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
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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...
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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