For Girls (Chibok), hijabs, framed photograph and wood crate
Shrine For Girls (Uttar Pradesh), saris, framed photograph and wood crate (Detail)
Shrine For Girls (Uttar Pradesh), saris, framed photograph and wood crate (Detail)
Shrine For Girls (Chibok), hijabs, framed photograph and wood crate
Shrine For Girls (Chibok), hijabs, framed photograph and wood crate (detail)
Shrine For Girls (Chibok), hijabs, framed photograph and wood crate (detail)
Shrine For Girls (Dublin), aprons, framed photograph and wood crate
Shrine For Girls (Dublin), aprons, framed photograph and wood crate (detail)
Shrine For Girls (Dublin), aprons, framed photograph and wood crate (detail)
Shrine For Girls, The LAB Gallery, Dublin, Installation View
Shrine For Girls, The LAB Gallery, Dublin, Installation View
Shrine For Girls, The LAB Gallery, Dublin, Installation View
Shrine For Girls, The LAB Gallery, Dublin, Installation View
Artist
Patricia Cronin is a New York based conceptual visual artist. Since the early-90's, Cronin has garnered international attention for her photographs, paintings and sculptures that address contemporary human rights issues of gender and sexuality. Slyly reinvigorating traditional images and forms with social justice themes, her critically acclaimed statue, "Memorial To A Marriage," a 3 ton Carrara marble mortuary sculpture of her life partner and herself was made before gay marriage was legal in the U.S., and has been exhibited widely across the country and abroad. Cronin began her career working for the Anne Frank Stichting installing the traveling exhibition "Anne Frank in the World" in Europe and the U.S.
Her work has been presented in solo exhibitions at museums and galleries; including American Academy in Rome, Italy, Brooklyn Museum, Deitch Projects, Brent Sikkema, Woodlawn Cemetery, New York, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA, and ConnerSmith, Washington, DC. In 2013 she was honored as the only contemporary artist ever invited to have a one-person exhibition at the Capitoline Museum's converted powerplant, Centrale Montemartini Museo in Rome, Italy.
Important international museum shows include: Massimiliano Gioni's NYC 1993: Experimental, Jet Set, Trash and No Star, New Museum, New York; Sean Glashan's Sh(OUT): Contemporary Art and Human Rights, Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow; and Frank Wagner's Just Different, Cobra Museum, Amsterdam.
Her work is in numerous permanent public collections including; Deutsche Bank, New York; National Gallery of Art, Corcoran Collection, Washington DC; Perez Art Museum Miami, FL; Gallery of Modern Art; and Kelvingrove Art Galleries and Museum, Glasgow, and many private collections including David Zwirner and Chuck Close.
She is the recipient of numerous awards, including the prestigious Rome Prize in Visual Art from the American Academy in Rome, where she is now a trustee, an Andy Warhol Foundation Grant, an Anonymous Was A Woman Award, a Civitella Ranieri Foundation Fellowship, a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Grant, and two Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grants, among others.
A compelling speaker, Cronin has lectured internationally, including: Smithsonian Museum, Museum of Modern Art, Victoria and Albert Museum and Christies. She is also the author of two books; Harriet Hosmer: Lost and Found, A Catalogue Raisonné (Milan: Charta, 2009) and The Zenobia Scandal: A Meditation on Male Jealousy (New York: Zing Books, 2013).
She received a BFA from Rhode Island College, was awarded a Battell Stoeckel Fellowship at Yale University, studied at Skowhegan School of Art and received a MFA from Brooklyn College. She has been on the graduate faculty at both Columbia University and Yale University, and is Professor of Art at Brooklyn College of The City University of New York since 2003.
Cronin lives and works in New York City.
CV download
Press
To view recent press, click on these links :
"Patricia Cronin: The LAB Gallery"
Sculpture Magazine | May 2018
"Speaking the Unspoken"
Visual Arts Ireland News Sheet | November - December 2017
"Patricia Cronin at the LAB Gallery Dublin"
Art News | July 19 2017
"Group of Garments Go Local and Global"
The Irish Times | June 27 2017
"Patricia Cronin: Value, Justice, and Success"
Whitewall | June 2017
"ART CITIES: Dublin-Patricia Cronin"
Dream Idea Machine | June 2017
"Shrine For Girls"
Discover Ireland | June 2017
Donate
Please help bring awareness of the international importance of girls and women by supporting Shrine For Girls with your tax-deductible donation. Your generosity will ensure the success of this project.
Here are three organizations where you can get more information and make a donation.
The Gulabi Gang (from Hindi 
"pink") is a group of Indian women activists responding to widespread domestic abuse and other violence against women in India. Recently they have gained international attention for taking matters into their own hands while the police and male-dominated society ignore and reinforce the plight of women in their country.
www.gulabigang.in
Justice For Magdalenes seeks to promote and represent the interests of the Magdalene women, to respectfully promote equality and seek justice for the women formerly incarcerated in Ireland's Magdalene Laundries and to seek the establishment and improvements of support as well as advisory and re-integration services provided for survivors.
www.magdalenelaundries.com
Camfed - Campaign for Female Education is an international non-profit organization tackling poverty and inequality by supporting girls to go to school and succeed, and empowering young women to step up as leaders of change. Camfed invests in girls and women in the poorest rural communities in sub-Saharan Africa, where girls face acute disadvantage, and where their empowerment is now transforming communities.
www.camfed.org
Catalogue
A fully illustrated catalogue accompanies the exhibition. Patricia Cronin: Shrine For Girls, Venice exhibition catalogue, published by SilvanaEditoriale (Milan) with essays by Phong Bui, Ludovico Pratesi and Maura Reilly.
Contact
info@shrineforgirls.org
