Georgia Saxelby
To Future Women
June 1 – July 1 2018
To Future Women is a 20-year time capsule of letters to the next generation of women, memorializing the anniversary of the Women’s March. The project invites participants across America and beyond to write a letter to women in 20 years’ time. Part art and part history, these letters will be archived for 20 years at The Phillips Collection and The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden and re-exhibited in 2037 on the 20th anniversary of the Women’s March. To Future Women has been a six month long roaming project throughout Washington, DC collecting letters in person and by mail with the support of local
museums, galleries, arts organizations and artists.
This exhibition re-interprets the To Future Women project into an artistic sacred space. The installation transforms letters received throughout the project into a processional chamber that reveals our hopes, anxieties and anticipations for a new future generation of bold women. The installation draws on the ritual act of procession and the mythology of the numinous gateway, a threshold space that bridges the present and the prospective, and stands between the known and
unknown. This exhibition is the last time the To Future Women letters will be on view before they enter a time capsule for the next 20 years.
To Future Women has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts, its arts funding and advisory body, as well as, IA&A at Hillyer, The Phillips Collection, the Hirshhorn, Halcyon Arts Lab, and
the Australian Embassy.
Georgia Saxelby is a Sydney-born, US-based installation artist and is currently an Artist-in- Residence at the art and social change incubator Halcyon Arts Lab in Washington, DC. Her interdisciplinary practice explores ritual and sacred
space and their role in re-imagining and re-forming our cultural identities and value systems. Saxelby creates installations that are rooted in participatory
and feminist practices and traverse sculpture, performance and architecture.
While in Washington, DC, Saxelby is a Visiting Scholar at the Sacred Space Concentration of the School of Architecture at Catholic University of America. She is the recent recipient of the prestigious Australia Council for the Arts Career Development Grant. In 2016-17, Saxelby worked at Diller Scofidio + Renfro, the renowned New York art and architecture studio that designed the High Line, and was awarded three prominent artist grants to undertake a series of international sacred space mentorships and residencies. In 2017, Saxelby was chosen to speak at the ninth International Architecture, Culture and Spirituality Symposium on her research and practice.
