The Department of Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies is delighted to welcome Chloë Bass, a multiform conceptual artist whose work explores intimacy, public life, and the ways we care for one another. Through a partnership with the Henry Art Gallery, Bass’s visit brings her ongoing project Soft Services—a sculptural installation in Volunteer Park—to life through a series of student-centered and public events.
Across these gatherings, participants are invited to reflect on Soft Services and its themes of memory, care, and survival. Each bench in the installation features inscriptions carved in Optima—the font made iconic by Maya Lin’s Vietnam Veterans Memorial—situating the work within histories of memorialization, AIDS activism, and environmental change.
Upcoming Events
Field Trip — Volunteer Park
📅 Friday, October 24 | 2:30 – 4:00 p.m.
Join GWSS for a semi-formal visit to Soft Services, guided by prompts developed by Bass to help students reflect on care and community in times of crisis and recovery.
👉 RSVP by October 17
Student Workshop — HUB 307
📅 Wednesday, November 5 | 3:30 – 5:30 p.m.
A semi-formal workshop with Chloë Bass, offering space for reflection, writing, and creative response to Soft Services.
Participants should visit the installation—either during the Field Trip or on their own—before attending.
👉 RSVP by October 28
Performance Lecture: Swim Parallel to the Shore — Henry Art Gallery
📅 Thursday, November 6 | 6:00 – 7:30 p.m.
Free and open to the public. Bass discusses how public artworks can serve as rehearsals for emotional and communal life, working from poet Tan Lin’s idea of “general feelings”—that emotions are not private but shared as a kind of communal recipe.
👉 Registration Required
About the Artist
Chloë Bass (b. 1984, New York, NY) is a conceptual artist working in performance, conversation, publication, and installation. Her projects use daily life as a site of deep research into scales of intimacy—where patterns hold and break as group sizes expand. Recent works include The Book of Everyday Instruction (2015–2017), Obligation to Others Holds Me in My Place (2018–2024), and Since feeling is first (2023–ongoing), which examines intimacy at the scale of the courtroom and the law.
Accessibility
Field Trip & Workshop: For disability accommodations, contact the UW Disability Services Office at 206.543.6450 (voice), 206.543.6452 (TTY), or dso@uw.edu. Requests made at least 10 days before the event will receive best consideration.
Artist Talk: Assisted Listening Devices (ALDs) and AI-generated live captioning will be available. The program will also be live-streamed on YouTube with automated captions. For more information, visit henryart.org/visit/accessibility or contact museumservices@henryart.org.
Presented By
The Department of Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies, in partnership with the Henry Art Gallery, with support from the Earl and Edna Stice Memorial Lectureship in the Social Sciences.