8:03 - 7:04 2012
CentroCentro Cibeles de Madrid
The last few years have seen a huge rise in the number of female artists working in the circuit and context of the visual arts, especially in the field of video, a category which presently encompasses a wide range of disciplines and formats including video-performance, video-creation, video-animation and video-installation.
Many of these video artists base their work on their personal and creative experiences, as well as their own identity as women, with all it entails on a social, cultural, economic, political and symbolic level in the world today. Their video works feature the conditioning factor arising from belonging to a gender identity –the officially female–, a standard of behaviour for women which has been historically and socially assigned to them merely because of their gender. An identity and a number of roles built by patriarchal societies, which included alienating and subordinated behaviours and attitudes that women have been forced to fulfil, and that, during the 20th century, especially its last few decades, have been transformed and replaced by new attitudes, approaches, ways of acting and behaving, and of dealing with life itself, giving rise to innovative, liberating and plural versions of what it is to be a woman in the world. All of this has taken place in the context of women’s historical demands for social, economic, legal and political equality, which is gradually being accomplished to varying degrees in each society and country. There is still a long way to go.
On the basis of these premises, FEMINIS- ARTE, which is part of the programme of CentroCentro Cibeles de Cultura y Ciudadanía, presents 12 videographical works, which are relevant both because of their subject matter and artistic interest, and which condense part of the research work conducted in this field by the project’s curator. The selection on display is made up of works submitted to the Concurso Nacional de Videoarte de mujeres artistas desde perspectivas de género, held in 2011 in the context of the VII encuentros Internacionales de Arte y Género, a project which also stands out in the research work carried out by Margarita Aizpuru.
The various works on display at FEMINIS- ARTE have been based on and deal with a wide range of issues, from the discrimination against women in society, sexist roles and/or stereotypical and chauvinistic behaviour in human relationships, and the generic female identity, its constructions and deconstructions. Optics, personal languages and innovative discourses displaying a range of tones, accents and visions –poetic, corrosive, entertaining–, as well as technical proposals ranging from a careful and meticulous treatment of images to more homemade finishes and direct street filming. They come together to offer critical paths, freeing us from constraints, clichés and subordination. FEMINIS-ARTE seeks to promote this creative field by women artists, as well as to drive and spread gender discourses within the policies for the development of positive action in favour of women, as stated in article 26 of Organic Law 3/2007 of the 22nd of March, for the effective equality between men and women in the context of the arts.
