Nadya Riot on Hypatia | The Dinner Party Today

Judy Chicago's The Dinner Party is an installation consisting of a banquet table with places set for 39 mythical and historical women; it honors an additional 999 women by inscribing their names in gold. The work, completed in 1979, addresses the absence of women from dominant historical narratives. Chicago intended The Dinner Party to be so vast and impressive that women could never again be erased from history. Conceptual performance artist and activist Nadya Riot is a founding member of Pussy Riot, a global feminist protest art movement. In 2012, she was sentenced to two years' imprisonment following an anti-Putin performance; she was released in December 2013. Here, she discusses Hypatia of Alexandria, an influential ancient philosopher whose work in mathematics and astronomy earned the wrath of radical Christian monks. This episode is part of The Dinner Party Today, a series by the Brooklyn Museum in which artists, writers, and thinkers reflect on the artwork's legacy and the women it represents. Read more about The Dinner Party, Hypatia, and the Heritage Floor, where the names of an additional 999 women are inscribed. Visit the Brooklyn Museum to see the installation in person. This project was produced by Seaplane Armada and the Brooklyn Museum.