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In Arles, the political and subversive images of the pioneers of feminist art

2022-08-03T14:35:52.824Z


The exhibition Une avant-garde féministe denounces through photographs, performances and videos, sexism, social inequalities and patriarchal power structures.


A feminist avant-garde

is an essential exhibition, in other words, radical and subversive.

Built in the wake of Simone de Beauvoir's famous adage "We are not born a woman, we become one", it brings together more than 200 works by 71 women artists who address the question of the construction of femininity in the 1970s. Imagined by Christoph Wiesner, director of the Rencontres d'Arles, as the counterpart to the exhibition Masculinités organized last year by the Barbican Art Gallery,

A feminist avant-garde

comes from the collection of the Austrian company Verbund, established since 2004, in the initiative of art critic Gabriele Schor.

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Behind the scenes of the visits of the jury of the 6th Madame Figaro Photo Prize, in Arles

It now has more than 800 works by 160 artists who question the feminine, unmask stereotypes, blast clichés and show the work of these pioneers.

In the 1970s, many artists distanced themselves from pictorial art, which was predominantly male, and embraced new mediums such as photography, video and performance.

Activists, most of them born between 1930 and 1950, they have created a new language and address the place of women in society.

Their images are provocative, raw, ironic, cruel.

In pictures: "A feminist avant-garde of the 1970s".

In images, in pictures

See the slideshow05 photos

See the slideshow05 photos

Full screen

Value Export.

Die Geburtenmadonna

[The Madonna of the Nativity], 1976. .Courtesy of Valie Export / Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac / Bildrecht / VERBUND COLLECTION, Vienna

The body as a weapon

The exhibition, presented at the Mécanique Générale de Luma, is divided into five thematic parts: the reduction of women to the functions of wife, mother and housekeeper, the feeling of confinement, the questioning of the dictates of beauty and female body, the exploration of sexuality, and the affirmation of their roles and identities.

It brings together discoveries and known artists such as Helena Almeida, Valie Export, Orlan, Cindy Sherman or Francesca Woodman who occupies a central place in this anthology.

The American photographer, who died in 1981 at the age of 22, stages her anger at the standards of the time, such as advertising images.

A formatting also mocked by Cindy Sherman who adopts poses seen ad nauseam in order to underline the ridiculousness of it.

Behind the scenes of the visits of the jury of the 6th Madame Figaro Photo Prize - Arles

Rita Myers, she uses collages to show the impossible perfection of the body while the self-portraits of Ana Mandieta, face glued to a window, distort her features.

These artists use their bodies as a weapon.

They use tape, bandages, hide their sex with a mask (Francesca Woodman) or their face under an animal skin like

Untitled (Me with fur)

, 1974, by Birgit Jürgenssen, who laments: “The woman is often art object, but it is seldom and reluctantly given the opportunity to express itself in words and images”.

For her part, the German Annegret Soltau photographed herself in 1975, her face covered with black threads like a spider's web, synonymous with confinement and alienation...

Full screen

Annegret Soltau.

Selbst

(Me), 1975. Courtesy of Annegret Soltau / Bildrecht / Verbund Collection, Vienna

Behind the scenes of the visits of the jury of the 6th Madame Figaro Photo Prize - Arles

Free yourself from dictates

Beyond the plurality of their looks, all these women say only that they want to free themselves from the dictates of patriarchal society.

And the exhibition demonstrates that, although they come from various parts of the world and do not know each other, these artists share similar approaches and common demands.

The final word goes to Gabriele Schor, curator, who has done remarkable work shown for the first time in France: "Challenging the codes of femininity, the images we have selected denounce the discriminations of which they are the object.

This protest speech is coupled with the affirmation of another desire: a freely chosen sexuality and a right to pleasure finally recognized.

“A feminist avant-garde”, photographs and performances from the 1970s from the Verbund Collection, Vienna.

www.rencontres-arles.com

Source: lefigaro

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