"Abortion" Series Paula Rego on display at the Armory Show
Opening September 9 at the Javits Center, the fair has partnered with London's Cristea Roberts Gallery to display Rego's “abortion prints” at the Crystal Palace – the front entrance – during the fair. Proceeds from sales of the two most recent prints in the series will be donated to Abortion on Demand, a telemedicine abortion care provider. Donations will be made in the name of the late artist. “Rego's work tackles obscure and complex subjects,Paula Rego wanted to make the viewer stop and become uneasy, but the abortion is never explicit. Only the blood is shown," Sophie Lindo, associate director of Cristea Roberts Gallery, told ARTnews . The gallery is the world representative of original prints byPaula Rego.
Paula Rego, who died in June at the age of 87, forced the world to face its failures. In 1998, he began a series of abortion photos inspired by the narrow defeat of a referendum to legalize abortion in Portugal. A Portuguese artist drew young women in mental and physical anguish from illegal procedures. Some of the women depicted are still in school uniforms; many boldly look at the viewer.Paula Rego spoke openly about her own abortion, determined to normalize this taboo. The best-known pieces in the series are his monumental pastels, which have been shown around the world, most recently in a major retrospective at Tate Britain, London. The engravings have the same disconcerting power. They were exhibited at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon in 1999, and appeared frequently in Portuguese newspapers before the success of the second referendum on abortion in 2007. The ten prints that arrive at the Armory Show feature women in domestic settings. Though their bodies and faces are contorted in pain, they remain defiant. In Untitled 7 (1999), a stone-faced woman is sitting on a bed with her legs splayed by two folding chairs. Her fists grip the sheets, perhaps anticipating what's to come. A macabre narrative is implied, but audiences must fill in the details, gleaning cues from Rego's lone composition and tense needle scratches.
Paula Rego was born in Lisbon in 1926 during the dictatorship of António de Oliveira Salazar, an especially oppressive regime for women – where they did not obtain the right to vote until 1976.Paula Rego he left for England at the age of 20, where he lived most of his life, but his art remained concerned with the situation of women in Portugal. A predominantly Catholic country, it had strict restrictions on abortion: the procedure could only be performed if the pregnancy represented a danger to the mother's life, the fetus was unviable or the pregnancy was the result of rape. “[Abortion restrictions] have disproportionately affected the poor,” he said.Paula Rego to the guardian in 2019. “If you were rich, it was easier to find a safe way to get an abortion, often by traveling to another country. Poor women were massacred.” Throughout his 70-year career,Paula Rego she has worked in printmaking, installation, pastels and painting, with a consistent focus on women's relationships with systems of power and control. It was notably an outspoken critique of the wave of restrictive abortion legislation in the US ahead of the 2020 presidential election – a precursor to the overthrow of Roe V. Wade. In many cases, these laws allow zero exceptions for abortion. “It seems unbelievable that these battles have to be fought again. It's grotesque," he said.Paula Rego to the British newspaper. “I'm doing what I can with my work, but both men and women have to face this. This affects men too. Women don't get pregnant alone, do they?"
