Exploring the radical heart of collaboration with Sally Jane Brown

The Radical Heart of Shared Attention: Reclaiming the Feminist Page

It is an honor to have been invited by the International Women’s Art Salon to contribute this first column for Women’s History Month that will be the start of many more. Given the Salon’s mission to support women in all forms of art, exploring the radical heart of collaboration felt like the perfect starting point for our conversation.

For over a decade, I have argued that when artists and poets step “Beyond the Walls and Pages” (ARTPublika, 2017), they do more than combine two media; they challenge conventional ways of seeing and reading, resisting the confines of the "white cube" and the transaction of the "high-art" market. In a contemporary art world often fixated on the myth of the isolated genius, the act of "shared attention" is a revolutionary gesture.

As recent discourse in feminist art scholarship suggests, collaboration is a resistance against the transactional nature of the traditional gallery model. By moving work into the intimate space of the book or the shared studio, we participate in what is now recognized as "Co-Production." As Hana Leaper explores in “Contemporary Co-Production with Historical Collaborative Feminist Precedents” (Visual Culture in Britain, 2026), this is a vital reclamation of historical feminist strategies designed to break down the walls between the institution and the community.

This practice follows a storied lineage of feminist resistance that extends far beyond any single studio. We see it in the historic partnership of Sonia Delaunay-Terk and Blaise Cendrars, whose Prose of the Trans-Siberian (1913) folded poetry and color into a singular, tactile object. It resonates through the rare 1970s collaboration between Judy Chicago and Anaïs Nin, where Chicago’s evocative lithographs for Nin’s Delta of Venus (PowerHouse Books, 2004) transformed erotic prose into a shared visual-literary reclamation of female desire. We see it in the contemporary works of Susan Bee and Johanna Drucker, whose Fabulas Feminae (Litmust Press 2015) challenges conventional ways of reading through visual-poetic layering. Zines, artist books, and small press collaborations from Betye Saar, Faith Ringgold, Carolee Schneemann, and the Guerilla Girls used alternative publishing to reclaim voice, experiment with form, and amplify marginalized perspectives  as a "feminist infrastructure," a term used by art historian Amy Tobin (Women Artists Together), to bypass gatekeepers and speak directly to a community of witnesses.

There is a specific power in the "Slow Art" movement here. In our current “image-saturated age,” the act of slowing down to truly analyze and inhabit a work of art is a radical departure from the rapid-fire consumption of digital content (JSTOR, 2025). Collaborative artist-poet books act as "Slow Art" objects, demanding a different kind of tempo, one of patience, presence, and sustained engagement that allows for deeper critical reflection.

This deceleration aligns perfectly with what theorist Ewa Majewska describes as the "Weak Avant-Garde", a feminist strategy that eschews "pristine" high-art distance and heroic individualist gestures in favor of the raw, the domestic, and the intimately human. In Feminist Antifascism: Counter-publics of the Common, Majewska suggests that this "weakness" is actually a strength, providing the essential "infrastructure" for counter-publics where marginalized voices can exist safely and collectively.

Recent critical reception of these collaborative "counter-publics" reinforces the power of this multidisciplinary approach. In a review for the Pittsburgh Review of Books (January 2026), critic Jason Kapcala notes that the most compelling connections occur when the visual imagery is "figurative," evoking the "tone and mood" of the verse to create a unified, embodied aesthetic experience. Whether through a hand-printed page or a community-led project, these collaborations allow us to navigate landscapes of home, body, and loss not as solitary figures, but as part of a vibrant, interconnected lineage.

About the Author

Sally Jane Brown is an artist, curator, and writer. Her artwork, including drawing, painting, and mixed media, explores womanhood, motherhood, and the body.  She has illustrated four books, including Feverdream (2026 with poetry by Renee K. Nicholson), two of which won awards for illustration. She has exhibited her work in spaces nationally and in the UK. She has participated in artist residencies nationally and in Argentina.  Her writing has been published in The Conversation, Women's Art Journal and Panorama, among others. Her art has been featured in publications such as Creative Mornings. She has curated group shows in Omaha, Nashville, Pittsburgh, Morgantown and Lubbock, TX. She holds a Bachelor of Arts-Studio Art, a Master of Public Administration and Master of Arts- Art History and Feminist Theory. She is a former College Art Association National Committee on Women in the Arts member, and serves as Curator for West Virginia University Libraries.  Find her on substack: https://salleryart.substack.com/ and Instagram: @sallery_art.