HWS News
19 July 2024 • Faculty A New Language: Makker’s Womb Chair Speaks Reviewed
Architecture Now features Professor of American Studies Kirin Makker’s collaborative artwork Womb Chair Speaks.
Professor of American Studies Kirin Makker’s collaborative artwork Womb Chair Speaks was recently reviewed in the New Zealand magazine Architecture Now.
Makker’s ongoing project tackles the cultural and physical mythologies of the womb by interrogating, refashioning and reclaiming Eero Saarinen’s classic Womb Chair, an icon of midcentury modern design.
“The chair, as an object, maintains its integrity with its original purpose of sitting,” writes reviewer Gina Hochstein. “However, a different occupation is to be felt with this reworked Womb Chair; the comfort provided is transient, necessitating eventual adjustment by the occupant, thanks to the knobbly nature of hand-sewn additions.”
The transformation offers “a new language of the womb, typically hidden from view, yet…reveals decades of societal and physical challenges. Womb Chair Speaks is to make visual the spectrum of womb experiences that can encompass pain, violence and loss of a fertile space that is traditionally seen as a symbol of compliance and objectification. Instead, it now emerges as a site of resilience, housing complex narratives and memories. In this new form, Womb Chair Speaks defies patriarchal norms and finds its provocative new voice.”
Previously displayed at HWS, Harvard University and the Center for Interdisciplinary Research on Aging and Care at the University of Graz, Austria, Womb Chair Speaks is now showcased at the Winterthur Museum of Decorative Arts in Winterthur, Del., as part of the “Transformations” exhibit of contemporary art. The piece was also featured when Makker was named to Good Morning America’s 2021 Inspiration List: Who’s Making AAPI History Right Now?
The Winterthur exhibit features more than 30 nationally recognized artists whose work draws inspiration from the museum’s extensive art, library and garden collections. Womb Chair Speaks will be on display through Jan. 5, 2025.
