A City of Women – Notes from Ljubljana
The legendary Guerrilla Girls made visible to the world the disparity among museum collections: how could it be that no one noticed or, even worse, no one cared that 90% of art exhibited was by male artists? Their first interventions – manifested through posters, billboards, demonstrations, actions – started in the 1980s. The good and bad news is that these anonymous girls, identity covered by an ironic gorrilla mask, are still active today. Almost 50 years have passed from 1968, 40 years from the Girls' first moves...and although it got better, statistics of women and male art given centre stage is still not satisfying. Not to mention the almost complete absence of visibility to work by transexual, transgender, queer and intersex artists.
Contemporary Art Festivals abound by the hundreds: we've got biennials, triennials, Documenta is every 5 years, but most of them happen every year. Many have been criticised as being too commercial, with aleatory or too broad themes, platforms for lucrative business for art collectors and, if art by women reaches close to 50% of the overall exhibited works, it becomes front page news showing its out of the ordinary character.
Luckily in Europe there is a festival which is dedicate solely to women's art. And while some may believe that this is only a strategic move, or a choice solely for the sake of having all women in one festival, we can assure you that this is not the case with Mesto Zensk – City of Women. The International Contemporary Art Festival - City Of Women is not only extremely relevant in its aim but also gives visibility to issues that may not be made visible in an ordinary contemporary arts festival. Held each year in the Slovenian capital, the International Festival of Contemporary Arts – City of Women begun in 1995 and is now at its 23rd edition (06-14 October 2017). The Festival touched on the themes of discrimination, exposes current conditions of women's and artist's life and work with the intention of improving them, encourages solidarity, awareness and acceptance of diversity. We were lucky enough to attend the last few days of the festival, here are our thoughts.
This year the festival brought together artists and theorists thinking about the idea of nature, the natural and norms. As professor of sociology at Paris-8 University Éric Fassin put it, what we think is nature or natural, such as our gender (male/female), our sexuality and the idea and value of the family, are in fact constructions in order for us to organise socially and politically our bodies and identities. We then moved to the Španski borci Cultural Centre where we witnessed the exceptional "Hope Hunt" by award winning Irish dancer Oona Doherty. The aggressive and spastic movements releasing inner anger was slowly channeled into a fully felt cry of hope. Throughout the days that followed, all attendees of the show could not stop speaking about the performance.
Hope Hunt by Oona Doherty. Photo by Nada Žgank
The next day we joined the duo Irena Pivka and Brane Zorman and performed their 2.Walk piece: wearing headphones and following an already set out path through the city of Ljubljana, we became aware of the act of walking. The sounds and voices recorded and those of the landscape around us merged. As the recording stated, "walking is a radical act", especially if done by women who often do not possess the luxury of walking alone, do not fully own the time and space of this simple action filled instead with fear or dictated by a social or cultural imposition. But to walk can become an act of revolution, of liberation and of self-assertion.
2.Walk by Irena Pivka and Brane Zorman. Photo by Nada Žgank
On the last day we visited the exhibition at Kresija Gallery. Although small, the show not only required time and attention but also an emotional investment. "On Abortion" by Spanish artist Laia Abril tracked the history of abortion through key objects such as a, still produced today, condom made of goat's gut and a cleaning vaginal shower. Episodes of women having gone through an illegal abortion revealed the importance of making public something that has been considered a private matter to be hidden and the necessity of discussing openly the real and heavy risks of illegal abortion; in other words the risks of not allowing a woman to make her own decisions about her body. The show was scary because of its relevance still today; necessary and important for both women and men. In the evening we were invited to see the outcomes of the week-long residence of five young performers as part of the "Performing Gender Dance Makes Differences" project. Trying to dismantle normative ideas of femininity and masculinity, the performers created individual performances that stood as the beginning of a two-year-long research. The body took centre stage in their research: performance showed its relevance still today as a worthy medium of the arts and as a necessary vehicle for thinking about representing, abusing, changing, performing, and moving the body. We cannot wait to see how, in two years time, the short performances of Nataša Živković (SI), Jija Sohn (NL), Roberta Racis (IT), Koldo Arostegui González (ES) and Sophie Unwin (GB) develop into a full work.
Roberta Racis in Performing Gender Dance Makes Differences.Photo by Nada Žgank
So what's the point of bringing together between 40 and 60 women artists and theorists? City of Women showed once again how feminist issues deal foremost with the exploration of the taboos in our society under which the freedom, safety and respect of women are in danger. The festival showed how a potential city of women is an interdisciplinary and intersectional city bringing in trans and queer art, speaking about gender boundaries and exploring how to deconstruct and move beyond the male/female boundaries. Art needs to and must engage these matters. Arte needs to fight for freedom and this freedom does no longer equal with democracy, but is a freedom of the body and of identity. We are sick of seeing the same old white male 'controversial' paintings, we need art that socially matters.
Don't you agree?
23rd INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL OF CONTEMPORARY ARTS
MESTO ZENSK | CITY OF WOMEN
"NACIJA-NATURA-NORMA"
Artistic director is Teja Reba
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