Niki de Saint Phalle

Structures for Life

Mar 11–Sep 6, 2021

MoMA PS1

Niki de Saint Phalle. Tarot Garden. 1991. Lithograph, 23.7 x 31.5″ (60.3 x 80 cm). © 2019 NIKI CHARITABLE ART FOUNDATION. Photo: Ed Kessler

From the very outset of her career in the 1950s, Niki de Saint Phalle (American and French, 1930‒2002) defied artistic conventions, creating works that were overtly feminist, performative, collaborative, and monumental. Her first major US exhibition, Niki de Saint Phalle: Structures for Life features over 200 works that highlight Saint Phalle’s interdisciplinary approach and engagement with pressing social issues. Innovation was key to Saint Phalle’s process: from beginning to end, she envisioned new ways of inhabiting the world.

Early on, Saint Phalle pushed against accepted artistic norms, creating artworks that used assemblage and performative modes of production—such as shooting at her canvases–as well as large-scale sculptures like her Nanas. From the late 1960s onwards, Saint Phalle expanded her practice to include architectural projects, sculpture gardens, books, prints, films, theater sets, clothing, jewelry, and, famously, her own perfume. This exhibition foregrounds the artist’s interdisciplinary endeavours, focusing on the visionary architecture and utopian sculpture environments that formed the core of her later work.

Saint Phalle produced fantastical and figurative houses, parks, and playgrounds. These structures were charged spaces of imagination from which she envisioned experimental societies emerging, places “where you could have a new kind of life, to just be free.” Central to this vision was Tarot Garden, a massive sculptural installation outside of Rome, open to the public since 1998. The intricate detailing and organic shapes of the garden’s structures, based on the 22 Major Arcana of the tarot deck, underscore Saint Phalle’s belief that art can alter perception and shift reality.

Saint Phalle also engaged with the politics of social space in her work. Addressing subjects that ranged from women’s rights to climate change and HIV/AIDS awareness, she was often at the vanguard in addressing pressing issues of her time. In particular, her work to destigmatize HIV/AIDS is highlighted through works related to her illustrated book AIDS: You Can’t Catch It Holding Hands (1986).

Order the exhibition catalogue, Niki de Saint Phalle: Structures for Life, from Artbook at MoMA PS1 and support independent bookstores.

Niki de Saint Phalle: Structures for Life is organized by Ruba Katrib, Curator, with Josephine Graf, Assistant Curator, MoMA PS1.

Niki de Saint Phalle: Structures for Life is made possible through the generous support of La Prairie Switzerland

Major support is provided by The Contemporary Arts Council of The Museum of Modern Art.

Additional funding is provided by Lise Stolt-Nielsen, MoMA’s Wallis Annenberg Fund for Innovation in Contemporary Art through the Annenberg Foundation, Keith Haring Foundation, The Deborah Buck Foundation, the Blue Rider Group at Morgan Stanley, and the MoMA PS1 Annual Exhibition Fund.

Artists

Licensing

If you would like to reproduce an image of a work of art in MoMA’s collection, or an image of a MoMA publication or archival material (including installation views, checklists, and press releases), please contact Art Resource (publication in North America) or Scala Archives (publication in all other geographic locations).

MoMA licenses archival audio and select out of copyright film clips from our film collection. At this time, MoMA produced video cannot be licensed by MoMA/Scala. All requests to license archival audio or out of copyright film clips should be addressed to Scala Archives at [email protected]. Motion picture film stills cannot be licensed by MoMA/Scala. For access to motion picture film stills for research purposes, please contact the Film Study Center at [email protected]. For more information about film loans and our Circulating Film and Video Library, please visit https://www.moma.org/research/circulating-film.

If you would like to reproduce text from a MoMA publication, please email [email protected]. If you would like to publish text from MoMA’s archival materials, please fill out this permission form and send to [email protected].

Feedback

This record is a work in progress. If you have additional information or spotted an error, please send feedback to [email protected].