Kara Walker is a collage artist who investigates issues surrounding gender, sexuality and race. She is known for her silhouettes on a white background. Her techniques reminds me of shadow puppets in a way. This could be seen as womens’ art, which also draws attention to the gender issues.
Martha Rosler is another artist who I have come across in my research. Her work takes many forms including performance, video, text, instillations and photomontages. The majority of her work in made from the perspective of a woman. Her feminist art looks to challenge the representation and expectations of women. In her works entitled Cold Meat I, Cold Meat II, Damp Meat (see fig. 1) and Hot Meat (see fig. 2).
(Fig. 1. Damp Meat)
(Fig. 2. Hot Meat)
Rosler combines images of naked women with domestic appliances. These works show how the female body is commodified, she compares it to food. “I was always interested in addressing people, primarily women but not only women, with the idea that you recognise me for other human beings” (Rosler Quoted in Murg). She uses images of women in magazines from the 1960s and the 1970s. She believes the tradition views of women still have a startling hold on women today. One image that stuck out was Cleaning the Drapes (see fig. 3), it shows a women vacuuming the curtains, whilst the spilt reveals a scene of soldiers. This contrasts the domestic view of women with the way the media showed people images of the Vietnam war, these images came to people through televisions which were relatively new.
Paula do Prado uses various techniques and materials including painting, textiles and photography. She addresses several issues in her work including identity, stereotypes, and race. Her work contains references to her culture as well as her experience of living in Australia. She is originally from Uruguay and often combines her heritage and language with her art. Her works often contains Spanish phases and sayings, this is an advantage in her art as “this tension between exclusion and inclusion is important” (Prado quoted in Madeleine). “Art provides a vehicle for me to explore, scrutinise, decipher and tease out these interconnections between culture, race and identity…dealing with some of these issues is hard…I’m not an activist by any means…It”s more about seeing things differently” (Prado quoted in Madeleine). Her work on gender is helpful for my work, I am looking at gender, and much of her work does too, she sees gender “like race, as another category that is socially constructed, that I don’t think anyone truly fits into neatly” (Prado Quoted in Madeleine).
In Some Living American Women Artists (see fig. 1), Mary Beth Edelson replaced the heads of the figures in the Last Supper with female artists. The image of the Last Supper is still recognisable, the structure of the image is unchanged. Edelson has only added images of the heads of female artists in place of Christ and his disciples. When I first looked at this image, to me it appears to be drawing a comparison between the patriarchy in the art world with the patriarchy in religion. Edelson shows women in the roles of men, it represents how women struggle against tradition, expectation and inequality in their work and lives. It shows just a small amount of female artists there are, but they are often overlooked and dismissed. This is similar to what I am trying to do. I am attempting to look at the inequality in the art world by using a male dominated pilgrimage route. This artwork is influential to my work, as it has the same principles and aim behind it. Edelson also uses collage techniques to accomplish this, which is what I want to do. It also links religion and art together. This work is quite symbolic, Linda Aleci believes it “honors the ecumenical ideals of communion and community” (Aleci quoted in Greifen). Edelson compares the historical systematic omission of women in art and in aspects of religion. Edelson explains why she choose to challenge religion, as “the most negative aspect of organized religion, for me was the positioning of power and authority in the hands of a male hierarchy that intentionally excluded women from access to these positions…[The work] gave me a double pleasure of presenting the names and faces of the many women artists who were seldom seen in the art world of 1972 as ‘the grand subject’—while spoofing male exclusivity in the patriarchy” (Edelson quoted in Dang).
(Fig. 1. Some Living American Women Artists (1972))
Georgina's Contextual Studies 