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
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Object Label
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.
Caption
Ellen Lesperance American, born 1971. 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. Wool sweater hand knit by the artist, and gouache and graphite on tea stained paper, 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). Brooklyn Museum, Purchase gift of Jill and Jay Bernstein, 2012.18a-e. © artist or artist's estate
Gallery
Not on view
Gallery
Not on view
Artist
Title
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
Date
2011
Medium
Wool sweater hand knit by the artist, and gouache and graphite on tea stained paper
Classification
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)
Credit Line
Purchase gift of Jill and Jay Bernstein
Accession Number
2012.18a-e
Rights
© artist or artist's estate
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Frequent Art Questions
I was wondering if you could provide some more background information in this piece. I'm not familiar with the incident in the description.
Of course! Five Puget Sound Women's Peace Camp protesters were arrested inside Kent Boeing Aerospace Center's cruise missile facility in September of 1983.They were part of a peace group that had been camped outside the facility since June and eventually they entered, unchallenged, using homemade Boeing identification badges.Lesperance, the artist, seeks out women involved in campaigns wearing sweaters in archival footage and then recreates their garments.Very cool! Thank you!Tell me more.
Ellen Lesperance creates knitting patterns based on examples of sweaters she finds in archival photographs of female activists, and then uses these pattern paintings as guides for her hand-knit “historic” sweaters.Can you tell me more about the title of this?
Who were the Boeing 5?The Boeing Five were a group of five women from the Puget Sound Women's Peace Camp who took their protest inside of the Kent Boeing Aerospace Center where cruise missiles were being developed.They were protesting the creation and use of nuclear warheads, which they felt threatened life on earth as a whole. They were arrested for criminal trespassing.Thanks.What is the definition of an intersectional feminist?
Intersectionality refers to the interplay between different kinds of discrimination. The term was originally coined by then law student Kimberleé Crenshaw in 1989 to describe the double discrimination she faced as both a woman and a black person.Today the term also incorporates the "intersections" of gender with age, class, socio-economic status, physical or mental ability, sexual identity, religion, etc.The purpose of intersectional feminism is to acknowledge these compounding forms of discrimination and listen to different kinds of feminists to ensure that all women benefit from women's rights movements, which hasn't always been the case historically.
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