Oakland-based Swedish-American artist Michele Pred achieved notoriety in the early 2000s for her conceptual sculptural installations of items like Swiss Army knives and manicure scissors confiscated by airport security. Pred’s witty and dramatic work, with a strong Pop-inflected emphasis on bright colors and geometry, clearly hit a nerve.
In 2014, she was inspired to shift to vintage purses as a primary medium, fashioning words out of glowing EL wire:“Pro Choice,” “Feminist as Fuck,” and “Pussy Grabs Back”a few of the options. The purse, as both a symbol of oppression of women, and of their economic power, offered a double-sided tool. Pred’s work has suddenly acquired an even deeper significance, with the overturn of Roe v. Wade. A dark time, certainly. I caught up with Pred hoping she might shed some light on the subject.
Artillery: You grew up in Berkeley, where your father was a professor at UC and a political activist, and your mother was from Sweden, with a feminist perspective. Can you tell us a bit about your upbringing and how it informs your art practice?
Michele Pred: My father was in the department of cultural geography and very much an activist; coming from Sweden, my mom was a socialist and a feminist. We spent summers there, so I grew up seeing different possibilities, like socialized medicine, and free education.
What steered you in the direction of fine art?
It was always in my blood. I respond to and comment on the world around me by making things. I started out in photography. Then at California College of the Arts I was already doing political work around women’s body issues, and reproductive rights. And that was in 1990!
Tell us a bit about how you began combining vintage purses with electroluminescent wire bearing feminist slogans.
I have always been very interested in using my body as a canvas, and have been intrigued by purses, by what we carry in them. I had been doing a lot of neon pieces on cases, that you couldn’t carry around, with feminist slogans. And I started thinking it would be really fun to carry them. So I made the first purse and took it to the opening night of The Armory Show in 2014, it said “Choice” on it… and people really responded strongly to the purse! Art galleries are such privileged spaces—taking the work out into the streets and engaging with people is interesting to me.
Michele Pred, Abortion is Healthcare, 2022. Neon, resin abortion pills and tapestry. Image courtesy of the artist.
Your purses have been carried by some amazing women. What are some of your favorite ways they’ve been taken into action?
Hillary Clinton and Amy Schumer have been photographed with them; Amy showed hers on Instagram. One side says “Pro Choice” and the other side “Nasty Woman.” They’ve been on the red carpet at the Oscars. Ariana DeBose owns one, and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova of Pussy Riot recently took hers on stage. She says she’s obsessed with it.
Your show this fall, “Equality of Rights” at Nancy Hoffman Gallery, includes replica abortion pills. Can you tell us a little about this new work?
Yes, the abortion pills, I had a thousand of them fabricated in resin, enlarged so no one would mistake them for actual pills, and I’m making a flag. I have also just made these sterling-silver abortion-pill necklaces; I’m really excited about them! Then there are works using the scales where I’m using dollar bills I’ve painted pink, which relate to my “Art of Equal Pay” Project.
Where you are asking women artists to commit to raising their prices by 15% to address the fact that women artists earn on average 15% less than men?
Yes, and I’m also asking curators, gallery owners and collectors to pledge to support the artists by showing and collecting their work at the higher prices. You can sign up online at theartofequalpay.com, and there’s a survey. It’s a longterm project.
You are also curating a Pro-Choice billboard exhibition, “Vote for Abortion Rights,” to be installed across the country. How many billboards will be included?
We’re hoping for 10. They won’t necessarily be in California—we don’t need them here.
Your work is important and timely. Are there other projects you’d like to mention?
“The Talking Tree A Space for Civic Discourse.” I want to bring together people from different viewpoints and have conversations—to try to find a middle ground. I think we have to. We have to do that.