SELF + LIFE + TO WRITE
2017
Mixed media on balsam wood
Variable dimensions
Judy Blum Reddy (1943) has always made lists – lists of daily actions and artist actions, and innately amusing lists that spell out patriarchy and forms of discrimination. Blum Reddy worked for two decades at the Hatch Billops Archives in Manhattan, New York. Here she transcribed interviews and made lists of all that was to remain of African American visual and oral culture. In 1980, as the photographer Ram Rahman was designing an invite to her show, he aptly named it 'Who is She?'. It was apt because she had spent the past decades with her partner, a relatively well-known printmaker from India, Krishna Reddy. Blum Reddy had met frequently with many greats of the Indian art arena, had shown within group shows with other Indian artists, and a seminal solo exhibition of her work had been held at the gallery Nature Morte, curated by Peter Nagy, but she never figured among the lists of Indian artists. This exclusion from the list mirrored the not-inclusion of Indian artists abroad from museum and biennale lists.
For Survival Kit 10.1, Judy Blum Reddy brings together water-colours, drawings, decoupage and photos, as well as reproductions of her earliest work, from her time at school to The Cooper Union and her stay in Paris. She also includes invitation cards featuring illustrious names, manifestations of her life, which are here displayed on wooden panels as if they were teaching aids for her grandchildren, who often hang out in her studio.
judyblumreddy.com