First Portrayals

By Peter Frank

Jennifer White Kuri is currently working on an evolving cycle of portraits of thirteen women, collectively titled the “Global Women” project. The subjects of the paintings are influential in their respective regions and professions. “Global Women” is a social as well as aesthetic undertaking that will portray these women with the objects and images that define their personalities and their professional and spiritual purposes while including references to the cultures that have nurtured them and in which they now operate.

Jennifer has designed “Global Women” as a ten-year project. The first display of her work on the sequence since she began her research three years ago will take place at the end of this month, October 2010, in the new arts neighborhood that has sprung up in the industrial area where the east side of Culver City abuts central Los Angeles. Jennifer’s friend, actor-sculptor Daniel Stern, is lending his space to help launch the public face of the project. On view will be the first of Jennifer’s large kraft-paper notations, painted studies and partially completed paintings, and, festooned with pertinent material, the stepladder that allows the 5′ 3″ artist access to the upper reaches of her expansive paintings and drawings.

As well, the exhibition, “The Global Women Project: First Portrayals,” will feature videotaped interviews with the three women documented here, Soula Saad of Lebanon, Rossana Castrellon of Panama, and Nadine al Bedair of Saudi Arabia. Also screening will be footage from Soula Saad’s Beirut Rising, her documentary about Lebanon’s youth peace movement, and footage from work in progress (including Women World Vision and Voices). During the exhibit a Skype connection to Soula will allow Jennifer to conduct a live interview.

The “Global Women” project will culminate in an exhibition of all Jennifer’s work — research material, studies, and finished paintings — in Venice, Italy, in the summer of 2017, in cooperation with the Biennale de Venezia.