Andrea Bowers (1965, Wilmington, United States)’ practice is inextricably linked to her activism. Her works often begin in the extensive archive she has assembled around American society, shaped by her relationships to various activist communities. Her terrain spans gun laws, civil rights, labour movements, immigrant rights, global warming and ecofeminism, subjects she approaches through the lens of civil disobedience and pacifism. Defense of Necessity (2003) refers to the ‘Women’s Pentagon Action’ of 1980, which brought 2,000 women to Washington, D.C., as well as the ‘Greenham Common Women’s Peace Encampment’ that began in 1981 near the eponymous Royal Air Force base in southern England. Weaving, adopted as a tool of protest during anti-nuclear demonstrations, became a symbol and strategy. In Bowers’ work, textile and embroidery recall this gesture, serving as metaphors for resilience of women confronting state power. The artwork functions as a barrier within the exhibition space, accompanied by a book and two photorealistic drawings based on historical images. The title references the legal notion ‘necessity defence’, a justification for illegal acts committed to avoid greater harm. It encapsulates Bowers’ belief in the moral imperative of resistance and underscores the paradoxes inherent to civil resistance – where the line between peaceful protest and unlawful action becomes porous. A small drawing Mug Shot (2013) is a self-portrait based on the artist’s photograph, taken in California after her involvement in a direct action to save endangered oak trees.

Andrea Bowers’ Radical Feminist Pirate Ship Tree Sitting Platform (2013) is animated by a call for resistance and activism. In 2011, Bowers was arrested in California for tree sitting, an act of environmentalist civil disobedience in which protesters sit in a tree, usually on a small platform built for that purpose. During this act, which aimed at preventing native oak woodland habitat from being clearcut, the artist met a veteran tree sitter who had spent the last six years living in old growth redwoods in California. As Bowers notes, upon asking the activist for his fantasy tree sitting platform: ‘All of my frustration, insecurities, and inequalities of living in a patriarchal culture flooded over me with his two words: Pirate Ship. I was immediately annoyed and unamused, of course. A typical man, I thought. Somehow it was so obvious yet, I would have never thought of that.’ Built with the veteran tree sitting activist, the work stands as a symbol of solidarity. An extract from the 1996 essay ‘Sin Big’, by controversial pioneering feminist Mary Daly (b. 1928, Schenectady – d. 2010, Massachusetts), fills the ship’s sail: ‘Ever since childhood, I have been honing my skills for living the life of a Radical Feminist Pirate and cultivating the Courage to Sin.’ This essay is a battle cry for Bowers, who was struck by Daly’s explanation of the origins of the word ‘sin’ deriving from the Indo-European root ‘es’, meaning ‘to be’: ‘When I discovered this etymology, I intuitively understood that for a woman trapped in patriarchy, which is the religion of the entire planet, “to be” in the fullest sense is “to sin”.’