Cardigan Worn by One Woman of the Boeing Five, Tried for Entering the Boeing Nuclear Missile Plant on September 27th, 1983, Sentenced to Fifteen Days in the King County Jail for Defending Life on Earth
2011
Ellen Lesperance
American, born 1971
Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art
Ellen Lesperance animates archives and feminist histories by re-creating the sweaters worn by individual women at protest events during the 1980s and 1990s. This work replicates the sweater of one of the “Boeing Five,” a group of women who trespassed at a Boeing cruise-missile plant outside Seattle in 1983 and urged workers to cease the production of military weapons. The cardigan and the painted knitting pattern, which invoke the traditional category of “women’s work,” memorialize this act of civil disobedience and position feminist and antiwar causes as ones that can be readily taken up by current and future generations.
- Maker/Artist
- Lesperance, Ellen
- Classification
- Installation
- Formatted Medium
- Wool sweater hand knit by the artist, and gouache and graphite on tea stained paper
- Dimensions
- a: 21 1/2 × 29 in. (54.6 × 73.7 cm) frame (a): 27 × 34 1/2 in. (68.6 × 87.6 cm) c: 6 × 14 × 17 1/4 in. (15.2 × 35.6 × 43.8 cm)
- Departments
- Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art
- Accession Number
- 2012.18a-e
- Credit Line
- Purchase gift of Jill and Jay Bernstein
- Exhibitions
- Half the Picture: A Feminist Look at the Collection, The Slipstream: Reflection, Resilience, and Resistance in the Art of Our Time
- Rights Statement
- © artist or artist's estate
- Museum Location
- This item is not on view
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