Visual Voices
This week we are heading towards International Womens Day – 8th March, thus is an apt time to talk through some female visual heroes.
Here are three of the 20th / 21st Century heroes that you can continue to be inspired by. You know, the ones that are still working hard on putting female artists on the map – this way, if any of them tickle your fancy you can follow them on social media and join them in their feminist arts crusade:
1. Bobby Baker: Domestic Performer & Celebrant of Humble Female Power – Bobby Baker’s artwork draws from her personal and family experiences, exploring the relationship between art and lived experience while addressing the splitting of women's domestic and professional lives. While creating artworks domestically for years (and a lot of the time out of cake! - e.g. her performance piece at the beginning of her career - An Edible Family in a Mobile Home (1976) Baker has over the years become more involved in social activism. In 2009 Baker exhibited in London’s The Wellcome Trust about her experience of mental illness and recovery, in turn prompting her to become a valued mental health and arts campaigner; since then, she has used her position to promote opportunities for diverse marginalised artists. Her work now focuses predominantly on undervalued and stigmatised aspects of everyday life and human behaviour. She expressly undertakes to foreground the lives of women in the mainstream and bring status to so-called 'humble' daily activity, such as in her work ‘Great & Tiny War’ in 2018 which highlighted the largely unseen and unacknowledged role of women during wartime and the impact of conflicts – historical and contemporary – on the mental health of whole families through the generations. This involved tours and immersive activities inside a terraced house in Newcastle.
Baker’s study of life, as such is now a fully fledge arts council funded organisation called ‘Daily Life Inc’ with their mission as described on their website:
“Our mission is to lead advocacy for change in the way people think about women, and the undervalued and stigmatised aspects of daily life. This includes celebrating age and experience, and tackling misogyny and injustice in the mental health system. We believe great art can change the way people think. As the activist, scholar and author Angela Davis has said: 'Art is not a luxury … We need art to illuminate the way to a different future' (WOW Global 24, 2020).”
2. Barbera Kruger: Picture Perfect Critique - Barbara Kruger is a social and political activist in all of her work, and has produced critical examples of feminist art for more than 40 years (she is now 78!). In 1989 she created for example 'Your body is a battleground' for the Women's March on Washington to protest for women's bodily right for safe and legal abortion. The true strength of Kruger's work being its commercial and understandable style. Her work is recognisable in its visual whether you know her as an artist or not. Through her bold collaged three tone advertising style (white black and red) the artist speaks to all ages, genders and communities. Other works by Kruger include 'Your gaze hits the side of my face' (1981) - which opened discussion on the problems of the male gaze on women - and also, 'We have received orders not to move' (1982), which cleverly speaks out about the entrapment of women within the domestic space in the 20th Century.
3. Guerrilla Girls: Supreme Activism - I was really lucky to see an exhibition in the Pompidou centre in Paris in 2011 which had a small compendium of the Guerrilla Girls work. Which is not only factual, confrontational and graphically super. It is also humorous. As with Kruger’s work, the Guerrilla Girls have a way of communicating with the masses which makes the activism of their work far more powerful. They have exhibited all over the world and call their art practise ‘Activism’ over art. Their ‘movement changing’ artwork is called ‘Do Women Have To Be Naked To Get Into The Met. Museum?’ - which was created in 1989. They are still practising and their most recent ‘poster’ ‘Meet the Creeps Who Stripped Away Our Abortion Rights’ highlights in graphic brand fuchsia, black and yellow the politicians who have been at the forefront of the changes in the recent American changes in Abortion rights. The Guerrilla Girls are a nameless and ageless group utilising masks and famous female artist pseudonyms to ensure the longevity of their collaborative.
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