Museum of Contemporary Art

Ann Toebbe

08 - 30 Oct 2011

© Ann Toebbe
The Doctor's Wife, 2011
Courtesy of the artist
ANN TOEBBE
UBS 12 × 12: New Artists/New Work:
8 – 30 October, 2011

Toebbe’s meticulously detailed paintings, collages, and drawings comprise a fascinating world of domestic interiors reconstructed from memory and depicted from multiple viewpoints. Her three new large-scale works made of painted paper—The Doctor’s Wife, The Grocer’s Wife, and The Photo Engraver’s Wife—are based on conversations with her mother, mother-in-law, and step-mother-in-law that centered on fond memories of their childhood kitchens and the difficulties of being a wife and mother in the 1940s and 50s. With these works, the artist considers the role of women as homemakers and the ongoing centrality of the kitchen within domestic life.