This document summarizes and compares several artworks that challenge patriarchal norms and sexism from a feminist perspective. It discusses early works by Guerrilla Girls that criticized the lack of female artists in museums. It also analyzes videos by Sadie Benning and installations by Hend Al-Mansour that assert lesbian identities and reject oppressive social standards. Further, it examines paintings by Patricia Olson and Jessica Larson that celebrate female sexuality and menstruation in defiance of cultural taboos surrounding women's bodies. Throughout, the document explores how these diverse artworks expand possibilities for feminist expression.

1. Guerrilla Girls, Do Women Have to Be Naked to Get into the Met. Museum? 1989
Look Again: Expanding Feminist Possibilities
Taylor Davis
Throughout much of Western history, discriminatory laws and restrictive
cultural norms have prevented all but a few women from pursuing independent
artistic careers. In her groundbreaking 1971 essay, Why Have There Been No
Great Women Artists?, art historian Linda Nochlin argued that “institutionally
maintained sexism against women,” rather than a lack of artistic talent or
creativity, had prevented women artists from achieving parity with male artists.
Nevertheless, by the 20th
century a growing number of women managed to
establish artistic careers, and by the late 1960s many women artists were creating
feminist artworks that challenged the patriarchal status quo. While the number of
works by women artists in U.S. museum collections has increased since the
1960s, museums have been shamefully slow to display art by female artists on
their walls. The general paucity of art made by women on museum walls
highlights the continued relevance of exhibitions like Look Again: Expanding
Feminist Possibilities, which presents the work of seven women artists, and one
all-women collective, whose works engage with feminist themes.
While all feminist art challenges sexism, the range of practices is
heterogeneous and not restricted by form or media. Popular conceptions of
feminist art often ignore the endless potential and diversity of feminist art. The
works included in Look Again defy narrow definitions, and range from highly
political calls for gender equality to quieter reflections on women’s domestic
production. These works demonstrate the multiplicity of feminist art, and banish
any misconception that feminist art is simplistic or otherwise restrictive. Most
significantly, this feminist exhibition strives to indict the art establishment’s sexist
exclusion of art made by women.
The Guerrilla Girls have been indicting the art establishment’s sexism and
racism with their brand of feminist art since the 1980s. A group of anonymous
activists and artists committed to combatting inequality in the art world, the
Guerrilla Girls have created posters, billboards, and books which blend biting
honesty and keen wit to critique art world injustice. Rather than quietly advocate
for change within the art establishment, the Guerrilla Girls adopted a firm outsider
status, calling out museums, galleries, and art collectors’ biases in front of a large
public audience. The group’s members don gorilla masks when making public
appearances, and use historically famous female artists’ names as pseudonyms in
order to preserve their anonymity.
In response to the art establishment’s lack of interest in art by women,
the Guerrilla Girls created hard-hitting posters such as Do Women Have to Be
Naked to Get into the Met. Museum? and Advantages of Being a Woman Artist.
Upon their discovery that a scant 5% of the art in the Metropolitan Museum’s
Modern Art wing was made by women, while a startling 85% of the nudes were
female, the Guerilla Girls created a poster that asked: “Do women have to be
naked to get into the Met. Museum?” Featuring a simplified version of La Grande
Odalisque, a famous 19th
century nude painted by the French Neoclassicist Jean-
Auguste-Dominique Ingres, wearing one of the Guerrilla Girls’ trademark gorilla
masks, the poster serves as a provocative indictment of the art world’s dismissal
of art made by women and its disproportionate consumption of the naked female
form.
Similar to the Guerrilla Girls’ bold reaction to inequalities within the art
world, the early video work of American artist Sadie Benning confidently exposes
and challenges repressive cultural norms. Born in 1973, Benning is a lesbian
videographer who began making self-reflective videos with a Fisher Price
Pixelvision toy camera as a young teen. Featuring close ups shots of hand
scrawled text, shaky camera footage, and music by the punk rock band Bikini Kill,
Benning’s Girl Power reflects the artist’s aggressive, in-your-face approach to
video making. Created in 1992 when Benning was 19 years old, Girl Power relates
the artist’s personal rebellion against female stereotypes and her struggle for
personal freedom. With a decidedly punk aesthetic featuring grainy, low-quality
footage captured by the toy camera, Girl Power rejects traditional standards of
videography. Informed by the underground riot grrrl movement of the 1990s,
Benning’s roughly hewn Girl Power reinvents the image politics of female youth,
rejecting politeness and passivity in favor of radical independence.
In Girl Power, Benning’s confrontational, irreverent attitude acquires
political resonance. Within the narrative, Benning’s refusal to attend school, where
she has been bullied for her lesbian identity, signals her fundamental rejection of
homophobic cultural norms. Taking a firm, countercultural stance, Benning is a
revolutionary, who closes her film with shots of handwritten notes insisting, “the
time for revolution is now” and warning us to “watch out for girl power.” Benning
not only rejects gender-based oppression, but also offers hope of a more liberated
future.
Hend Al-Mansour, Haneen, 2016
Like Sadie Benning’s Girl Power, Hend Al-Mansour’s Haneen affirms a
woman’s lesbian identity. Yet the style of the two works is markedly different.
While Benning’s Girl Power is an aggressive shout, Al-Mansour’s installation is a
reflection on the sacred quality of the erotic. Born in Saudi Arabia, Hend Al-
Mansour practiced medicine for many years before immigrating to the United
States in 1997 and becoming a full-time artist in 2000. Now based in the Twin
Cities, Al-Mansour’s work employs Arabic and Islamic designs, and investigates
themes of identity, gender politics, and inequality. An installation based on the
artist’s encounter with a Christian Arab woman who immigrated to the United
States, Haneen is a shrine-like space which viewers are invited to enter. Haneen,
an Arabic name that means longing, desire, and nostalgia, is a pseudonym chosen
by the woman on whom the work is based, and it is a fitting title for the work.
Rejected by her family because she is a lesbian, the woman whose likeness
appears inside the installation confessed to Al-Mansour that while she is pleased
with her life and career in the United States, she continues to long for her family’s
love and acceptance.
The installation’s sensuous red and pink tones, combined with the
geometric designs printed on Haneen’s fabric walls and floor create an interior
space which feels both sacred and erotic. An attractive, reclining nude portrait of
Haneen covers the installation’s back wall. The central focus of the work, the
prominence of this voluptuous nude solidifies the space’s potent erotic charge. Yet
the installation is not a space in which viewers are encouraged to objectify the
nude female form. Before entering the innermost portion of the structure, viewers
must confront a medusa-like portrait of Haneen’s face. While traditional female
nudes privilege the heterosexual male viewer, encouraging him to find sexual
gratification by gazing upon the passive female body, the presence of Haneen’s
face in the installation’s corridor ensures Haneen’s active, independent role in the
work. In the corridor, Haneen looks confidently out at the viewer, the scale of the
portrait ensuring that her gaze will not pass unnoticed. Like Medusa who turned
those who dared look upon her face to stone, Haneen’s unflinching countenance
serves as a talisman meant to counteract objectifying glances. Haneen presents
the nude female form in all its erotic glory. But Haneen’s piercing gaze, combined
with Al-Mansour’s request that
viewers remove their shoes prior
to entering the installation,
ensure that this work presents
viewers with a strong,
autonomous woman in whose
presence they are honored to
stand.
Much like Hend Al-Mansour’s
Haneen, Patricia Olson’s Baubo
presents viewers with a portrait
of a woman who is in full control
of her sexuality. In this
rambunctious painting we are
confronted by Baubo, a bawdy
trickster figure from ancient
Greek mythology. A mature
crone, Baubo played an important
role in the ancient Greek
Eleusinian Mysteries. Baubo
restored harmony and order to
the world when she cheered up
Demeter, who was despondent
over Hades’ abduction of her
daughter Persephone. With her
daughter locked away in the underworld, Demeter refused to bring fertility to the
earth, and thus humankind was locked in a perpetual, barren winter. Baubo
helped shake Demeter from her depression by jokingly lifting her skirt over her
head and flashing Demeter. Her spirits lifted by Baubo, Demeter found a way to
temporarily rescue her daughter Persephone from the depths of Hades, and to
thereby bring springtime and fertility back to the earth.
Patricia Olson, Baubo 2007

2. Patricia Olson, a Twin Cities-based artist, is a founding member of the
Women’s Art Registry of Minnesota (WARM). She has been creating feminist work
since the 1970s. Fellow artist and friend of Olson’s, Sandra Menafee Taylor, posed
as Baubo for Olson’s painting. Dressed in a bright yellow dress with matching
glasses and jewelry, Taylor is impossible to miss. Although the diminutive clay
figures hung in rows behind Taylor harken to ancient Greek processions
celebrating the Baubo-Demeter myth, Taylor’s contemporary clothing emphasizes
the painting’s modern-day relevance. Indeed, Taylor’s giddy expression serves as
a playful rejection of contemporary, youth-obsessed culture that considers older
women’s sexuality taboo or nonexistent. Far from being desexualized, this mature
woman happily owns her sexuality, celebrating the fullness of her life.
Like Olson’s Baubo, Minnesota-based artist Jessica Larson’s Euphemenses
series questions societal taboos surrounding women and their bodies. A portrait of
one woman’s menstruation, Larson used the stains created by her own menstrual
flow as inspiration for this series. The humorous titles of the works, such as Kitty
Has a Nose Bleed and Having the Painters In, spring from the many euphemisms
women use to refer to menstruation. Considered an inappropriate topic for polite
conversation, menstruation is often discussed in veiled, euphemistic terms. In
addition to being considered taboo, the fact of menstruation has long been used
to marginalize women and to cast them as hysterical, moody, and unreliable.
Frustrated by remarks such as those made by Donald Trump, who suggested on
national television that journalist Megyn Kelly had “blood coming out of her
wherever,” Jessica Larson’s work strips the taboo from menstruation and
confronts the viewer with the reality of a natural, bodily function. Created through
a combination of Photoshop and computerized sewing, Euphemenses presents the
viewer with artfully cropped and vibrantly colored representations of menstrual
blood that question why menstruation is still stigmatized. Created using a
technically sophisticated version of stich work, a traditionally feminine medium,
the richly textured surfaces of the Euphemenses series are reminiscent of Abstract
Expressionist painting. Works by male painters like Jackson Pollock and Willem de
Kooning, both part of the male-dominated movement which began in New York
City during the 1940s, are often viewed as the epitome of American painting. In
contrast, traditionally feminine art forms and media, such as textiles and stitch
work, have been maligned as mere craft. The Euphemenses series disputes this
patriarchal hierarchy by combining disparaged textile work with the textured
strokes of Abstract Expressionism.
Echoing the densely intertwined strands of thread in Larson’s
Euphemenses series, the intense, curling skeins of hair in Kiki Smith’s lithographic
print, Untitled (Hair), form a portrait of female hair which rejects traditional
standards of feminine beauty. First active in the 1970s, American artist Kiki Smith
is best known for her sculptures of the human body, in which she frequently re-
imagines traditional images of women. Untitled (Hair), created from photocopied
images of the artist’s own hair, stands in stark contrast to traditional portraits of
women. In this self-portrait, the distorted imprint of the artist’s face appears in all
but one of the print’s corners. Reminiscent of the portrait of Haneen’s face which
hangs inside the entryway of Al-Mansour’s installation and turns away objectifying
glances, Smith’s print presents the viewer with a self-possessed, even menacing
depiction of a woman, which counteracts any attempt to objectify the female form
it represents.
While many of the works included in Look Again approach feminist
themes directly through the use of text, or through the use of woman-centric
imagery, Elizabeth Garvey’s Selkie Wife Series and Mary Berg’s A Visible
Configuration are less immediately obvious, yet equally rich examples of feminist
art. With an interest in exploring feminist possibilities through traditionally
masculine formats, the Twin Cities-based artist Mary Bergs has created an
installation of crisply folded file folders reminiscent of Minimalism’s austere
geometric forms. But Berg’s bright pink folders, which appear to be joyfully
undressing as they move across the wall, offer a playful retort to the staid
production of the boys’ club of 1960s Minimalism. The file folders that make up A
Visible Configuration hail from the traditionally masculine domain of the office, so
it is surprising to find the folders in such a bright, girly-pink color. This contrast
encourages viewers to consider the socially reinforced gendering of colors, as well
as the supposed divide between the “masculine” sphere of work outside the home
and the “feminine” sphere of work inside the home.
Rather than reject the materials frequently associated with domesticity
and femininity, Elizabeth Garvey exploits both domestic materials and domestic
scale in order to create the Selkie Wife Series. The series explores a myth told
among the Celts, the Scots, and other maritime cultures, from a selkie woman’s
point of view. Selkies are mythological seal creatures capable of shedding their
sealskin and living on land. In some versions of the myth, a calculating human
male suitor steals and hides a female selkie’s sealskin, thus forcing her to remain
on land with him. Trapped on land and prevented from returning to her ocean
home, the selkie is forced to enter the domestic sphere, where she performs her
daily tasks while yearning for the sea.
Unlike the monumental
bronze and marble
sculptures dominating the
history of Western art,
Garvey’s Selkie Wife Series
consists of delicate,
domestically-scaled works
that reflect the day-to-day
struggles of a land-trapped
selkie wife. Her work, like
that of many contemporary
women, is a labor of love.
Yet the selkie’s entrapment
transforms her daily routine
into a burdensome duty.
The slender sewing needles and thread immobilized by stones in Burdens to Bear
reflect the selkie’s sense of being held back from her potential. The crushed rose
petals of Love or Duty? underscore the ephemeral nature of cleaning and cooking,
domestic duties with which many women are still disproportionately burdened.
Through its embrace of domestic scale and delicate materials, the Selkie Wife
Series both challenges the dismissal of traditionally feminine materials such as
lace and thread while simultaneously exploring the fact that women still do most
of the domestic labor in the home.
The works included in Look Again: Expanding Feminist Possibilities
challenge the patriarchal history of Western art through their use of traditionally
feminine media, feminist subversions of the male gaze, reflections upon
traditionally masculine contexts, and their rebellion against oppressive taboos.
Varying widely in form, content, and style, feminist art created by women artists
has much to offer. Sadly, too little art by women artists is being made available
for the public to see. In 2012, the Guerrilla Girls returned to the Metropolitan
Museum of Art in New York City to update their 1989 count of works by male and
female artists in the museum’s Modern Art wing. Disappointingly, the percent of
female artists on display had decreased to a dismal four percent. As long as
women and other marginalized groups are denied equitable space on museum
walls the richness and diversity of the art world will suffer. What Sadie Benning
said in her 1992 video, Girl Power, is still pertinent: “the time for revolution is
now.”
Curated by Taylor Davis
February 9 – March 6, 2016
Opening Reception:
Friday, February 19, 7–9 p.m.
Flaten Art Museum
Elizabeth Garvey, Burdens to Bear, 2015
Cover Image: Jessica Larson, On the Blob, 2015
Look Again:
Expanding Feminist
Possibilities