Witches are guardians of suppressed forms of knowledge; they channel ancestral wisdom and embodied practices that have long been dismissed or feared. Visionary agents of transformation, spiritual practitioners conjure alternative futures through acts of resistance, imagination, and care. Witches, Bitches: Witchcraft as Empowerment explores the rise of the occult, new spirituality, and magic in contemporary culture, and reads it as a symptom of undergoing social transformations. Featuring contemporary artists who challenge dominant systems of patriarchy and colonialism to reclaim power on their own terms, this exhibition situates the practice of witchcraft into the past, present, and future acknowledging it as a form of feminist and political empowerment, and a radical proposition for a fully decolonial way of being.
Witches, Bitches brings together works that engage with the iconography, stereotypes, and active practices of witchcraft to explore themes of spiritual power, collective energy, alternative cosmologies, and environmental consciousness. The exhibition features works spanning from the 1970s to the present by about thirty women-identifying international artists from different generations. Some of them self-identify with witchcraft or draw on practices of magic and spirituality, while others engage these themes through a critical and defiant lens. The exhibition will be accompanied by a robust public program including a talk series with public scholars and authors specializing in witchcraft, workshops in spell-casting with witchcraft practitioners, programming for families, performances, panel discussions with artists from different generations, and film screenings.
Witches, Bitches: Witchcraft as Empowerment is co-curated by Ionit Behar, PhD, DPAM Curator, and Magdalena Moskalewicz, PhD, Chief Curator and Associate Director for Curatorial Affairs, Sheldon Museum of Art, and organized by DePaul Art Museum. Support for this exhibition is provided by The Andy Warhol Foundation for Visual Arts.
Image credit: Tirtzah Bassel, Four Sweepers of the Apocalypse, 2025. Oil on canvas. 72 x 96 in. Courtesy of the artist.
