Howardena Pindell received her BFA from Boston University in 1965 and her MFA from Yale University in 1967. A curator at the Museum of Modern Art for over a decade, she currently teaches at Stony Brook University in New York. While Pindell uses a wide variety of media, she is best known for her long exploration of paper as a material, bridging abstract painting and conceptual art, particularly her use of hole-punched paper dots which she accumulates and affixes to surfaces, employing both materials and practices found in everyday life. She is also known for direct political statements, including exhibitions and publishing in support of female artists of color, and the landmark video, Free, White and 21 (1980). In 2018, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts co-organized a major retrospective of the artist’s five-decade career in the exhibition Howardena Pindell: What Remains To Be Seen.
“I loved the feeling of the flow of material. . . , whether it’s figurative or abstract doesn’t matter. . . . Art was/is like a form of prayer. . . . I really believe that one can almost heal oneself through action and creativity.”