Jody Pinto
Body/Land
Aug 28, 2025-Mar 7, 2026
∆ Jody Pinto, Well Projects (detail), 1974-76. Earth, found materials. Philadelphia, PA. Courtesy of the artist.
∆ Jody Pinto, Well Projects (detail), 1974-76. Earth, found materials. Philadelphia, PA. Courtesy of the artist.
∆ Jody Pinto, Well Projects (detail), 1974-76. Earth, found materials. Philadelphia, PA. Courtesy of the artist.
Aug 28, 2025-Mar 7, 2026
Jody Pinto
Body/Land
Jody Pinto’s five-decade practice spans sculpture, drawing, ephemeral outdoor installations, landscape interventions, and public art. Emerging during the 1970s Land art movement, Pinto made what she described as “living structures," site-responsive works dependent on weather, visitors, and found materials. As founder of Women Organized Against Rape (WOAR) in 1973, Pinto linked feminist activism with a lifelong commitment to public space. Her concept of “body/land” connects bodily and environmental forms and systems such as veins and irrigation, hair and plant growth, and cycles of injury and healing. Since the 1990s, she has completed more than fifty international public commissions, exploring municipal space as a form of public theater.
Jody Pinto: Body/Land, the artist’s first retrospective, traces the scope of this career from her work in rape crisis activism, to early excavations and outdoor constructions, to later landscape and urban design projects. The exhibition restages several major installations and includes her experimentations in drawing, plans for realized and unrealized works, and a new outdoor sculpture presented in partnership with Art Lot in Brooklyn, NY. Body/Land will be accompanied by the publication of Pinto’s first monograph.
Exhibition curated by DJ Hellerman, Deputy Director & Senior Curator, and Marie Catalano, Independent Curator.
This exhibition is presented through Toby’s Prize, a special commission award made possible by Toby Devan Lewis.
Lead support provided by Margaret Cohen & Kevin Rahilly
& John P. Murphy Foundation.
About the Artist
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Jody PintoJody Pinto (b. 1942, New York, NY) lives and works in New York, NY. Her work was recently featured in Groundswell: Women of Land Art at the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas, TX (2023) and in the exhibition Underground at MoMA (2022-2023). Pinto’s work has been included in the Whitney Biennial, the Venice Biennale, and in exhibitions at Artpark, Lewiston, NY; the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia; the Philadelphia Museum of Art; the Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia; the New Museum, and the Queens Museum (both in NY). From 1971-74 she founded and directed Women Organized Against Rape (WOAR), the longest operating rape crisis center in Philadelphia, PA. She has collaborated on over 50 public works including for bridges, gardens, parks, and transit systems. She is the recipient of numerous awards and grants for her work, including the NEA Federal Design Achievement Award, A.I.A. Honor Award: National Design for Transportation Award, Art in Public Spaces and two National ASLA Design Honor Awards. Her public works include Fingerspan Bridge (1987) in Fairmont Park, Philadelphia PA, Tree of Life/ City Boundary (1992) at Papago Park, Phoenix, the redesign of Santa Monica State Beach and Palisade Park in Los Angeles (2001), the Fort Lauderdale International Airport (2002), and Land Buoy (2014) in Philadelphia, PA. Pinto received her BFA from Philadelphia College of Art (now University of the Arts) in 1973, and taught for four decades at Pennsylvania Academy for Fine Arts (PAFA). |
Selected Works
