GENDER ROLES GENDER CAGES AND SURROUNDINGS (original) (raw)
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This exhibition does not exclusively feature work by women or by Chinese artists. What it does do is engage in multiple ways with what could be called the social engineering of the body. It includes some particularly cogent work that stretches the tensions of what does—or must—or must not, depending upon the stakes—adorn the body, as dictated by age and gender among other codes. These concerns have proved many times over to be politically symptomatic in populations collectively. In other words, they touch on disturbing questions from which normative privileges of gender, race, and sexual orientation are ultimately unable to shield anyone. Emerging from these questions, the work is not surprisingly elated, expansive and troubling. Book: http://www.cccsf.us/product/women%E6%88%91%E5%80%91/
This essay will attempt to show the reader which spaces were associated with women and their roles in society in Paris during the nineteenth century. I will then compare this to Johannesburg and the situation in Johannesburg, regarding gendered space. This will include referring to a photograph, taken in contemporary Johannesburg, and comparing this to an impressionist painting by French Impressionist, Berthe Marisot.
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Women's "narrative space" the authority granted women's stories exists marginally, as the concept of female story continues to compete with the perceived monopoly of the "master text." "Sick humour," an approved method of publicly reducing subject to object, principally reconstructs its target, or "butt," through the mechanism of gender identification. Exploring the culture and popularity of "sick humour," I critique the means by which sick jokes-which can in some cases effect social change-define the public awareness of three ordinary American women: Christa McAuliffe, Cathleen Webb and Lorena Bobbitt. Assessing the narrative space of these women, whose private tragedies became sensational public domain, we experience how the humour surrounding and confining women replaces their specificity with the saleable and consumable images of other female bodies. Mary. Almost. Yes. Better. Ah. There. I've done it. See the invisibl...
Material Matters: Contemporary 'Women's Work'
This exegesis situates and explores my contemporary art practice that aims to address global ecological and social issues through the mediums of ‘women’s work’ and digital technologies. As used here, ‘women’s work’ refers to all needlework techniques and myriad other textile techniques (m)aligned with females, including but not limited to, embroidery, knitting, crochet, and binding. At the heart of the project is a sustained exploration of these mediums’ inherent materiality beyond their obvious aesthetic attributes. This is inextricably entwined with the processes of ‘women’s work’, the device of metaphor, and the body as both tool and subject. The exegesis examines the position of textiles, particularly embroidery, in a contemporary context. It reflects on the process, meanings and potential strength contained in the textile traditions and processes that are used in this project, being aware of textile tropes and the potential for making meaning through their disruption. By merging the history, materiality and sensuality of textiles with the advances of digital technology, this research and its creative outputs offer a much richer language for self-expression and contemplation. Notions of impermanence, contingency and the fragility of our natural environment are validly addressed by using mediums that are similarly framed. Thus, metaphors of interconnecting threads—weaving, embroidery, knitting, binding—are applied across the studio practice. Digital mediums function as lines of communication, which are woven together like threads to connect the subject and viewers. The research determines that representation and engagement can be influenced profoundly through synergy with the embedded materiality of the chosen mediums. Several international art residencies have significantly shaped the research, providing a particular form of engagement with various cultures and places, and fostering transnational perspectives on select environmental and social issues. Due to the site-responsive nature of most of the research, my practice cannot be placed within any restrictive homogenised category. Nevertheless, my works is are informed and framed by feminist theory, recognising the political importance of ‘women’s work’, and providing space for its development and exhibition outside the feminised domestic arena. The works created have the potential to disrupt the dichotomy of the supposedly masculine public art realm and the private female domestic realm by transposing ‘women’s work’ into the public realm and speaking of public issues. Through this strategy, and through recourse to contemporary embodied feminist and ecofeminist theories, my work surpasses the incongruence between what is being represented and its mode of representation. Thus these works contribute to nullifying Cartesian dualism and related culture/nature oppositions. Recognising the roles of anthropocentrism and anthropomorphism has been vital in addressing and rescinding the strongly ingrained systems of dominance, superiority, and higher value attributed to culture in opposition to nature, and, in many of my artworks, the body is used as mediator to explore our liminal positioning between these realms. The corporeal body is used as a sociocultural artifact, a primary material source. The metaphoric threads that connect the various bodies of work created during this research are ecological issues and endangered species (human); collectively, the multidisciplinary works address concerns about humanity’s impost upon the natural world.
Press Release INSIDE BOXES-BEYOND BORDERS: GENDER IDENTITY INVESTIGATION BY GREEK FEMALE ARTISTS WORKING IN THE URBAN PUBLIC SPACE Dizi, Marika Konstantinidou, Μora, Nique, Reis, Simoni Kavala, Greece, 26-29 July 2012 Municipal Tobacco Warehouse ‒ Tobacco Worker Square (Dimotiki Kapnapothiki ‒ Plateia Kapnergati) Inside Boxes-Beyond Borders is a group exhibition realized within the framework of the conference Knowledge in a Box: How Mundane Things Shape Knowledge Production and presents the works of Greek female artists whose artistic activity has been practiced in the streets taking the form of graffiti, street art and/or experimental performance. Their works, objects and paintings, were created in view of the conference and were inspired by the shape of the box elevated to a conceptual level as the various forms of the containers explore gender identity issues. Dizi presents the “Chocolate Box.” The delicacies within it are made out of modelling clay and razors. This particular content is associated with feminine obsessions ‒ the longing for beauty, the desire for love and the emotions of self-hatred. Marika Konstantinidou paints the work “Triple Samurai”. She depicts a form of grid, inspired by Sudoku, the number placement puzzle based on logical/rational thinking. Thereby she playfully questions issues pertaining to the logical/rational tenets implied by various twentieth-century versions of neo-Kantian formalist theory. The gridded pattern, a feature linked with historical and late avant-garde, has often been identified with “aesthetic autonomy” and relies on criteria of classification and evaluation; therefore, it operates as a device of exclusion and discriminatory abuse not only in theory but also in practice. Her second piece, entitled “Rainbow,” is a plastic drawing tube whose dark interior alludes to the conceptualization of the artistic procedure; the latter remains archetypically clandestine and hints to the artist’s inability to reveal beauty in general as an extraordinary ideal. Μora participates with a painting entitled “Μy Perfect Me.” She deconstructs a female face in a way that resembles the pixels of a digital picture. Except for the eyes, the remaining features are partly erased as if the outcome of a pixel enlargement. Do we erase spots we don’t like? The beholder wonders whether the ideal of beauty, pursued even with means such as surgery, influences attitudes, behaviour and the perceptions of the self. Νique presents a “paper toy,” an object composed by small carton boxes vaguely rendering a standing female figure. The eye sketched on the box, which is mounted in place of the head, bears the initials esc, a clear reference to the Esc key on computer keyboards and a carrier of rather eloquent connotations. Besides, the figure’s simplified rendition offers a different point of view with respect to the representation of gender identity, which is based on unconscious and conscious stereotypes originating from the patriarchal culture. Reis constructs a wooden box and affixes the model of a vagina model on top. The viewer may put his fingers into the model only to find out that he/she is touching a doll. The main problematic behind her work is the investigation of sexual politics, namely the role that patriarchy plays in sexual relations. Additionally, Reis explores the split between the active looking of the man and the passivity of the woman being looked at. Simoni presents “The Secret Garden”, a box-like construction marked on the exterior with her graffiti representational logo, whereas its interior is filled with sand. The delicate, girly face on the external surface reveals a renewed interest on the subject of beauty and goes beyond traditional notions: it connects beauty with a new genre of humanism and moral value. The construction’s interior with its load of sand may actually allude to the secure, enclosed garden (hortus conclusus). Alternatively, the sand itself may be construed as a suggestion to the transient female identity, which is perpetually in a constant flux. Text: Konstantina Drakopoulou, Art Historian Exhibition Curating and Organisation: Stigma Lab Andrea Metaxa 4, Athens Τel.: + 30 6972087530, 6948485845 E-mail: info@stigmalab.gr
Art Monthly, 2017
In this article, I take a critical view of the return to the all-women art exhibition in the UK, asking questions about whether the current focus on female artwork ten years after the so-called 'feminaissance' of 2007 is a cause for celebration or a co-option into an altogether more conservative agenda? Instead of feminist art or feminist-inspired art, I argue that the reification of 'making' gets uncannily or subliminally mapped onto 'women's art' in an uncritical celebration of pleasure and skill.