“After Venus” Museum of Fine Arts St. Petersburg Florida

May 16 – August 30, 2026

“After Venus”  Women Bodybuilders 1990 – 1998

Nude Amazons — powerful women bodybuilders — transgress gender codes and boldly confront visualized and verbalized issues about women. Amazons are my metaphor, conveying the inherent physical, intellectual and emotional strength of women. The work accentuates the myth of the Amazon, beginning in domination found in ancient matriarchal societies. Symbols from these times, among them the Sheela-na-Gig, Mena, and Yoni, impart historical coda into the dynamics of contemporary women bodybuilders to provoke controversy of the female form, and underscore the long journey of the societal evolution of woman. Women bodybuilders juxtapose master works of female nudes by male artists, ranging from Rubens to Picasso, and destroy the female as desirable “object”. Profound in my mind is the cultural context of male-female bodies, androgyny, and the undertone of tension between them. The work is meant to transcend the parody of the stereotype and empower a new dimension in the continuing societal evolution of women.

Babs Reingold Talk with Curator Katherine Pill
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNwCmVy-KsI