Pandora’s BoxX Project
Pandora's BoxX Project is a photographic portrait archive built over seven years of engagement with 360 women artists, curators, writers, and cultural practitioners (cis, trans, and non-binary) whose work has shaped the art world from the 1960s to the present. Like its namesake, the project opens a vessel of stories, releasing faces and voices that have challenged myths, privileged curiosity, and upset norms. These women are not merely witnesses to art history, they are its authors.
Every portrait begins not with a camera, but with a conversation. We talk about work, sacrifice, influence, and the lives each has chosen in the service of art. Trust is not a by-product of the process; it is its foundation. Only then does the camera come out. Each subject is asked to look directly into the lens, inviting an eye-to-eye encounter with the photographer and, ultimately, with the viewer. For the final selection, the sitter chooses the image they feel best represents them, making authorship itself a shared act.
What began as a way to expand my own artistic community became something much larger. The project grew through relationships rather than a predetermined list of names, each conversation leading to another until an extraordinary intergenerational community came into view.
Together, the portraits span multiple generations and eras: the radical roots of the 1960s and 70s, shaped by feminist and civil rights movements alongside performance and land art; the critique-driven 80s and 90s; the globalization, technology, and social practice of the 2000s; and the present, marked by both progress and backlash, amplified by social media, attacks on reproductive rights, threats to trans lives, and growing challenges to cultural institutions. Many of the earliest participants are now in their 80s and 90s; some have already passed. Today, these portraits stand as evidence of extraordinary achievement and as a reminder of what remains at stake.
Pandora's BoxX asks direct questions: Who gets remembered? Who is left out? How are histories built, and who holds that power? The project is not about elevating a select few, but about honoring a broad and interconnected community. It insists that history is not fixed or finished, but continually rewritten through who is seen, who speaks, and whose work is carried forward into the present.
“You row forward looking back, and telling this history is part of helping people navigate toward the future. We need a litany, a rosary, a sutra, a mantra, a war chant for our victories. The past is set in daylight, and it can become a torch we can carry into the night that is the future.” Rebecca Solnit,‘Hope In The Dark’
“WOMEN MAKE ART HISTORY”, Guerrilla Girls