{"id":27356,"date":"2016-01-19T14:09:57","date_gmt":"2016-01-19T13:09:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/?p=27356"},"modified":"2016-01-19T14:09:57","modified_gmt":"2016-01-19T13:09:57","slug":"why-are-all-female-exhibitions-so-problematic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/de\/article\/why-are-all-female-exhibitions-so-problematic\/","title":{"rendered":"Warum sind reine Frauenausstellungen so problematisch?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"moje Soheila Sokhanvari, Moje Sabz, 2011. Taxidermy, Fibreglass, Jesmonite blob, automobile paint. (c) Soheila Sokhanvari. Image courtesy of the Saatchi Gallery, London<\/p>\n

\u201cChampagne Life\u201d\u00a0<\/em>is the new exhibition at Saatchi Gallery featuring 14 women artists. It inaugurates the gallery\u2019s 30th year, so this first all-female show of the gallery seems to be a big statement, and, accordingly, it\u2019s the talk of town. It has even been said that this could start \u201cto shift male gaze of the art world.\u201d It\u2019s indeed a fact that women artists are still very much underrepresented in whichever museum of contemporary art you go to, and galleries are not doing any better. In Berlin, for instance, Johann K\u00f6nig Gallery is a rare exception, representing more female (16) than male artists (14), whereas others like Johnen Galerie has 22 male and three female artists.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In the face of all this, the Saatchi Gallery might think they\u2019re bringing things forward but effecting gender equality in the art world is not that simple. First of all, given the fact that its owner, the art tycoon Charles Saatchi, was recently embroiled in a domestic violence scandal, this show easily comes across as an act of atonement. Besides that, there\u2019s a puny thinking behind its curation, one that goes along the lines of: \u201clet\u2019s take care of discrimination once and for all, let\u2019s get it over with now!\u201d<\/p>\n

All this might have the glaze of being radical, but in reality Saatchi Gallery is playing very safe. To change structures that\u00a0discriminate in the art world, one should go about it differently.\u00a0Can an all-female show really put women artists in their righteous place in art history? Hardly; instead it can only repeat the convention, despite the best intentions.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Alice Alice Anderson, Left: Bound, 2011, Bobbin made of wood and copper thread 345 x 248 x 248 cm. Right: 181 Kilometers, 2015, Sculpture made after performances, copper thread, 200 cm (diameter). Image (c) Steve White, 2015. Courtesy of the Saatchi Gallery, London<\/p>\n

\"Mequitta Mequitta Ahuja, Rhyme Sequence: Wiggle Waggle, 2012, Oil, paper and acrylic on canvas, 213 x 203 cm (c) Mequitta Ahuja, 2012. Image courtesy of the Saatchi Gallery, London<\/p>\n

Women shows became popular in the art world not so long ago, around 2010, with Centre Pompidou showing the work of women artists from the collection in \u201celles@centrepompidou\u201d. Did it mean that the art world has taken the work created by women more seriously? Feminist Germaine Greer had a cynical sneer at it in The Guardian: \u201cDoes anyone really think that Martin Kippenberger could have been Martine Kippenberger?\u201d In the same year the Brooklyn Museum showed \u201cSeductive Subversion: Women Pop Artists, 1958-1968\u201d and since then many have followed suit. Auction houses have also jumped on the bandwagon and last year Sotheby’s put on the exhibition \u201cCherchez la femme: Women and Surrealism\u201d.<\/p>\n

The droll thing is that it\u2019s never the other way around:\u00a0 \u201cMen and Pop\u201d, \u201cMen and Surrealism\u201d. Why not? Because it\u2019s considered to be norm, no need to emphasise the male gender. If Saatchi Gallery would have mounted an exhibition with 14 male artists, nobody would call it a male exhibition. I remember the shock I got in 2014 at the Hans Richter show in Martin Gropius Bau in Berlin, curated by\u00a0Timothy Benson\u00a0of\u00a0LACMA. In this exhibition they showed Richter together with his colleagues Laszlo Moholy-Nagy (no, not his artist wife Lucia!), Viking Eggeling, Walter Ruttmann, Theo van Doesburg, John Cage, Marcel Duchamp, Fernand L\u00e9ger, and Max Ernst. There was one woman who made it onto the wall, Irene Bayer-Hecht, for making a portrait of her husband Herbert Bayer. The preface of the exhibition\u00a0catalogue\u00a0was written by the five (male) directors of major institutions stating that Hans Richter worked with the “who’s who” of the 20th century avant garde \u2013 they were all male artists. Amen.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Okay, all good, but what exactly would be a radical thing to do for Saatchi Gallery? Well, it would have been, for instance, much more radical of them to make an exhibition about something as random as eyeglasses in the 20th century that just happened to feature only works by women artists. Would anybody notice? As it is, talking male and female seems to be so 20th century. Aren\u2019t we living in a time that it\u2019s generally acknowledged that there are more than two genders? Putting on an all-women exhibition is as original as making a show about let\u2019s say Belgian artists – it repeats the boundaries in society and it pigeonholes artists. I personally have nothing against quotas and I would have loved it if Saatchi had declared that from now on 50% of every group exhibition will comprise works by female artists. And that would be the moment when we could start talking about a real shift in the art world.<\/p>\n

Text von An Paenhuysen<\/a> Berlin-based curator and author<\/strong><\/p>\n

“Champagne Life” is at Saatchi Gallery<\/a>, London until 9 March 2016<\/strong><\/p>\n

Mehr: Who\u2019s the WAXCHICK?<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Mehr: Vonna-Michell Makes Sound Art in Tokyo While Getting Lost in Translation<\/a><\/strong><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Soheila Sokhanvari, Moje Sabz, 2011. Taxidermy, Fibreglass, Jesmonite blob, automobile paint. (c) Soheila Sokhanvari. Image courtesy of the Saatchi Gallery, London \u201cChampagne Life\u201d\u00a0is the new exhibition at Saatchi Gallery featuring 14 women artists. It inaugurates the gallery\u2019s 30th year, so this first all-female show of the gallery seems to be a big statement, and, accordingly,…<\/p>","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":27362,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[11856,139],"tags":[2969,3278,1218,3823,3824,527,3825,3239,3672],"class_list":["post-27356","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sleek-art","category-art","tag-alessandro-cirillo","tag-an-paenhuysen","tag-showroom","tag-champagne-life","tag-female-artists","tag-feminism","tag-johann-konig-gallery","tag-saatchi-gallery","tag-women"],"acf":{"main_category":null,"legacy":"1","exclude_from_ads":null,"hero_title":null,"subtitle":null,"hero":null,"teasers":null,"facebook_image":null,"related_articles":null,"next_article":null,"sleek_card_focus":null,"content":null},"yoast_head":"\nWhy Are All-Female Exhibitions So Problematic? 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