There are so many artists out there, and I’ve been wanting to creating this list for a long time. Given how popular my ‘Contemporary Black Artists You Should Know’ post was, I finally sat down and created this list of Contemporary Female Artist You Should Know. This was quite the endeavor, and I know I will have left key individuals off by accident so I apologize in advance.
I’ve restricted this list to only living female artists. I feel there are many great resources for deceased female artists such as Eva Hesse so I’ve omitted them from this list in order to include artists that can be collected and engaged with here and now.
If you’d rather consume this content in a video format, there are two videos, part one is included at the end of the post.
1. Amy Sherald
Amy Sherald is an American Artist who's known for large scale portraits. She painted the official portrait of former first lady Michelle Obama. She's represented by Hauser & Wirth Gallery.
According to Hauser "Sherald subverts the medium of portraiture to tease out unexpected narratives, inviting viewers to engage in a more complex debate about accepted notions of race and representation, and to situate black heritage centrally in the story of American art." (source)
2. Ana Segovia
Ana Segovia lives and works in Mexico City. She creates paintings from film stills, mostly from the Mexican cinema golden era that investigate the performative aspect of the gender as well as the construction of masculinity in massive audiovisual medias.
3. Andrea Bowers
Andrea Bowers is an LA Based, American multi-media artist - she works in video, sculpture, etc. Key themes she explores in her works are around women's’ and workers’ rights to climate change and immigration (source).
4. Anna Park
Anna Park, young emerging artist that lives and works in Brooklyn. Fun fact: she was “discovered” by, KAWS, as he visited the school's open studio exhibition (she went to the New York Academy of Art). She's known for these very detailed, expressive, works created with charcoal.
5. Anya Kielar
Another American Artist who lives and works in New York. She's known for creating these painting/sculpture hybrid works. She's represented by Rachel Uffner Gallery.
6. Arghavaan Khosravi
Another artist of Rachel Uffner Gallery, is Arghavan Khosravi who's an Iranian artist who currently lives and works in New York. Her heritage influences her work a lot, she uses textiles from Iran, and reflects on women’s status in her native country and her own feelings of dislocation from it (she was a victim of trump's travel ban) and hasn't been home since 2015.
7. Avery Singer
Avery Singer is "American artist known for creating digitally assisted paintings created through 3D modeling software and computer-controlled airbrushing." (source) Her works were in the 2019 Venice Biennale, super impressive since she's only 34. She's represented by Hauser & Wirth.
8. Barbara Kruger
Barbara Kruger is an American conceptual artist and collagist. If you've seen the supreme logo - that was inspired by the work of Barbara Kruger. Most of her work consists of black-and-white photographs, overlaid with declarative captions, stated in white-on-red Futura Bold Oblique or Helvetica Ultra Condensed text and it addresses cultural constructions of power, identity, consumerism, and sexuality. She's still alive and is a professor at UCLA. (source)
9. Becky Suss
Becky Suss is an American artist who lives and works in Philladelphia. Her work explores ideas of intimacy, domesticity and memory. Her works are very flat with exaggerated proportions and she often paints interiors. According to Jack Shainman which is the gallery that represents her "She is fascinated by American culture’s dismissal and dependence on homemaking and homemakers, and inspired by her own personal heritage, the generations of women in her family who managed the domestic sphere without recognition" (source)
10. Beverly Fishman
Her most recent works are abstract sculptures and paintings that are derived from a focus on pill and medication addictions. Fishman has a really incredible resume and is head of the painting department at Cranbrook Academy of Art, she also got her MFA at Yale. (source)
11. Bharti Kher
Bharti Kher was born in the UK and now lives and works in India. I like to think of Kher's work as cultural collages. She uses all kinds of materials in her sculptures, paintings, and installations.
12. Cajsa von Zeipel
Cajsa von Zeipel is a Swedish sculptor that lives and works in New York. She's known for her towering, white sculptures of lean, powerful young women, androgynous creatures in dynamic postures. With their color, pattern, and vibrance, they're meant to challenge classical ideas of sculpture. (source)
13. Caroline Larsen
Caroline Larsen is a Canadian artist who lives and works in Toronto. She's known for these incredible almost sculpture/like paintings that she creates with paint in pastry tubes. They're super colorful and have tons of texture. It's actual candy for the eyes. (source)
14. Catherine Opie
Catherine Sue Opie is an American fine-art photographer who lives and works in LA. Opie specializing in portraiture, studio and landscape photography. Her style mixes traditional photography and unconventional subjects. She is known for her portraits exploring the Los Angeles leather-dyke community. (source)
15. Cecily Brown
Cecily Brown is a British painter who lives and works in New York. Her work falls under abstract figuratism. She's known for referencing the greats of Western painting—think Peter Paul Rubens, and Edgar Degas to Willem de Kooning, Francis Bacon, and Joan Mitchell—as well as to popular culture (her nudes series) (source).
I have a whole video of me visiting her latest exhibit at Blenheim Palace over the holidays (here).
16. Chloe Wise
Chloe Wise is a Canadian artist who's based in New York City. She's known for her oil painting portraits. I'm pretty sure she's represented by Almine Rech Gallery - if she isn't already she will be, they've been investing a lot in her career. (source)
17. Christina Forrer
Christina Forrer lives and works in LA - she creates tapestries, paintings, and works on paper, but I'd say she's most famous for her tapestries.
Her work explores 'conflict' and according to Luhring Augustine, the gallery that represents her "they present an Id-driven ecosystem, synthesizing need, hatred, fear, jealousy, and violence into a battle of bodies, instincts, and wills." (source)
18. Christina Quarles
Christina Quarles is a contemporary American artist living and working in Los Angeles. Her works are gestural, abstract paintings that confront themes of racial and sexual identities, gender, and queerness. (source)
19. Christine Wang
Christine Wang lives and works in San Fransisco. She's known for her 'meme paintings.' They're spot on, and honestly refreshing. She's represented by Night Gallery in LA.
20. Cindy Sherman
.jpeg)
Cindy Sherman is an American photographer who is known for taking self portraits of herself dressed up as a variety of fictional characters in various contexts. (source)
21. Claire Tabouret
Another Night Gallery Alum is Claire Tabouret. Claire Tabouret is a French artist based in LA. She's known for her paintings of figures that she creates with loose expressive brushstrokes. She's also represented by Almine Rech Gallery. My personal favorites of hers are these gas mask paintings, but she's famous for her makeup paintings as well. Her works have sold for roughly half a million dollars at auction in 2020.
22. Clare Woods
Clare Woods is a British artist who lives and works in the UK. Woods more recent work speaks to the themes of fragility, vulnerability, mortality and disability, the delicate border that exists between sickness and health, cruelty and humanity, and ultimately life and death. This is according to Simon Lee Gallery that represents her. She uses oil paint on aluminum which makes for a really beautifully sculpted, abstract figurative work. (source)
23. Dana Schutz
Dana Schutz is an American artist who lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. She's known for large scale, richly colored figurative paintings. She's represented by major galleries such as David Zwirner and Thomas Dane Gallery in the UK. One of her works sold for $6.5 million at Christies.
24. Ebecho Muslimova
Ebecho Muslimova, creates paintings and works on paper that feature her shameless fictional character "Fatebe" She captures this character in events with self-consciousness, comedy and vulnerability. She currently lives and works in New York. She's represented by Magenta Plains Gallery - she has a show at The Drawing Center that I'm super excited to see.
25. Elsa Sahal
Elsa Sahal is a Paris-based sculptor. She's known for creating biomorphic ceramic works that upend notions of the masculine and feminine. She's represented by Nathalie Karg Gallery.
26. Emily Mae Smith
Emily Mae Smith is an American artist who lives and works in Brooklyn. Her representation with Petzel Gallery was just announced. She's known for creating surrealist-esq paintings with anthropomorphic figures. Anthromorphic, means giving human characteristics to objects that normally don't have them (like broomsticks in Smith's case). (source)
27. Emma Kohlmann
Emma Kohlmann is an American artist based in Massachusetts. Her primary focus is usually in working with ink and watercolor. Kohlmann also "publishes her own artist’s books, zines and made various record covers for music labels." (source)
28. Erin. M. Riley
Erin M. Riley is an American artist who lives and works in Brooklyn. She's known for creating hand-woven, hand dyed wool tapestries. The theme of her work focuses on women and women's issues (like birth control)
29. Farah Atassi
Farah Atassi is a Belgian Artist who lives and works in Paris.
She's known for creating works made of vibrantly colored geometric shapes that play with perspective. "Her paintings mix textile patterns and motley mosaics, referencing Modernism and Folk Art in equal measure." (source)
30. Firelei Báez
Firelei Báez was born in the Dominican Republic and now lives and works in New York City. She's known for creating super intricate works on paper and canvas as well as large scale sculpture.
"Firelei Báez casts cultural and regional histories into an imaginative realm, where visual references drawn from the past are reconfigured to explore new possibilities for the future" - James Cohan Gallery (Source)
31. GaHee Park
GaHee Park was born in Korea and now lives and works in Montreal, CA. Park is known for creating paintings that at first glance, look colorful and romantic, but are actually depicting scenes where the "ideal has turned sour." Galerie Perrotin has been featuring her in a few solo shows over the last two years.
32. Genesis Belanger
Genesis Belanger is an American artist that lives and works in Brooklyn. She's known for creating "porcelain-and-stoneware ceramics pigmented in pastel hues." Her sculptures are of "fantastical objects that cull the uncanny from the everyday." (source)
33. Genieve Figgis
Genieve Figgis is an Irish Artist who's known for creating abstract figurative paintings that reference traditional paintings by Goya and Velázquezs. She makes a mockery of tradition by smearing the depiction of the European class system. (source)
34. Gina Beavers
Gina Beavers was born in Greece, and lives and works in Newark, New Jersey. She's known for creating painting/sculpture hybrids with thickly textured paint. She creates paintings based off of images she sees on Instagram of food, makeup, etc. (source)
35. Grace Weaver
Grace Weaver is an American artist who creates works that portray the "theater of public life." Her works are large, colorful, and feature female protagonists that are "archetypes of feminine self-presentation." (aka your typical female). (source)
36. Hannah Epstein
Hannah Epstein is a Canadian artist who creates hooked rugs. She describes her work as "a feminist folklore of the internet age.” She creates rugs to depict "monsters, internet memes and historically-inspired creatures." (source)
37. Hannah van Bart
Hannah van Bart is a Dutch artist, based in Amsterdam. She's stated that she's inspired by Dutch Golden Age artists. Her works feature Figures or anthropomorphized figures against a dark, matte palette. (source)
38. Hayv Kahraman
Hayv Kahraman is a Kurdish-American artist who lives and works in LA. "Her works reflect the controversial issues of gender, specifically concerning female identity in relation to her experiences as a refugee, and all issues that plague her home country of Iraq." (source)
39. Heidi Hahn
Heidi Hahn lives and works in Brooklyn. Heidi Hahn creates paintings that are portraits of women as they are, not as society wants or expects us to be.
"I wanted to give you a woman of our time. No questions asked." - Heidi Hahn (source)
40. Henni Alftan
Henni Alftan is a Paris based painter. She's known for creating paintings of scenes that are tightly framed, reminiscent of close-range photography. In her works she likes to "explore the similarities between painting and image-making." (source)
41. Hilary Pecis
Hilary Pecis lives and works in LA. Pecis is known for creating paintings of interiors, still lifes, and landscapes in bright colors. Her works are full of objects, intruding many vibrant colors and textures. (source)
42. Issy Wood
Issy Woods was born in the U.S and currently living and working in London. Woods refers to herself as a "medieval millennial in reference to her classical style, envisions a dark world in which women have been battered by consumerism, heritage is turned into a transaction, and humor is as trenchant as a pair of gold teeth." (source)
43. Ivy Haldeman
Ivy Haldeman lives and works in New York. She's known for creating pastel paintings of women's power suits from the 80's as well as handbags and shoes. Her work has a definitely pop art feel without the cheesiness. (source)
44. Jamian Juliano-Villani
Jamian Juliano-Villani is an American painter who lives and works in New York. She creates paintings that are (as I would like to describe them) culture collages.
Her works are influenced by "visual references from books, magazines, and other print media she has collected since high school." (source).
45. Jennifer Packer
Jennifer Packer is an American painter who is known for creating portraits, interior scenes, and still lifes. Her style of painting is what makes these works really special...her use of loose brush strokes and rich color palette. (source)
46. Jenny Holzer
Jenny Holzer is an American artist, based in New York. Her work focuses on "the delivery of words and ideas in public spaces."
She's most famous for her Truisms series, which consists of "300 aphorisms and slogans utilize a series of modern clichés or commonly held truths." (source)
47. Jenny Saville
Jenny Saville is a British painter that's known for her large-scale portraits of nude women. According to Gagosian, the gallery that represents her, she blends "classical figuration and modern abstraction." (source)
She's on that same level, blue chip level as Cecily Brown (another Gagosian gal)...she's had a painting sell for 12.4 M dollars, "It is also the most ever paid at auction for the work of a living female artist." (source)
48. Jesse Mockrin
Jesse Mockrin is an American artist that lives and works in LA. She's known for creating oil paintings that are inspired by European painting of the 17th and 18th centuries, but that are tightly cropped in order to redefine the female figure within art history. She reframes (literally) how scenes of violence and hatred against women are remembered in order to make the subject matter more about the struggle, the pain, and the shame these violent acts inflict. (source)
49. Jessica Stoller
Jessica Stoller is an American sculptor who lives and works in Brooklyn New York. She's represented by P.P.O.W Gallery, and is an assistant professor at The Pratt Institute. She's known for creating porcelain sculptures with grotesque details that contrast "the idealized world of femininity." (source)
50. Jessie Makinson
Jessie Makinson is a British artist who lives and works in London. She creates large scale, vibrant paintings that "readdresses a patriarchal
past from a female perspective" (source). She takes erotic scenes from folklore stories from 17th and 18th-century where women are "dangerous active participants, not passive permission givers."
51. Joanne Greenbaum
Joanne Greenbaum is an American artist that lives and works in New York. Greenbaum experiments across many different mediums from painting to sculpture, but inserts her signature style of bright colors and loose, gestural marks into all of them. (source)
52. Jordan Casteel
Jordan Casteel is an American figurative painter who lives and works in New York. She's known for first photographing people she's encountered in life and then paints them with exaggerated textured in the texture of their skin and clothing, almost similar to the dynamism of Baroque paintings. She's a really young artist with an already very established career having many museum shows and acquisitions. One of her recent paintings sold for roughly 700K. (source)
53. Judith Bernstein
Judith Bernstein is a firecracker, feminist artist. She lives and works in New York, and she's most widely known for her drawings and paintings of the male anatomy. She's also very outspoken about anti-war activism. (source)
54. Julie Wachtel
Julia Wachtel is an American Painter who uses Pop Art to explore 'the human psyche.' She often features images from popular culture (like this cartoon of The Jetsons). She, like Cindy Sherman and Barbara Kruger are said to be part of the Pictures Generation (a group of artists that were influenced by the culture of movies and television, popular culture). (source)
55. Julie Heffernan
Julie Heffernan is an American painter who lives and works in New York. She's a Professor of Fine Arts at Montclair State University in New Jersey. She's known for creating large scale paintings that "honor women who have been misrepresented or excluded from this visual history" (source).
According to The New Yorker her paintings are "ironic rococo surrealism with a social-satirical twist."
56. Kara Walker
Kara Walker is an American artist who works across a number of mediums such as painting, print making, installations, sculptures and film-making. The themes of her works are what ties it together, she explores "race, gender, sexuality, violence, and identity in her work. She is best known for her room-size tableaux of black cut-paper silhouettes." (source). She currently lives in New York and is Tepper Chair in Visual Arts at Rutgers University
57. Katherine Bernhardt
Katherine Bernhardt is an American artist based in Brooklyn, New York. She's known for creating loosely painted works of cultural characters and objects such as E.T., Garfield, the nike check, cigarettes, etc.
58. Katherine Bradford
Katherine Bradford is an American artist who's based in New York. She's known for creating figurative paintings with undefined edges and a dense color palette. She didn't start her career until later in her life, she's gotten the most recognition in her 70's, which proves it's never to late to go after your dreams. (source)
59. Kelly Reemtsen
Kelly Reemsten is an American Artist that lives and works in LA. She's "known for her bright and bold paintings of women carrying household tools such as chainsaws or axes." (source) Her work speaks societies perceptions of gender, power and femininity.
60. Kim Gordon
.jpeg)
Kim Gordan is not only a famous artist, but a famous musician. She's the bassist, guitarist, and vocalist of alternative rock band Sonic Youth. She currently lives and works in LA. She's represented by 303 Gallery, and she's known for translating the same punk rock attitude present in her music into photographs, paintings and film. (source)
61. Lisa Yuskavage
Lisa Yuskavage is an American artist who lives and works in New York. She's a figurative painter who creates fantastical compositions with direct sensuality. The most of her work has ever sold for is 1.4 M, so she's one of those more blue chip artists. (source)
62. Liza Lou
Liza Lou is an American artist who lives and works in Los Angeles and Durban, South Africa. Liza Lou is known for her use of glass beads in her practice. She really wants to break the stigma of beads being associated with craft, by showing that the material can be associated with fine art. Her most famous work is titled The Kitchen, and it took her 5 years to make and was purchased by The Whitney Museum of Art. All of this is amazing, but honestly I think the coolest thing about her is that her studio in Durban, South Africa, employs over 25 women and men, breathing life into a struggling, poverty infiltrated community. (source)
63. Loie Hollowell
Loie Hollowell is an American artist.
"Loie Hollowell is recognized for her paintings that evoke bodily landscapes and sacred iconography, using geometric shapes to move a figure or its actions into abstraction" (source)
64. Lorna Simpson
Lorna Simpson is an American photographer (although she has recently dabbled in painting).
"She is best known for her photo-text installations, photo-collages, and films. Her early work raised questions about the nature of representation, identity, gender, race and history." (source)
65. Louise Bonnet
Louise Bonnet is a Swiss artist that lives and works in LA.
Her works "explore emotions of melancholy, loneliness, nostalgia and grief in her works on canvas or paper." - Galerie Max Hetzler (source)
She achieves this by depicting figures in exaggerated proportions.
66. Lynette Yiadom-Boakye
Lynette Yiadom-Boakye is a British painter and she lives and works in London. "She is best known for her portraits of imaginary subjects, or ones derived from found objects, who are painted in muted colours. Her work has contributed to the renaissance in painting the Black figure." (source) A painting of hers sold at auction for roughly 1 million dollars in 2019. She has a huge exhibit at The Tate Britain museum currently. She was nominated for the Turner Prize in 2013.
67. Mandy El-Sayegh
Mandy El-Sayegh lives and works in London, England. She's best known for using newsprint and other forms of text from media, collaged to "call into question our assumptions and understanding of typically unquestioned systems." She really goes for it with her exhibits as well and is known for covering not only the walls but the floors as well. (source)
68. Martha Diamond
Martha Diamond is an American artist. She's known for her cityscapes - or abstract expressions of the New York City skyline. She's really having a moment recently. She's had an exhibit at Skartedt as well as Magenta Plains in 2020. (source)
69. Mary Corse
Mary Corse is an American artist who lives and works in California. Her works are a hybrid of American Abstract Expressionism and American Minimalism, and her practice revolves around the idea that light can serve as both subject and material in art. (source)
70. Mary Weatherford
Mary Weatherford is an American artist that lives and works in LA. "She is known for her large paintings incorporating neon lighting tubes." (source) She's represented by Gagosian and David Kordansky Gallery.
71. Mernet Larsen
Mernet Larsen is an American artist that splits her time between Florida and New York. Mernet Larsen is an artist and Professor Emeritus at the University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida.
She's known for her "narrative paintings depicting hard-edged, enigmatic characters that inhabit an uncanny parallel world filled with tension and wry humor." (source)
72. Mira Schor
Mira Schor is an American artist that lives and works in New York City. She's so much more than an artist, she's also a writer, editor, and educator. She's had loads of teaching positions, but over the past decade she has taught in the Fine Arts Department at Parsons The New School for Design. Her paintings are equal parts expressive and poetic, through a feminist lens. (source)
73. Natalie Frank
Natalie Frank is an American artist currently living and working in New York City. "Her work deals with themes of power, sexuality, gender, feminism, and identity." (source) She blurs the lines between reality and fantasy. She predominately sticks to painting but she does experiment with sculpture. I'm really into the pottery works she's been posting on her Instagram lately. She received her B.A. at Yale and her M.F.A at Columbia.
74. Nicola Tyson
Nicola Tyson is a British artist that currently lives and works in New York. Her primary medium is painting but she's also worked with photography, film, performance and the written word. Her works are known to include gender fluid figures. (source)
75. Nicole Eisenman
Nicole Eisenman is an American artist that lives and works in Brooklyn. She's best known for her paintings, but she's also created sculptures as well.
She has a bit of humor in her works, and her figurative oil paintings play with themes of desirability, comedy, and caricature." (source)
Her sculptures were a part of the Whitney Biennale in 2019, and her paintings were a part of the Venice Biennale in 2019. She's represented by Hauser & Wirth and Anton Kern Gallery.
76. Nikki Maloof
Nikki Maloof is an American artist that lives and works in Massachusetts. Her works depict brightly colored and patterned domestic interiors that star animals like fish, birds and carts. Nikki Maloof is another Yale MFA graduate. (source)
77. Nina Chanel Abney
.jpeg)
Nina Chanel Abney is an American artist who's based in New York. Her works dive into the themes of race, celebrity, religion, politics, and art history (to name a few).
"She works in a pop-surrealist style, employing cartoonish figures and playful compositions to echo the perpetual stimulation of the digital age. Abney’s paintings present new ways of approaching loaded topics and generating discussion, allowing viewers to come to their own conclusions." (source).
78. Njideka Akunyili Crosby
.jpeg)
Njideka Akunyili Crosby is a Nigerian-born artist working in LA. She's known for her large scale works of domestic experiences such as a family watching tv that are depicted by layering images over paint like a collage. They're meant to represent the complexity of contemporary experience. (source)
79. Paola Pivi
Paola Pivi is an Italian artist based in Alaska. She's best known for her bears covered in feathers that are representative of global warming. She won the Golden Lion award at the Venice Biennale in 1999 (an award given to the 'best' artist of the biennale). (source)
80. Petah Coyne
Petah Coyne is a contemporary American sculptor and photographer. She's best known for her large and small scale hanging sculptures and floor installations. Her sculptures are created from an incredible array of materials such as wax, feathers, fabric and more. She's won so many awards (too many to list) and has had roughly 30 solo museum exhibits. (source)
81. Pia Camil
Pia Camil is a Mexican artist that lives and works in Mexico City.
Her work is "usually associated to the mexican urban landscape, the aesthetic language of modernism and its relationship to retail and advertising." (source)
82. Portia Munson
Portia Munson is an American artist that lives in upstate New York. She works in a variety of mediums but she's best known for "large-scale agglomerations of mass-produced plastic found objects arranged by color," such as the Pink Room (source). Her works speak to how our culture infantilizes women and have a certain notion of what femininity is.
83. Rita Ackermann
Rita Ackermann is a Hungarian-American artist that lives and works in New York. Her paintings are a hybrid between abstract and figurative. She's represented by Hauser & Wirth. (source)
84. Robin F. Williams
Robin F. Williams is an American painter that lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.
"Her figurative paintings explore pervasive American narratives about childhood, identity and gender." (source)
Her style is borderline surrealist where she creates figures with exaggerated proportions.
85. Ruby Neri
Ruby Neri is an American artist that lives and works in LA. She's best known for her massive ceramic pieces depicting the female body. She really plays into the idea that a woman is a vessels, but literally making women vessels. (source)
86. Sara Rahbar
Sara Rahbar is an Iranian artist who's based in New York. She's a mixed-media artist who's best known for her Flag Series, that are "collages that form various incarnations of the American and Iranian flag, exploring ideas of national belonging, as well as the conflicting role of flags as symbols of ideological and nationalistic violence" (source).
87. Sarah Lucas
Sarah Lucas is a British artist who's known for "appropriate everyday materials (including, for example, freshly made fried eggs) to make works that use humour, visual puns and metaphors of, death, Englishness and gender." She's also known for her self portraits. This picture is from her exhibit at The New Museum. She's a part of the Young British Artists (YBAs) - a group founded by Damien Hirst, made up of artists known for their "shock tactics and entrepreneurial attitude." (source)
88. Sarah Sze
Sarah Sze is an American artist that's based in new York.
She creates solar systems basically. ..but actually she "explores the role of technology and information in contemporary life utilizing everyday materials." (source).
She's known for her installations of found objects, light and video....that look like if humans were to create a galaxy. Sze is a professor of visual arts at Columbia University.
89. Serena Stevens
Serena Stevens is an American artist who lives in Iowa. She's known for her large scale paintings of interiors and suburbia.
The New Yorker describes her works as "watchfully rendered rooms that convey the contradictions of home and the tension between melancholy and intimacy" (source)
90. Shara Hughes
Shara Hughes is an American artist that lives and works in Brooklyn. She's best known for her brightly colored floral paintings. She had works featured in the 2017 Venice Biennale, and she's represented by Rachel Uffner Gallery.
91. Simone Leigh
Simone Leigh is an American artist that lives in New York. She explores black female-identified subjectivity.
She's best known for her sculptures that use "materials and forms traditionally associated with African art." (source)
She's represented by Hauser & Wirth. Leigh will represent the United States at the 59th Venice Biennale in 2022.
92. Sojourner Truth Parsons
Sojourner Truth Parsons is a Canadian artist that lives and works in LA. Her work is reminiscent of 80's advertising campaigns.
They have "a powerful sense of narrative intimacy, where we, as viewers, are witnesses to highly-personal yet fictional slices of life." (source)
93. Sophie von Hellermann
Sophie von Hellermann is a British artist that's based in London. She's inspired by German Romanticism and German Expressionism (source). Her works are very dreamlike, featuring feminine figures.
94. Sue Williams
Sue Williams is an American artist that lives and works in Brooklyn. Later on in her career she's moved more towards abstraction, but she still covers key themes of history, politics, and gender. She's been included in 3 consecutive Whitney Biennials. (source)
95. Tara Donovan
Tara Donovan is an American sculpture who lives and works in Brooklyn.
She's known for her "large-scale installations, sculptures, drawings, and prints utilize everyday objects." Think plastic straws, coffee cups, etc. (source)
96. Tracey Emin
Tracey Emin is a British artist that like, Sarah Lucas, is also a part of the Young British Artists (YBAs). She's best known for her "autobiographical and confessional artwork" such as 'my bed' and 'Homage to Edvard Munch and all My Dead Children'. You also have probably recognized her iconic neon tube artworks. (source)
97. Tschabalala Self
Tschabalala Self is an American artist that lives in Connecticut. She's known for her "depictions of Black female figures using paint, fabric, and discarded pieces of her previous works" (source).
Self has stated that she "the use of unconventional materials help to highlight the unique shapes of a body because it separates the emphasis of each part from the whole structure of the artwork and creates an individual space for the pieces to express rather than to perform for the audience." (source)
98. Vanessa German
Vanessa German is an American artist that lives and works in Pittsburgh. Vanessa is a visual artist as well as performance artist, and poet. German describes herself as a 'citizen artist' or "someone that explores the power of art and love as a transformative force in the dynamic cultural ecosystem of communities and neighborhoods." She is the founder of Love Front Porch and the ARThouse, a community arts initiative for the children of Homewood. (source) She's best known for her embellished sculptures.
99. Yayoi Kusama
Yayoi Kusama is a Japanese artist who's best known for her dotted pumpkins and flowers as well as her 'infinity rooms.' Kusama was driven to obsessively create these works because of a mental condition she's dealt with from a young age. (source)
100. Zoe Buckman
Zoe Buckman is a British multi-media artist. Her work "investigates feminism, identity, and cultural norms in modern society." Buckman is a member of For Freedoms, the first artist-run Super PAC (political action committee) founded by artists Eric Gottesman and Hank Willis Thomas (source). She was also married to David Schwimmer for 7 years. (source)
