Alla Efimova: House/Work: The Art of Sonya Rapoport
22 May 2025 - 10h
Room B112.B (School of Arts and Humanities), University of Lisbon
Zoom link:
https://videoconf-colibri.zoom.us/j/99832115354?pwd=pQp3g2CQQCRyQaPaOAORO0mYEMWqcN.1
Password: 451184
In the post-WWII era of rapid university expansion, Sonya Goldberg (1923-2015) married chemistry professor Henry Rapoport. The couple moved to California, where he began his career at the University of California, Berkeley. While Henry immersed himself in teaching and research, Sonya found her own path, becoming one of the first women to earn a master's degree in fine arts at the university. Despite her academic achievements, Sonya Rapoport found herself constrained by the expectations placed upon her as a "faculty wife." The demands of maintaining a large household and raising three children limited her opportunities for artistic advancement. Although she achieved early recognition with a retrospective of her paintings at a prominent San Francisco museum in the 1960s, it was her later work that would ultimately define her legacy.
In the 1970s, Rapoport transformed the large garage behind her home into a studio space. There, she developed conceptual, psychologically complex projects that drew directly from her domestic environment. Works such as The Doors of My House and Objects on My Dresser reimagined her homebound existence as rich material for pioneering feminist art. These projects applied methodological rigor to everyday surroundings with an intellectual precision that matched her husband's work in organic chemistry.
Only recently has Rapoport's significant contribution to conceptual and feminist art received proper recognition through museum exhibitions and scholarly publications, highlighting how she ingeniously converted the limitations of her domestic role into pioneering artistic work.
Further information can also be found on the RHOME – Representations of Home Project website:
https://www.rhome.letras.ulisboa.pt/en/open-seminars/rhose-2025