Global Feminisms situates itself within a sequence of art shows that have sought to correct the traditional Western prejudice against women artists, as well as against artists who come from outside the European and American art centers.
Its premise is that the humanist universalism that Western Euro-American art has claimed for itself in fact comprises a narrow concept of what is human, making for a pitifully cramped notion of “universality.”
If women are the “Other” in masculinist Western culture and social practice, then curators Maura Reilly and Linda Nochlin wish to avoid making that same mistake in an international context dealing with women artists.
Nochlin had been one of the curators in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s breakthrough 1976 show Women Artists 1550–1950, which emphatically put to rest the notion that women are less “creative” than men by displaying masterful works previously confined to vaults by the masculinist prejudices of museum directors and curators.
Global Feminisms takes the next step, which is transnational, following the lead of a number of previous groundbreaking (and controversial) shows based on the same premise, including Magiciens de la terre exhibition in Paris (1989), the 1993 Whitney Biennial, Documenta11, a transnational exhibition that spanned four continents over 18 months (2001-2002), and the Venice Biennale of 2005.
Nochlin and Reilly are at pains to give equal status to participants from everywhere in the world: no artist is the “other” by virtue of nationality; everyone’s subjectivity is equally valued. Feminist art’s claim to universality — i.e., among other things, its relevance to men as well as to women — derives from the fact that it addresses the social structures, identity issues, and gender/power relations in which we all participate, and whose lines of force would otherwise remain unclear (if not, in fact, invisible) to us living inside them.
As a result, feminist art tends to be highly conceptual, requiring the viewer to be made aware of a context that may or may not be immediately apparent. It also makes heavy use of paradox and performance. The works may be disturbing without being completely clear — this is especially true of art from other cultures. But this is the risk these artists take in trying to make discernible what is normally veiled or obscure.
In both the Life Cycles and Identity categories (described in Part 1) the political aspect is the subtext — though perhaps it is a little closer to the surface in the latter. The Political category of Global Feminisms offers works and documents by women artists that expose intolerable political situations.
Indonesian artist Arahmaiani (b. 1961) presents an innocent-looking Display Case — which earned her censorship and death threats from her local Islamic fundamentalists. Her subversive act was to lay side by side a Koran, a Buddha icon, a Coca-Cola bottle, a fan, a Patkwa mirror, a drum, a box of sand, and condoms. She apparently hit her mark, given the response, even though the work looks entirely banal to someone from outside her cultural context.
Palestinian-American artist Emily Jacir (b. 1970) does this directly, through a clandestine video documentary. After being humiliatingly detained for three hours in freezing rain by an Israeli soldier, who threw her US passport into the mud, she undertook to surreptitiously videotape her passing through the security checkpoints within the West Bank, while crossing from Ramallah to Birzeit University, concealing the camera in a bag she was carrying.
This produced 132 minutes of video footage over a period of a week, and those with the patience to sit through it will observe the humiliations to which Palestinians are regularly subjected, to the extent that this maltreatment has come to be regarded as normal.
Israeli artist Sigalit Landau (b. 1969), on the other hand, resorts to metaphor to make her political statement. She has videotaped herself on a beach, naked, and gyrating a hula hoop made of barbed wire around her waist, wounding her with every turn. It is her way of giving herself multiple stigmata in solidarity with the pain her government inflicts on Palestinians.
Serbian artist Milica Tomic (b. 1960) — also from a country with a great deal of guilt on its hands — makes a similar gesture in I Am Milica Tomic by depicting herself standing in a white sleeveless dress for 9 minutes, while bloody wounds mysteriously appear all over her face and exposed body.
Finally, the Emotion category parodies the pop psychological stereotype of women as “emotional.” To this end Bulgarian artist Boryana Rossa (b. 1972) depicts two women in her two-minute video Celebrating the Next Twinkling, who run through a series of extreme emotions while watching something off camera. Stills from this video adorn the publicity for the show.
Perhaps the most entertaining piece in the exhibit is the 21-minute-long composite movie by Australian artist Tracey Moffatt (b. 1960), Love, that patches together scene after scene from Hollywood-style feature films depicting women in relationships at the height of a spectrum of passions: from love, to suffering, to anger, to murderous fury. Why bother with those predictable plots when we can have our guts wrenched so quickly with a piece like this?
James Joyce famously made the distinction between “kinetic” and “static” art. The former is art that tries to persuade or inform the viewer, to “move” him or her to change an opinion, hence “kinetic.” “Static” art leaves viewers where they are, but aims to give them an aesthetic experience. Joyce felt this was the higher form.
The art of Global Feminisms is entirely conceptual, that is, entirely “kinetic,” though many of the works have a strong aesthetic component.
Upon a second visit to the show this distinction stood out clearly. Most of the works whose sole point was to shock — the staged murdered rape victims in Annika von Hausswolff’s Back to Nature series, the mysteriously appearing wounds in Milica Tomic’s video, even the shaved-head frontal nude self-portrait and documentation of Tanja Ostojic’s Looking for a Husband with an EU Passport — had spent their initial punch, though the pain they convey was undeniable.
Others, however, revealed even more richness, like Dayanita Singh’s Mona photographs, Patricia Piccinini’s Big Mother sculpture, and Sonia Khurana’s Bird video.
It is worth repeating: art works that skillfully address the aesthetic component, and thereby invite repeated viewings offering successive layers of meaning — whether static or kinetic, these art works are the more powerful and most likely the more enduring.
This important, virtually encyclopedic show documenting the struggles of women on our globe today, among all of the political and social points it makes, reteaches this timeless lesson about art itself.
