Viewpoints is a rotating series that highlights artwork from the Henry's collection, paired with commentary and insights from members of the University of Washington community. This iteration of Viewpoints presents paintings by Amanda Ross-Ho (b. 1975, Chicago, IL) with photographs by Marsha Burns (b. 1945, Seattle, WA) and Justine Kurland (b. 1969, Warsaw, NY) that explore self-expression and identity formation during adolescence. Double Dare Ya, the exhibition’s title, refers to the 1992 Bikini Kill song of the same name in which Kathleen Hanna addresses girls in her audience directly, “Dare ya to do what you want, dare ya to be who you will, dare ya to cry right out loud.” 

Ross Ho’s Untitled (SIMPLE PLAN) and Untitled (MY CHEMICAL ROMANCE), 2013, are titled after pop-punk bands popular in the 2000s and are based on the artist’s larger-than-life reconstruction of an abandoned backpack, heavily decorated by its former owner. The resulting paintings magnify the marks on the original backpack’s surface—a dense constellation of doodles, language, and numbers—a visual record of one teenage girl’s personal expression. In her photographic portraits of young adults from the 1980s, taken in the studio and on the street, Burns does not so much reveal her sitters as present them to the viewer on their own terms. Dressed and adorned in personalized ways, her subjects appear before the camera in postures that evoke both self-possession and vulnerability. Kurland’s Flashlight, 1999, pictures two young women in the woods at night and is part of the artist’s Girl Pictures series in which she staged scenes of young women exercising their independence in ways that defy gendered social expectations. Each artwork in this presentation touches on elements of youth culture, boundaries, and transgression, but from a different decade and perspective. Together, they offer an opportunity to reflect on the experience and meaning of youth, and how this transitional period of life differs and remains the same across generations.

The community contributors for this iteration of Viewpoints are: Kari Lerum, Associate Professor in the School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences at UW Bothell; Debi Talukdar, PhD candidate from the College of Education at UW Seattle; and Ilah Walker, an undergraduate student at the UW Seattle campus and former Henry Teen Art Collective member.