NANCY WILSON-PAJIC
HIGHLIGHTS
NANCY WILSON-PAJIC
1941 Born in Peru, Indiana, U.S.A.
1950-59 Classical studies in drawing and painting.
1959-64 Art school, then studies in psychology and communications.
1965 New York. Takes part in an experimental poetry reading. Throws away all poems. Chooses to read from a how-to magazine.
1966 Definitively stops painting. Explores other forms of cultural expression, notably film, sound, text, performance...
Begins using sound to modulate space.
Creates a media center on Long Island. Center is a laboratory for exploring and exhibiting new art forms.
1967 Forms a "salon", a group of like-minded people from different disciplines who meet regularly to share their work. First public performances.
Takes the name Nancy Wilson Kitchel.
1968 Installs a recorded voice in a pile of dishes in a kitchen, for a salon exhibition. Voice recounts the daily routine of a secretary-wife-mother.
Chooses to develop narrative forms within an art context. Utilization of spoken word to charge space with meaning, to activate, to delineate space.
1969-73 B.F.A. degree from the Cooper Union.
Confronts the problem of documenting ephemeral and four-dimensional artworks.
Working on problems of identity and women’s social roles in installation form.
1972 Founding member of A.I.R., first women's gallery, in New York and personal exhibition of installations and objects with texts. First solo show the following spring.
1973 Personal show at Artists Space in New York is first time sound installations is shown in an art context and inspires an impassioned debate in the art world.
1974 Text installations at 112 Greene Street Gallery in New York attract attention.
Participation in the international avant-garde with text-based installations.
1976 Solo show at M.L. D’Arc gallery, consisting of an installation with a long text continuously printed out by a word processing machine, receives major reviews in Artforum and Arts Magazine.
1977-80 Discouraged by the growing academism of the avant-garde. Sells house in New York and gives away possessions.
Marries the video artist Slobodan Pajic. Takes the name Nancy Wilson-Pajic to indicate changes in art and career.
Settles in Nogent-sur-Marne in a studio of the national arts foundation.
Begins research on the aestheticizing tendencies of photography.
1983 Solo show at the Musee National d'Art Moderne in Paris.
1984-86 Large-scale pigment prints of banal images made with box cameras arranged in cinematic sequences with text panels. Realizes series V.O. Soustitré, integrating text as subtitles for large-scale prints on canvas.
1989 Commissioned by the French Ministry of Culture to create a monumental work commemorating the 150th anniversary of the invention of photography.
1990-92 Large-scale retrospectives at the Musee National d'Art Moderne in Paris, at the Musee Cantini in Marseille and in two museums in the city of Aurillac.
1995 Creates, with art historain Carole Chichet, the virtual artist Penelope Morgan, who makes the most radical works possible using discarded objects. Begins series of full-sized photograms of human figures in cyanotype, Falling Angels. Commissioned to produce a work for the new lace museum in Calais, a large-scale ensemble of photograms of items from their collection.
1996 Named Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture.
1996-98 Acquires the use of an abandoned warehouse at Ferrières-en-Brie. Produces more than thirty “still life” ensembles of banal objects, text, sound and natural elements.
1998 Christian Lacroix agrees to lend his Haute-Couture creations for a new series of photograms. Produces around 30 large-scale photograms on hand-coated cyanotype emulsion. Collaboration continues until 2003.
1999-00 Commissioned by the model urban agglomeration of Sénart to produce a major installation work, Les Paliers, a single installation in four “stages”.
Commissioned by the town of Ponthault-Combault to produce a series of 7 image-text «posters», Série Noire, installed in the outdoor information system.
2001-02 Grant from the FIACRE program of the French Ministry of Culture to explore digital photography during a trip down the coast of California.
Commissioned by the town of Lomme in the Lille area to realize a 1% work for the new multi-media library. Creates a modular, cumulative project consisting of ensembles of images on the walls, films in the form of screen savers and an image base for graphic communication.
Granted studio in Nogent-sur-Marne. Begins program of documenting works.
2008-10 Participates in Elles@CentrePompidou, the important survey of women’s art from the collections of the Musée national d’art moderne in Paris, and shows vintage sound installations in several retrospectives of feminist art in New York.
From 2011 Concentrates on developing text-based statement in installations, video, sound and writings.
