What is your most memorable experience of a feminist/ women's art exhibition in the past 10 years and why? Did it challenge or change your understanding of feminism?
(Please name the title of the show, the venue, and the
date.
Please feel free to write about shows you may have curated yourself.)
If any readers would like to contribute a response, please email: k.deepwell@ukonline.co.uk
Answers below from: Kirsten Justesen.
Kirsten Justesen (artist, Denmark)
Since 1975 when Valie Export invited a number of international woman artists, myself included, to a exhibition in Galerie Nächst St. Stephan in Vienna with the title of Magna Feminismus: Kunst und Kreativitat - Ein Überblick über die weibliche Sensibilität, Imagination, Projektion und Problematik, suggeriert durch ein Tableau von Bildern, Objekten, Fotos, Vorträgen, Diskussionen, Lesungen, Filmen, Videobändern und Aktionen – the conversation has been going on: What does a feminist piece of work look like ?
The established exhibition halls now and then pick up and show works which might address these loose ends and vulnerable minefields. Feminist exhibitions have been visible in Europe and USA (in USA including mainly US artists though) as events, which have rapidly changed everybody’s ideas about women, their surrounding contexts and their art. In 1991 Valie Export and I continued our own conversation. A conversation, based on our own body-actions within and between different media and different positions. As a result of the conversation, came the invitation to be curators of a show about the body in 1996. (Body as Membrane, Kunsthallen Brandts Klædefabrik, Odense DK, January 12-March 17 1996 and Nifca, Helsinki, Finland June 13-July 30,1996. Catalogue: Body as Membrane ISBN 87-7766-046-3).
The purpose of this exhibition was to present the glance of women in a new direction, and to visualise for us further conversations on this subject. We tried to present a screen, the Membrane, through which women’s bodies might appear and we presented this idea for ourselves as well as for the audience. And this is why it made such a great exhibition !
“MEMBRANE means a border-flake between the cell and its surrounding. It is also a very small sensitive, smooth piece of skin- flake - transformer (convert)inside the body. The membrane is one of the body's vital organs; it functions as a filter as well as screen of reception and a screen for reproduction. The membrane transports and spreads all possible information. We see the body as a MEMBRANE - as well as we see body-works as MEMBRANES. THE MEMBRANE-BODY is constant floating. A MEMBRANE-BODY is moving between media. So we see the body as a constant reflection AND THIS WE LIKE TO GIVE FORM in this exhibition as we see it: ONE MATERIAL IS A MEMBRANE FOR ALL THE MEMBRANES.”
We chose a number of artists, with whom we have co-operated and who have crossed eachothers tracks over the years together with a few young artists, who have taken their first steps in the same kind of investigations and developed themes and scores of their own. What we had in common is that all of us, over the years have used our own bodies as artistic tools in various contexts and different media. The body in electronic media was also present in a number of ways, the earliest works were made in Super 8 substandard film. The exhibition was not about what the body means - it is about what the body is, what the body is capable of in its own terms. The body surpasses words, literally talking. Talking forms one kind of space. Language forms another space, as if it were a reality. Language is useful for explanation and descriptions. If it can find itself. It does not mean anything on its own. The invited artists all used their own bodies, in a way connected to themselves as an available material something they are literally holding in their own hands: Eija-Liisa Ahtila, Finland - Reneé Cox, USA - Joan Jonas, USA - Mary Kelly, USA - Alison Knowles, USA - Elke Krystofek, Austria - Natalia LL, Poland - Orlan, France - Jayne Parker, UK - Heli Rekula, Finland - Carolee Schneemann, USA - Annie Sprinkle, USA, as well as ourselves. The exhibition also shows series by the three dead artists: Ana Mendieta, Cuba - Gina Pane, France - Hannah Wilke, USA, as well as we ourselves were included in the exhibition.
A debate about the show and issues arising took place in the magazine Siksi over several issues from December 1996 with Katy Deepwell, Kristine Stiles, Tania Orum and Laura Cottingham. The debate in the Nordic Art Magazine was in many ways sad. But indeed, because of the show a feminist debate surprisingly appeared in a Nordic Art Magazine! It did not change my understanding of feminism, but it made these feminist issues very human and expanded them, through a bright and bitchy discussion !
I would also like to mention another show, my own ReKollection (Nordjyllands Kunstmuseum, Aalborg DK 1999). This was not a retrospective show, but a presentation of my body works during 30 years. All the works appeared with a new format, scanned and then digital printed in one-woman-size + 10%. This was just fun, and made in a way so that it became also a tale about a woman’s body. It is mine all right, but I always saw it just as a tool, a form, a surface which one can use for investigations, explorations and impossible, superfluous contributions, feminist question marks included. See the catalogue: Kirsten Justesen ReKollection (Nordjyllands Kunstmuseum, 1999. ISBN 87-88307-41-7).
Copyright © : n.paradoxa, September 2000
N.Paradoxa : Issue No. 13, 2000