Transformations: Fable as Form presents living women artists whose works explore fairy tales, folklore, and feminist allegories. Reflecting a range of cultural traditions from Japanese Shintoism to Magical Realism to European Surrealism, each artist employs visual referents that invite open-ended narratives and spark flights of the imagination. 

The title Transformations references Pulitzer-Prize-winning poet Anne Sexton’s 1971 volume, a retelling of Brothers Grimm fairy tales through a modern, feminist lens. Sexton’s imaginative poems offer pointed commentary on social structures, gender-based social expectations, and sensitive topics such as spirituality and death. Like Sexton’s poems, the works on view offer portals into imagined narratives and fantastical landscapes with real-world implications, eliciting emotions that can range from joyful to unsettling. 

In the Central Gallery, an immersive installation of walking clouds, flowering umbrellas, and fantastical spirits by Masako Miki (b. 1973, Osaka, Japan) welcomes visitors to a timeless space of unlimited possibility. The Brown Foundation Gallery will feature a group of works by artists including Kiki Smith (b. 1954, Nuremberg, Germany) who explores the human condition through the female body, referring to the cycles of birth, life, death, and spiritual transformation, and Summer Wheat (b. 1977, Oklahoma City) who engages archetypes drawn from fables to explore themes of labor, leisure, and our evolving relationship to the natural world.

Through varied materials, including bronze, felt, paint, and tapestry, the works on view explore identity, fluidity, and hybridity through the lens of history, mythology, and folklore. The featured objects offer an invitation to dream and to disrupt, to reenvision what has been and what can be. 

This exhibition is curated by Executive Director Alison Weaver and Associate Curator Claudia Mattos. 

Transformations: Fable as Form is made possible by the City of Houston through the Houston Arts Alliance, the Moody Center for the Arts Excellence Fund, the H. Russell Pitman Fund for the Moody Center for the Arts, the Tamara de Kuffner Fund, the Kilgore Endowment Fund, and the Sewell Endowment.