In 1924, French poet André Breton published the first Surrealist Manifesto, setting out ideologies and principles for writers and artists to engage and explore the unconscious mind. While Breton’s text launched Surrealism as a transcontinental movement, Breton’s conspicuous exclusion of work by women artists ignored the reality that women were advancing many of the artistic techniques associated with Surrealism. The title of this exhibition, Double Space, calls attention to some of these techniques, including the use of double exposures, mirrors and reflection, distorted figures, solarization, and multiples. Additionally, while male Surrealists often engaged with notions of the womanly muse as enchantress or childlike, many of the artists in this exhibition challenged these notions of by representing female figures as subjects of agency and queer desire, constructing an alternative to a masculinist uncanny.

Double Space: Women Photographers and Surrealism is organized by the New Orleans Museum of Art and is supported by the Del and Ginger Hall Photography Fund and the A. Charlotte Mann and Joshua Mann Pailet Endowment.