In an audacious presentation of political and protest art, the Katzen Arts Center’s Art of CONFRONTation showcases three separate exhibitions that share a confident outspokenness. Whether it’s the poignant reenactments of torture of Abu Ghraib by Fernando Botero, or the surreal depictions of the city-dominated human condition by Irving Norman in Dark Metropolis, or the multifaceted collection of some of the 1970s most important feminist art in Claiming Space, these works are united by a passionate and irrepressible yearning to speak and be heard.

Despite their similarities, each exhibit has its own floor in the Katzen Arts Center—whose curved walls and pointed hallways make it a perfect venue for such a dynamic collection—so viewers are able to see each one independent of the others.

Start on the top (third) floor, where you’ll find Botero’s 79 Abu Ghraib paintings and drawings. Seen around the world, this is the first time the whole collection will be presented in the U.S., where Botero has had considerable difficulty getting museums to take on the controversial collection. He started working on the project as an outlet for the anger he felt after reading Seymour M. Hersh’s 2004 article on the now infamous torture there. Botero explained that he became “obsessed” with Abu Ghraib, saying, “the more I painted, the more the feelings came.”

The works are filled with emotion. Blood is everywhere. The colors are grotesque and bring to mind the color skin assumes when afflicted with gangrene or jaundice. Grimaces form on the inmates’ faces and pain is ubiquitous. Yet perhaps the most interesting aspect of the works is the absence of guards. “Whenever you see or hear about a crime you feel sympathy for the victim,” Botero explained, “not the perpetrator.” In fact, Botero was so taken by his work he said he didn’t even realize the guards’ absence until after the collection was finished.

One floor down, Irving Norman’s exhibition also focuses on anguish, although his victims are not nearly as specific as Botero’s. Norman believed that there are three basic segments of modern society—industrialism, war, and urban life—and his works in Dark Metropolis show the consequences of their preponderance.

Norman, after fighting against Franco in Spain, spent most of his life in obscurity, and he portrays the suffocating scope and helplessness of the modern human condition. He utilizes surrealism, creating contorted figures in imaginative and immensely layered settings that might be satirical, if not for the ominous, dark palette.

For whatever reason, most of Norman’s works have never been seen in public. They show workers slaving in factories stretching for infinity; people packed into one another lining the streets; and everywhere people are uncomfortable. His works are so packed with figures and nuance that any single piece can hold your attention for as long as you’d like.

On the first floor, AU professors and exhibit curators Norma Broude and Mary D. Garrard assembled a remarkable collection of feminist art from the 1970s. They called it Claiming Space, in an effort to reemphasize “the original feminist initiative, which was to claim space for women in an art world that had given them little space.” No piece exemplifies this idea so much as Miriam Schapiro’s 52 feet long Anatomy of a Kimono, which Schapiro said also serves to “Announce the comfort that a woman has with territory.”

The collection, which is running concurrently to the Wack! Women Artists and the Feminist Revolution exhibit currently on display in the National Museum of Women in the Arts, is made up of works in all kinds of mediums by numerous different artists, including Judy Chicago, Faith Ringgold, Suzanne Lacy, Leslie Labowitz, and Schapiro.

The pieces remind us of the many ways in which feminist art dethrones patriarchal systems: the removal of the female form from the male gaze; the emblematic use of goddess symbols; and the metaphorical power of the image of a central cavity.

These images of feminism, as stark as they may be, fit remarkably well into the broader theme of confrontation that runs through the whole three-floor presentation. It surely was a bold move for Katzen Director Jack Rasmussen to seek and present these three exhibitions, but there can be little doubt that his bravado paid off, for the exhibitions succeed in keeping their respective discourses alive and strong.

Katzen Arts Center is located at Ward Circle where Massachusetts and Nebraska Avenues meet, and is open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Tuesday through Sunday. Admission is free.

Photo courtesy of the Katzen Arts Center at American University