Women artists. There is no such thing. It’s just as much a contradiction in terms as ‘man artist’ or ‘elephant artist’. You may be a woman and you may be an artist; but the one is a given and the other is you.
Dorothea Tanning
When I make a series of dinosaurs, nobody asks me why I make only dinosaurs. When I make an exhibition with travel-inspired work, nobody asks me why I didn’t make work inspired by my own country.*
When I make black and white work, nobody asks me about color and vice versa.
But beware, when I make an exhibition full of female figures**, I get asked: Why do you only make women?
This is a weird question. I am a woman. It is perfectly natural to be a woman. It is the human norm. Why shouldn’t I? What’s so special about it?
I’ve seen male artists paint only male figures (or only female figures). I know they don’t get asked the same question. Nobody will notice. I wouldn’t have noticed if I hadn't been thinking about this issue. Almost nobody asks why in newspapers, in movies, in children’s books – why literally EVERYWHERE there is a majority of men. Why do men get more, so much more space and time in media, in discussions, everywhere, when they make up less than 50% of us. No. We don’t even notice, because we have been gaslighted, and we continue to gaslight ourselves and others to see women as a minority, and we treat them as such. Although women are the majority.
A woman only drawing women, apparently, it’s too much to take. And especially the kind of women I make, not some sexy girls (where, again, it’s totally ok if it’s only women because these are not really essential women, but women seen through the male gaze, and god beware would we depict men as sex objects) but figures taking up a lot space and which have a lot of presence. These are not figures you can overlook. I understand, although they are not at all meant to be like this, that their energy can unsettle some people.
I can’t stand women being treated as something exotic, something out of the norm. Women are not exotic, we are the human norm. We are more than 50% of humanity and women make up 70% of our ancestors and women have a far greater influence on the genetic make-up of newborns than their respective fathers. Biologically, we are undisputedly the more significant sex, which is probably the reason we ended up in this neurotic patriarchal mess catering to the fragile male ego, men who cannot accept their natural place.
We are supposedly living in an “equal” society. But as a professional and as a creative, unlike the man, I am being defined by my sex first. Only next, I am an artist.
But no, I am not an artist, I am a “woman artist”. Did you ever ask yourself why there exists the term “woman artist”, but not the term “man artist” – and this in a world where the majority of artists are female? It’s ridiculous.
Oh my god, she’s a “woman artist”, how remarkable! Sensational! She does not create just art, she makes “female art”, “woman art” (whatever that is), she needs to be “empowered” and “celebrated” when all this “empowering” and “celebrating” women contributes to exoticize and infantilize us. Women are not weak creatures who need “help” to walk their path, we simply need society to stop putting stones in our way. But our way is full of stones.
We need the same chances and we don’t have them.
I often point it out to the persons responsible when women are discriminated und underrepresented in panels, discussions, and exhibitions everywhere, I point it out politely because even if I have all the right to be angry, the truth is women don’t have the right to be angry about this in our society. Anger would harm the cause, at least in this case. So I patiently explain to them what unconscious bias is. I tell them that we all have it. I ask them politely to think about women next time, to give them the same chances as men.
The answer I get is always disappointing. It’s always “just a coincidence”. There are, regularly, three or more times more men than women, but yeah, it’s always just a “coincidence”. Or I get no answer at all.
The saddest thing is, women get discriminated against by both women and men.
A few exhibitions that pretend to be “feminist” because a capitalist, pretty, and pretty toothless version of feminism has become some sort of a trend now, are not helping any female artist when this discrimination (“coincidence”) we face is denied and has absolutely no consequences when the rest of the time (and if you don’t believe this, because it’s so unbelievable, there are studies proving it) we have to work much harder than men for the same success and to survive, and when our work is bought less often and for lower prices and is regarded inferior to men’s work just because we are women.
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* But the question I get asked most is “how is it as a woman in this country”, because of all the stories I have to tell, the stories of me being disrespected because of my sex apparently are the most interesting ones to people, bravo.
**In said exhibition there were also a few male figures. But as we know from scientific studies, where women take up only half of the space (just as it is their right) they are already perceived as the majority, as “too much"