Events | Women: Hood Collective, "RADIANT Cafe"
Public Space One’s Big Field Fund is thrilled to announce two upcoming exhibitions in eastern Iowa. Please join Satomi Kawai (2025-26 Big Field Fund Project Grantee) and the Women: Hood Collective for a series of public events, including a new collaborative performance “RADIANT café,” at 237 Collective in Cedar Rapids and ArtiFactory in Iowa City. Please read on for all the details.
EXHIBITIONS:
“Women: Hood” IV at 237 Collective Gallery
Location:
329 10th Ave SE, Cedar Rapids, IA 52401
(Located in the Cherry Building)
Time:
Following an opening reception on October 17, 6-8 pm, this exhibition will be on view October 17th through October 25th, 2026 during gallery open hours. These include: 10/23, 11am-3pm, 10/24, 1:30-4pm, and 10/25, 1:30-4pm
•••
“Women: Hood” IV at ArtiFactory
Featuring keynote speaker Lina-Maria Murillo
Location:
120 N. Dubuque, Iowa City, IA 52240
Time:
This pop-up exhibition will take place on November 1, 2026, 2-4 pm.
All events are free and open to the public.
ABOUT WOMEN: HOOD IV
“Women: Hood (WH),” a community-engaged art project, explores complex experiences of femininity through interviews, responsive artworks, and performances. For the past eight years, the collective has interviewed women who have lived, worked, or studied in Iowa. These women’s stories, along with the art they inspired, are the heart of this project. The project plans to release the fourth phase in Iowa City and eastern Iowa with our new body of artwork, performances, a video screening event, and a participatory move.
Project organizer and collective member Satomi Kawai grew up in Japan, where a woman’s virtue is modesty, obedience, and harmonizing with her family and society. When she moved to Iowa City, she found new opportunities to examine and explore the qualities of womanhood, including physical, mental, emotional, and psychological layers, as well as muscular appearance. Changes in the external environment, over time, added flexibility to her conception of femininity. Her experiences sparked curiosity: did others have similar transformations after moving to Iowa? Women: Hood is the culmination of years of research and interviews with inspiring women from around the world who share a connection to Iowa. Women: Hood Collective includes Satomi Kawai, Douglas Baker, Dani Sigler, Vero Rose Smith, and Anita Jung.
For media inquiries, please contact:
Satomi Kawai via email: satominakawaiina@gmail.com
Find out more about this project and other events here or on FB. View some of the collective’s recent work and process for this Big Field Fund project here.
Support for this work is provided by Big Field Fund (BFF), a program of Public Space One. Funding is provided by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.