“Maybe those heads are about power. Maybe they’re about male power’s envy of women. They do look ferocious,” Grossman said of her work of the late 1960s and early 1970s. She once described her ambiguously gendered, assertively bound and masked heads as form of self-portraiture, and depicted them in a range of media from works on paper to sculpture. Here, Grossman constructs a connected pair heads through a combination of collaged and drawn elements. By presenting the figure as doubled, the artist resists imposing the assumptions of a singular identity, instead prioritizing the many ways gender and power shape collective and bodily experience.

Gallery label from

Vital Signs: Artists and the Body, November 3–February 22, 2024

Medium Cut-and-pasted painted paper, pressure-sensitive tape, and pencil on paper
Dimensions 21 x 29" (53.3 x 73.7 cm)
Credit Purchased with funds provided by Agnes Gund and Daniel Shapiro
Object number 587.2006
Department Drawings and Prints

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