The following blog post is the last in a series of Facebook posts I wrote for Women's History Month, and to follow along with the hashtag #5WomenArtists, started by the National Museum of Women in the Arts. These posts were written to be an accessible, informative, and humorous way to encourage friends of mine to engage with art history and feminism.
WELL EVERYONE WE ARE HERE. We did it. We arrived to International Women's Day!!! We've spent the past five days chatting about #FiveWomenArtists, and I am so proud of us. I hope you consider yourself more knowledgeable, more in the know, more likely to say, "Oh hey, I can name at LEAST five artists who are women, IF NOT MORE." You are welcome for that line, which you may now put into your conversational toolkit.
To recap, you now know about Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Zubeida Agha, Yayoi Kusama, Adrian Piper, and Sophie Calle. But you GUYS, here is the kicker: There are more artists out there who are women! I know!!! I had SUCH a difficult time narrowing down this list to just these five extraordinary ladies, and I encourage you to go off and educate yourself about all the groundbreaking badass women in art history who have had to work as hard (if not way harder) than their male counterparts to be seen, sold, and exhibited. The next time you are at a museum, take a minute and take stock -- is the piece you're looking at by a woman? What about the piece next to it? And the one after that?
As activist/artist/anonymous collective the Guerrilla Girls so succinctly put it: "You're seeing less than half the picture without the vision of women artists and artists of colour." Without the voices of marginalised groups within the canon of art history, we're only seeing the world and its history through one lens -- and that lens is white and male.
"I don't want that! What ELSE could I do?" I hear the strawmen ask!
Wellll, you could follow the hashtag #FiveWomenArtists to see the amazing trend the National Museum of Women in the Arts started to learn more about the women who have contributed to the world of art over the years, and expand your vocabulary. If you're more of a self-motivated Wikipedia-hounding Googler like myself, maybe check out some of the fave ladies on my list I didn't get to include this week, like Kara Walker, Tracey Emin, Janine Antoni, Jenny Holzer, Barbara Kreuger, Cindy Sherman, Carolee Schneemann, Berthe Morisot, Laura Knight, Judy Chicago, Francesca Woodman, Marina Abramović, and SO MANY MORE.
Maybe check this awesome list Huffington Post put together:http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…/artists-you-should-remember…
Or THIS list of *UPCOMING* solo shows for women across the world:https://news.artnet.com/…/10-groundbreaking-female-artists-…
IN CONCLUSION, MY PALS: It has been a rollercoaster week for all of us, I'm sure. But I have had such fun putting together these posts for you, and a part of me is sorry to have to let you go! More than that, however, I'm glad and so thankful that you've taken the time out of your day to give them a read and learn more. Each 'like' to let me know you've read has meant an embarrassing amount to me, and I hope you've enjoyed it as much as I have!
Go forth and spread the good word of ladies making art.
Peace.
xx