In the first half of 2016, the FLAG Art Foundation opened its doors to feminism and the words that encompass women–past, present and future.

Betty Tompkins is a self-proclaimed activist and feminist who has been depicting work involving sexual acts and taboo visuals since the 1960s. When she first arrived on the New York art scene in the 1960s, she was rejected from every gallery she visited, but instead of ditching the world that had so blatantly rejected her, she decided to forge on, but on her own terms. Without a gallery breathing down her neck, Tompkins was able to paint what she pleased. This led to some of Tompkins’ most well-known works, the Fuck paintings. She went deep into the world of sexuality, depicting acts of intercourse, both oral and vaginal, in a detail never seen before. When her paintings were censored abroad, she decided to censor herself so no one else could in paintings like Censored Painting #10. Her career has been built around the female body, and while her show at FLAG takes a break from the graphic sexual close ups, it is still, unapologetically, Betty.

Women, Words, Phrases, and Stories was exhibited from January 20 to May 14, 2016 and encompassed the entire second floor of the Foundation’s Chelsea gallery. The exhibit is Tompkins’ second iteration with language. Her previous work using words involved the stamping of nouns into the shape of genitalia. With the help of her friends, Tompkins is expanding past the world of nouns with this exhibition. In 2002, and again in 2013, Tompkins sent out this email to everyone she knew:

I am considering doing another series of pieces using images of women comprised of words.  I would appreciate your help in developing the vocabulary.  Please send me a list of words that describe women.  They can be affectionate (honey), pejorative (bitch), slang, descriptive, etc. The words don’t have to be in English but I need as accurate a translation as possible. Many, many thanks, Betty Tompkins.

From that came Women, Words, Phrases, and Stories, a sometimes crude, sometimes humorous, always thought provoking look at what society thinks of women.

It is easy to feel overwhelmed when you first enter the exhibit. One thousand canvases surround you in an array of colors. Some bear singular words, shouting “slut” in your face, while others tell a story of a type of woman (“With her you never know if you are going to get a ‘fuck you’ or a chicken dinner”). The canvases seem to be in conversation with each other, some sticking close with pals, while shunning off the “witchy” rejects of the group. The “total babe” who you “ache to touch” is probably actually an “epic bitch” and the “tall glass of water” is “unlike any other woman.” While Tompkins did not come up with the wording, she took the words given to her to tell a story.

Tompkins uses all of her skills to depict these words as she believes fit. Some make sense, like “crazy bitch” perched atop a chaotic Pollock-esque splatter, or the “girl next door” laying on a sheet of pink. Others, however, leave one to think about their design and how it adds to the meaning of the piece. It can be easy to get lost in the colors and designs as they surround you from every angle, but that is not the point.

The result of 14 years, a lot of emails, and 1,000 paintings is a moment for the viewer to step back and look at society in one room, quite an exciting experience. While the exhibit is small, one can stay in there forever, going through the canvases, laughing and nodding at some, cringing at others, looking over the ones that have no meaning to most.

The exhibit is a story about progress, about how in 11 years, nothing really changed. The most repeated words of the beginning of the first decade (cunt, slut, bitch) continued their popularity into the next.

The gallery, which Tompkins insisted to show in, refusing to show the exhibition anywhere else, is a small one, so the viewer has the advantage of being in the room alone, able to completely surround him or herself with the experience. This harmony is interrupted only by one of the four walls, that houses a description of the show above hundreds of pieces of paper, a place for the viewer to add their own word, to keep the conversation going, to take Schwabsky’s idea a little too seriously. While some words add to the exhibit, in the end, this interactive aspect seems to take away from the meticulously curated canvases that we all came for.

In all, Tompkins’ goal as a feminist artist is to create conversations, about sex, about women, and about the way society views both, and this exhibition does that. In a career filled with sex and genitalia, Women, Words, Phrases, and Stories, is an easier exhibition to digest, but compelling nonetheless.