# @jewel on Instagram

- **Type:** Image
- **Original URL:** https://www.instagram.com/p/DVpfYBOjSFH
- **Gondola URL:** https://gondola.cc/posts/58870475-jewel-instagram
- **Thumbnail:** https://img.gondola.cc/tr:w-,h-,fo-auto/postThumbnails/34d1c5dead.jpg
- **Posted:** 2026-03-09T03:17:00.000+00:00
- **Account Owner:** Jewel (@jewel) — https://gondola.cc/jewel

## Caption

As part of #internationalwomensday I thought I’d share new work 

crystalbridgesmuseum invited me to create an entirely new body of work that will run concurrently with the Venice Biennale - and I am calling it MATRICLYSM

It centers Women’s stories-  exploring feminine memory, erasure, and power - so thought I would reveal a few of the women I am celebrating in my paintings. These are small details from a series called CERAMONY(first slide)

Einstein first wife : 
Mileva Marić, Albert (1875–1948) was a Serbian physicist and mathematician who was Albert Einstein’s first wife (1903–1919) and a fellow student at the Zürich Polytechnic. As the only woman in their class, she was a brilliant, promising scientist who collaborated with Einstein, leading to speculation that she contributed significantly to his 1905 “miracle year” papers, particularly on special relativity

Zenobia (c. 240–c. 274 AD) was a 3rd-century queen of the Palmyrene Empire in Syria who famously led a revolt against the Roman Empire

Henrietta Lacks (1920–1951) was an African American woman whose cancer cells became the source of the HeLa cell line, the first “immortal” human cells ever grown in a laboratory. Taken without her knowledge or consent during treatment for cervical cancer at Johns Hopkins Hospital, her cells have since revolutionized modern medicine

‘The Mothers of Gynecology’ were three enslaved Black women—Anarcha, Betsey, and Lucy—who were subjected to non-consensual, experimental surgeries by Dr. J. Marion Sims in Montgomery, Alabama, between 1845 and 1849. While Sims was historically hailed as the “father of modern gynecology,” modern scholars and activists have reclaimed their story to honor them as the true, forced founders of the field.

And a Kim K sex tape - The story resists simple conclusions. It sits in the unresolved tension between exploitation and agency, shame and reinvention—an ambiguity that mirrors the broader experience of women navigating visibility in the digital age.

These are all oil on aluminum substrate 

Look forward to sharing more as we get closer to the #venicebiennale

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## Tags

venicebiennale, internationalwomensday

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