P·P·O·W is pleased to present Will She Ever Shut Up? the gallery’s second exhibition with Betty Tompkins, featuring new and historic work. Tompkins is a pioneering feminist artist, best known for her direct depiction of the female body, sexuality, and desire through paintings, drawings, photographs, and video works. The exhibition title comes from a phrase submitted as part of Tompkins’ original Women Words project, which Tompkins worked on from 2002-2015, and serves as a poignant and humorous lens through which to grapple with the themes that Tompkins explores in her current exhibition. 

The exhibition will also feature a series of Apologia works, an ongoing project where Tompkins paints verbatim apologies issued in response to accusations of sexual violence or harassment against women onto art historical images that were either created by or which depict women. The works feature paintings by a variety of artists throughout art history including Angelica Kauffmann, Judith Leyster, Mary Cassatt, Andy Warhol, Caravaggio, and Raphael, among many others. The works are overlaid with apologies from art world figures like Chuck Close and Jens Hoffmann and pop culture figures such as R. Kelly and Mario Batali. One work, a reproduction of Caravaggio’s Boy with a Basket of Fruit and Boy Bitten by a Lizard, features Matt Lauer’s public statement after being fired from NBC News, while another depicts Lucas Cranach the Elder’s Judith with the Head of Holofernes with Charlie Rose’s words painted over Holofernes’ head.