Gender and sexuality — though often seemingly external to the abstract aesthetic — had numerous real-life manifestations for the exhibited artists, who at times brought a feminist perspective into their works. Feliza Bursztyn, who studied at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, Paris, with Ossip Zadkine in the 1950s, invested Kinetic Art with oppositional feminist and leftist agendas, fighting against oppressive social and political conditions in Colombia. Rosemarie Castoro was part of New York’s legendary Art Workers’ Coalition in 1969, and one of the eight women interviewed in Linda Nochlin’s 1 groundbreaking 1971 essay, ‘Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?’ Kazuko Miyamoto, Sol Lewitt’s first assistant, co-founded A.I.R. (Artist in Residence) in 1972, the first all-female collective art gallery in New York. Eschewing traditionally feminine attributes, Marlow Moss changed her forename from Marjorie and adopted a dandified masculine appearance around 1919.

The ‘emancipatory’ aspect of minimalism is furthered in this exhibition through the recognition of new geographies when mapping Minimal Art, which has traditionally been understood as a movement predominantly associated with the United States. This exhibition will look beyond this paradigm to examine Eastern European and Latin American practices, and the oppositional stances these artists took within their specific socio-political milieus. The personal trajectories of the artists presented demonstrate how stories of migration and dynamics of international exchange have been a consistent driver of innovation and creativity.