100 Women: Collaborations Beyond the Veil is a series of banners featuring photos of 100 women. The women, bringing diverse perspectives due to their range of ages, races, and backgrounds, are pictured in identical draped dress and pose: one hand on the heart and one on the abdomen—the seats of feminine intuition—invoking intimacy and power. Despite their diversity, there is a striking commonality in those portrayed. They are powerful, vulnerable, forward-looking, present—all at once. The strength of each individual, multiplied by 100 in the procession of banners, dares and inspires viewers to keep battling the various inequalities they still face—financially, politically, and personally. 

100 Women: Collaborations Beyond the Veil was first introduced in Prato, Italy, in June of 2019. A solo performance set amidst an outdoor installation featured 12 large-scale photos of women.

The performance was inspired by Sykes’ recent involvement with Le Nemesiache—a movement founded 50 years ago by Lina Mangiacapra and led by feminist artists that began in Naples, Italy. Sykes collaborated with Mangiacapra’s sister, Teresa, to put on a series of performances. 100 Women: Collaborations Beyond the Veil was inspired by, and in homage to, Teresa, who passed away in 2018.

Adapting to the constraints of the growing pandemic, 100 Women: Collaborations Beyond the Veil was then exhibited virtually in an online event titled “Strength in Suffrage: A Livestream Event” in August of 2020. 100 Women: Collaborations Beyond the Veil is a nuanced visual, textual, and audio experience. Presented in video format, it portrays 100 women, through 100 connected photographs, first presented on the 100th year anniversary of the 19th amendment. 

The video serves as a digital version of the print catalog, created in partnership with Chicago Women’s History Center, in an effort to make this project accessible to the widest audience.    

In the following years, a smaller selection of banners were shown at two regional libraries in Chicago: Legler Regional Public Library in 2020 and Woodson Regional Public Library in 2021.

In 2021, Sykes interviewed three of the women featured on the banners to create Speaking of Liberty. The women shed light on the thematic nature of 100 Women: Collaborations Beyond the Veil as they speak about how they see the future of feminism, what being a woman means to them, and what they have learned from the women of the past.

The project entered a new iteration in 2021 titled Unprecedented No More, as a video in which the banners were unveiled virtually upon major historical landmarks to emphasize their monumental form and the lack of representation of women in these landscapes. The piece won the First Place Video Performance Prize at the ArtPerformingFestival VII Ed. in Naples, Italy.

The project was also presented at a symposium to the public and to the American Ambassador at the Goethe Institute in Sofia, Bulgaria.

Selections from the project were shown in 2022 at the Art Center Highland Park in Highland Park, Illinois, and at Salonlb in Chicago in 2023.

The most recent iterations were at the Chiesa di San Severo al Pendino in Naples, Italy, in February of 2024, and as an installation at the Christopher Art Gallery at Prairie State College in March of 2024. 

“Ginny Sykes’ project 100 Women: Collaborations Beyond the Veil is a powerful addition to the feminist art tradition of image reclamation, and art making to advance social change. With the creation of 100 Women, Sykes has replaced the pervasive marble tributes to patriarchy and racism with monumental images exalting women’s grace and power, and illustrating the joining of identity and intellect with gut and heart.”

• Connie Tell, Chair of National Committee of the Feminist Art Project, Former Director Center for Women in the Arts and Humanities, Rutgers University

“Today, we are experiencing a roll back of women’s rights on a national and international level. At a time when women’s bodies are under assault, when reproductive rights and justice are under siege, when the natural world is approaching a crisis point, and our most democratic values are threatened, the power, beauty, dignity, intimacy, and passion expressed by 100 Women: Collaborations Beyond the Veil is certain to be experienced as a welcome intervention, wherever it is displayed.”

• Mary Anne Johnson, President of Chicago Women’s History Center

The project was launched in Chicago on the 100-year anniversary of the 19th Amendment—the hard-fought and hard-won legislation ensuring women the right to vote—and not coincidentally, the suffragists also made powerful use of banners, often bearing hand-stitched slogans such as “Mr. President: How Long Must Women Wait for Liberty?” and “More Ballots, Less Bullets” to drive home their point.

History is mostly marked by monuments to men—usually white men armed and charging resolutely on horseback or proudly waving flags of victory. But women are largely missing. The few female depictions that do exist as public monuments are most often symbolic—expressing a benevolent attribute such as Charity, or a malevolent force such as the beheaded Medusa. One Hundred Women: Collaborations Beyond the Veil corrects the false landscape.  The sheer number of the banners acts as a counterpoint to the constraints of the prevailing patriarchy that often relegate women to invisibility. 

One Hundred Women: Collaborations Beyond the Veil is revealed at an important and prescient time; the U.S. is embattled by the resurgence of racial, sexist and political oppression and the added upheaval of recovery from a global pandemic. As the #MeToo and Black Lives Matter movements underscore the essential need to demand change, much strength and courage can be gained from seeing women as forces shaping and leading the way.