HERS: Inside/Outside is a collaborative, interactive installation developed with Menucha across three iterations between 1981 and 1994. The work began as part of Women’s Tools, a juried exhibition selected by May Stevens at the Washington Women’s Art Center, and evolved into a more structurally defined, participatory environment addressing women’s lived experience.

By 1991, in its presentation at Arlington Arts Center in a photography and new media exhibition curated by Philip Brookman, the installation incorporated a 50-minute audio component composed of voices of women of varying ages reflecting on the conditions of being female. The work established a spatial and psychological distinction between exterior and interior: an enclosing, womb-like structure that viewers physically entered. Inside, a single chair and a journal invited participants to sit, listen, and write—shifting the work from observation to introspection and contribution.

The final iteration, presented at the University of Maryland under the sponsorship of PANDORA, expanded this framework while maintaining its core structure of participation and reflection. Audience response was notably strong; the work elicited sustained engagement and personal testimony, even as critical reception remained ambivalent.

Across its iterations, HERS: Inside/Outside investigates the formation of identity at the intersection of internal experience and external social construction. The work positions the body as both site and subject—psychological, cultural, and political—while anticipating concerns with participation, voice, and embodied perception that continue to inform my current practice.

Add audio file from Hers, 1991, 1993.