Critique by Judith Le Roux

Public Women
A critique by Judith Le Roux

Presenting art in public space means recognizing the artists who came before and who entered streets and other public spaces to create, perform, share their visions, and, in many cases, earn their livelihoods.

In recent years, however, these spaces have become increasingly gentrified.
The city’s neighborhoods where artists used to thrive have become more commercialized and controlled by private interests, with significant consequences for artists. Reclaiming public space through artistic creation, participation, and freedom of expression is therefore also a way of defending access to culture.

This act of reclaiming space connects contemporary artists to a broader lineage of artists who have used public space as a site of creation and resistance.

The city itself reflects this contradiction. On one hand, it presents itself as a place of diversity, bohemian culture, and independent art. On the other, it often uses policing and regulation against the artists who contribute to this cultural identity and bring public spaces to life.

With these ideas and precedents at the center of the project, three women artists: Susana Aldanondo, Brittany DiMauro (Eternal Possessions), and Kanami Kusajima (Let Hair Down), came together at the intersection of Mulberry and Grand Streets to intervene in public space.

Public Women was a public intervention that sought to emphasize the importance of reclaiming and reframing art as a universal human right deserving of recognition and protection. The project questioned the boundaries between institutional art and street art while placing women artists at the center of the discussion.

Susana Aldanondo developed an interesting curatorial approach. Through the arrangement of the works, she created a space for dialogue among the three artists and encouraged a hybridization of languages across three different disciplines: painting, collage, and performative dance.

The intervention incorporated a construction wall that served as the backdrop for the sidewalk performances. Posters with white backgrounds, bold black text, and images of the artists created a clear visual identity. The black-and-white design kept attention on the artists, their names, and the actions taking place in the street.

The posters were visually effective. They clearly identified the artists and communicated the purpose of the intervention. At the same time, they created a strong backdrop within a busy, high-foot-traffic area between Chinatown and Little Italy.

Placing the posters next to one another, with the curatorial text on the reverse side, was also an effective decision. It created a physical and conceptual space between the artists and their individual interventions. Each artist was given enough room to develop her work without competing visually with the others.

Each artist approached the public space differently.

Susana Aldanondo curated the temporary exhibition while also participating as an artist. She regularly works in the public spaces of SoHo, where she transforms walls into temporary studios. There, she creates large-scale abstract paintings influenced by music, the public, and her surroundings. Her practice questions traditional ideas of high art while drawing attention to the challenges faced by women artists. Her work also explores female empowerment and the immigrant experience. During this intervention she painted to music, her work resulting in a figurative work painted directly on one of the posters.

Kanami Kusajima is a dancer and choreographer whose performances are guided by spontaneity and emotional responses to her surroundings. Music, the audience, and the physical environment all influence her movements. For Kusajima, space is not simply a background; it becomes an interlocutor. She uses her body as a force in tension with the space around her.

During this intervention, she disrupted the usual rhythm and background noise of the intersection, inviting passersby’s to stop and observe the tension between the fragility and strength of her movements. She performed with paper set on the floor, dancing directly on that surface, using her hands and feet for mark making with traditional inks. Her body thus became both an instrument of performance and a tool for visual production. The resulting marks serve as documentation of her dance.

Brittany DiMauro deconstructs dominant narratives through popular imagery. She moves beyond traditional artistic supports and transforms her practice into an intervention in the urban landscape. Her collage practice incorporates photographs and popular images from magazines, focusing on the reestablishment and redefinition of relationships between objects and images that were not previously connected.
Her work emphasizes female identity while examining how media and popular culture influence the construction of identity. For this intervention, she presented her collage Trust Utopia. Both its imagery and title functioned as an invitation to collective reflection and action.

The intervention sought to emphasize the meaning of culture and the importance of access to it for both artists and the general public. Passersby became witnesses to the performances and, through their presence and responses, became witnesses while embodying that art and culture are meant to be experienced and seen and accessible to everyone.

Public space, therefore, should not be understood simply as a “non-place” devoid of identity or reduced to symbolic exchange, as Marc Augé proposes. It can also be understood as a place to inhabit: an open stage, a social mirror, and a space where cultural relationships are continuously produced and negotiated.

The importance of an event such as Public Women exists not only in what is seen and remembered, but also in its documentation. The record becomes a form of cultural memory—a memento mori that allows the event and its ideas to return to the present, even after the physical intervention has ended.

Judith Le RouxVisual Artist, Graphic Designer and Curator based in Argentina

Judith Le Roux (Córdoba, Argentina) is a visual artist and curator whose work explores the intersections of gender, stereotypes, clothing, fashion memory, and cultural codes, among other themes. She holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Graphic Design, a Technical Degree in Photography, and a Diploma in Exhibition Mounting from the National University of the Arts.

Since 2005, she has exhibited in Latin America, Europe, Asia, and Africa. Her awards and selections include Photopolis Agripino (Greece, 2025), Arica International Photofestival (Chile, 2025), and the Peru Design Biennial (2024/2021), among others. Her work has been published in various art publications.

As a curator, she has organized and co-curated exhibitions in museums, galleries, and festivals since 2010.

IG: @judith.lerouxWebsite: https://judithleroux.myportfolio.com/