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SWAAY Editors On The Media's Egregious Exploitation Of The Women's Movement - SWAAY

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Another holiday, another barrage of pitches from publicists looking for coverage of their "IWD efforts," which typically is something like "HEY! We're giving 10 percent of proceeds to X charity for a full 24 hours."

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http://www.ilonaszwarc.com/news-1?start=90

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Use to show how women are negatively portrayed and why our artists are therefore contemporary by challenging this?

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Those women in the Dove ads must be getting exhausted - what with being dragged out every time someone wants to highlight the lack of "real women" in advertising. They are apparently the shining examples of realness but in truth there are plenty of individual examples of women that look and sound as "real" as the men in ads - but the bigger question surrounds broader issues of representation and how women are portrayed in advertising.

Why for example are the majority of voiceovers male? Why in financial services advertising is the advisor most likely to be a man? The same goes for a doctor, engineer or scientist but if there's a teacher, that person is usually a woman, or why and this is just one example of many is the person in the shower washing their hair a young conventionally gorgeous woman?

Last week in the White House the US Association of National Advertising (ANA) represented by 50 of the top ad spending brands, committed to eliminating bias against women in advertising. The ANA wants a 20 per cent increase in the "accurate portrayal of all girls and women" in media by 2020 - the centenary year of when women got the vote in the US. "We know that the right advertising environment for women can improve ad effectiveness by as much as 30 per cent," said Bob Liodice ANA chief executive in a statement. "So there is a business imperative to truthfully and accurately portray women and girls. More importantly, it's the right thing to do."

The #SeeHer campaign was launched at last Thursday's event with a research monitoring programme - a Gender Equality Measure (GEM) that will track how advertisers are responding to the new brief. The initiative - and it's White House link - came out of official concerns in the US about the under-representation of women in tech jobs in the media - the science technology, engineering and medicine (STEM) sectors. Seeing women in these roles provides role models for young girls.

Those campaigns that reflect the gender balance requirements in the #SeeHer campaign will be on its website from July for the public to view and as an ongoing best0-practice model for advertisers. Agencies will be encouraged by the ANA with the help of a checklist to ensure its advertising portrays women and girls in a non-sexist way and to attempt to cut through that great get-out clause "unconscious bias".

Research in the US has shown that while female voiceovers in advertising are 3 per cent more effective than men, a massive two thirds of voiceovers are male. There are no figures for Irish voiceovers that I could find but going by the predominance of male voices on the airwaves as presenters it's not unreasonable to guess it follows through during the ad breaks.

Part of the problem has to be the number of women in creative positions in advertising. In the US just 11 per cent of the staff working on the creative side are women. The situation is much better in Irish advertising agencies: the 2015 IAPI census found that women made up 26 per cent of the creative departments - and that's a figure the industry is actively trying to improve on. The picture in the UK is much the same with the "This is adland 16" study by industry body IPA showing creative departments in the bigger agencies having "a significant male bias".

Meanwhile in Britain the Advertising Standards Authority has announced it is to investigate "negative gender stereotyping" in advertising and is commissioning research into public opinion. In April the ASA chief executive Guy Parker said "We've already been taking action to ban ads that we believe reinforce gender stereotypes and are likely to cause serious and widespread offence or harm.

How the ASA judges offence will be watched closely. Last summer it said Protein World's body shaming "beach body ready" poster campaign was "not offensive" even though the 380 complaints about it were further amplified by a social media backlash.

Meanwhile the empowering #likeagirl campaign from feminine hygiene brand Always was so extraordinarily brilliant that I doubt any of the 61 million people who viewed it on YouTube will ever use a phrase such as "throw like a like a girl" or "run like a girl" in a negative way again. Though curiously the two people who complained last year to the Irish Advertising Standard Authority about an ad for a Dublin gym that used the line "Stop training like your sister and do some real training" got short shrift. The watchdog said saying it did not consider the ad to be sexist.

bharrison@irishtimes.com

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Those women in the Dove ads must be getting exhausted - what with being dragged out every time someone wants to highlight the lack of "real women" in advertising.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YudyhoCAJjQ

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Ilona Szwarc notes:

'Working with people and places where they live is a very special time for me. To get to know them, connect with them, see who they are, where they live, what their dreams are and capture all that in a photograph that will communicate a nature of that exchange and therefore relate to a universal human experience is always my greatest challenge. It is about spending time together and sharing moments, about connecting. That connection becomes the spine of the portrait.''

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Photo Book
Designer: Michela Povoleri
Editor: Ilona Szwarc
Imprint: Ilona Szwarc
Printer: Magcloud
Publication date and place: September 2015 / Los Angeles, California, USA
Edition: 500
Format, binding: Softcover / Perfect-bound
Size:  8.25 in x 10.75 in (20.95 cm x 27.30 cm)
Number of pages and images: (36 pages / 23 images)
Type of printing and paper: HP Indigo digital press/ 80# text stock (acid free)
Retail price: $60
http://selfpublishbehappy.com/2016/04/i-am-a-woman-and-i-feast-on-memory-by-ilona-szwarc/

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- Focus on promoting two photographers for the exhibition who photograph and explore women in a contemporary way.

- This could include anything from showing “real women”, where women are portrayed in a more realistic light (opposed to a lot of fashion and advertising photography that is often highly retouched), to the “real issues” that women face today.

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- Both people in our group will research multiple photographers and focus on one in particular that has the greatest appeal and relevance for the project.

- Work through Padlet to generate ideas and collect our research and relevant information and imagery.

- Collaborate over multiple days in person after initial research and writing to combine our individual work into a presentation.

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Goal: In our presentation we should outline our rationale and pitch for the proposed curated exhibition for PhotoIreland 2019 with our
selected artists/photographers – show everyone their work.

1) Title
2) Press release 200 words

3) define Contemporary and/or Contemporary Photography Practices.

4) Provide some history on how women are more commonly, and often inaccurately, portrayed through imagery, media etc.
-- mention how the shift to portraying women in a more revealing and accurate light is relatively new and therefore, contemporary.

5) write about 1 artist each (2 total in presentation) under the theme of the contemporary portrayal of women and femininity today.
--  write about why the artist is particularly contemporary, current, interesting, and influential.
-- How and why our chosen artist is deviating from and/or challenging the way women are often unfairly and inaccurately portrayed.

- Focus on process and methods (ways of working) by including 1-2 projects that the artist has created.
- Show relevant visual examples to support the projects.
-      (Include Harvard referencing under the images. Put the bibliography of the image at the end.)

6) Connect in any other kinds of tendencies or approaches which might be relevant in relation to the practices you have identified: Are there significant themes, modes of display, particular philosophies, theories, geographical locations etc. that should also be considered?
— (What way does the artist do their work? how do they do it? What do they use to do their work? Is it all very similar or different? Etc..)

7) On what evidence or authority are you making this selection ie. who or what are your sources?
— (Write about why our photographer should be included in the exhibition. Who or what talks about them? Where did we get info about them?)
— Eg. Photographers/Artists themselves, curators, critics, galleries and museums, particular exhibitions, publications, magazines, newspapers, bloggers etc.?

8) include all image and text sources used in a bibliography at the end).

Result:

• 10 minute presentation using Google Slides.

• Present slides of good resolution, well-organised, all properly titled and dated.

• Equal presentation time between partners.

• Submit our Padlet research and the the presentation to the folder supplied (which documents your research pathway, with samples of work used, texts and bibliography.)

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Magazine-'World after Barbie'
'Show me your doll and I'll tell you who you are''

Her work explores ways in which female identity is constructed in current cultural context, as well as processes of socialization of girls and women. Notions of becoming, and concept of the ideal self are at the core of her investigation.
She mailny focus on exploring and breaking stareotpes which tell women the way they're suppose to be.

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http://www.ilonaszwarc.com/ilona-szwarc-2

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“No-one is being held accountable for our image of sexuality becoming increasingly two-dimensional.
One of the biggest perpetuators of sexuality as a commodity was the TV show Sex And The City and it is no coincidence that the STD Necklaces are modelled on the ‘Carrie Necklace’, worn by the main character played by Sarah Jessica Parker”

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CLICK ON THUMBNAILS TO VIEW LARGER IMAGE I have always had a rather difficult time accepting anything gratuitous. The annoying trend of selling mundane and totally unrelated products using women's...

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Annelies Hofmeyr ‘Trophy Wife Barbie’ Project 

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Annelies Hofmeyr ‘Trophy Wife Barbie’ Project 

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- Main Site:
http://www.witmyt.com/

- Main Project website under construction:
https://www.trophywifebarbie.com/

- Twitter account:

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- about
https://www.google.ie/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/susannahbreslin/2016/06/01/trophy-wife-barbie/amp/

- about
https://www.google.ie/amp/s/www.independent.co.uk/life-style/trophy-wife-barbie-instagram-real-woman-body-positive-size-weight-a8086331.html%3famp

- video:
https://m.facebook.com/abcnews.au/videos/10156831212969908/

Exhibition:
https://midsumma.org.au/program/trophy18

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- explores female identity and the status of women’s roles in society, largely through provocative and creative imagery.

- “Trophy Wife Barbie’s main goal is to highlight the limitations of labels and to explore gender issues and the modern female identity. The work is an invitation to consider what might happen if we focus on the things we have in common, rather than fear the things that make us different. ”

- https://www.instagram.com/wit_myt/

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We discovered Trophy Wife Barbie account over the weekend, and it is the best account ever! It's the definition of a Satire with colours, great humor, and Barbies. The project is owned by Annelies Hofmeyr, who was born in South Africa to a British mother and Afrikaans gunsmith father. She is a firm believer that art disturbs the comfortable and comforts the disturbed and it is from this firm belief that she started Trophy Wife Barbie.
Trophy Wife Barbie's main goal is to highlight the limitations of labels and to explore gender issues and the modern female identity. The work is an invitation to consider what might happen if we focus on the things we have in common, rather than fear the things that make us different.

Currently living on her fifth continent, Annelies Hofmeyr navigates her place in the world by visiting recurring themes around gender and identity. She, therefore, sets out to find like-minded people through her work. Trophy Wife Barbie is one of such themes where she humorously puts a spin on the 'Trophy wife' identity that the world constantly debates.
According to Annelies, "Barbie, as a timeless icon - recognized by everyone but carrying meaning that varies tremendously with the viewer - affords a medium that's highly relatable and amusing. The antlers are a physical representation of a label imposed on her, likening her to a hunting trophy; something to be owned."

Follow her on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. You should also get the print version of her work.

You should also see Moshtari Hilal's Drawings which explore Identity, Womanhood & decolonizes beauty standards.

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Annelies Hofmeyr's Trophy Wife Barbie Explores Female Identity - For Creative Girls

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We discovered Trophy Wife Barbie account over the weekend, and it is the best account ever! It's the definition of a Satire with colours, great humor, and Barbies. The project is owned by Annelies Hofmeyr, who was born in South Africa to a British mother and Afrikaans gunsmith father.

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Women Portrayed in Media/Ads Previously vs in the Contemporary

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Women Portrayed in Media/Ads Previously vs in the Contemporary

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“The conflict between women's actual role in society and the ways in which advertisers portrayed that role came to the forefront during World War II. While wartime propaganda encouraged women to labor for country and family, advertisers urged female factory workers to remain glamorous and keep the home running smoothly.”

— Gender roles changed although there was still backlash against women portrayed in more ‘male’ roles.

“Advertisers came under severe scrutiny from feminist groups, women's organizations and students of mass communications. As the debate over women's images in advertising intensified, the National Organization for Women, founded in 1966, sought to eliminate gender-based stereotypes in the mass media.”

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Although women are depicted in various roles and statuses in advertising-ranging from homemaker to business executive and from sex object to superwoman-it is only since the mid-20th century that women have been shown in roles other than purchaser of domestic products.

While some observers may be impatient with the traditional images of women used by major packaged-goods marketers, those depictions reflect meticulously calibrated research designed to detect the subtlest element of potential offense in the target group.

This market research-based advertising may not always show trend-setting women the images they want to see, but market research seldom leads advertisers far astray. In short, the roles of wife and mother continue to be performed by large numbers of women whom advertisers seek to address.

Targeting women: Early days

One of the most enduring female characters in advertising is Aunt Jemima, a trademark that had its beginnings in 1889. Invited to breakfast with millions of families all over the world for more than a century, Aunt Jemima eventually became an icon. By the end of the 20th century, she had undergone several face-lifts to reflect the evolving African-American consumer market.

While some products are named to entice women to buy them, none has enjoyed the success of Gold Medal flour and its Betty Crocker trade character. As a result of a successful promotional campaign for a pincushion in the 1920s, Washburn Crosby Co., the marketer of Gold Medal flour and forerunner of General Mills, found itself besieged with requests for the premium, along with more than 30,000 letters asking questions about baking.

Sam Gale, head of the company's ad department, decided that a single fictional spokeswoman should sign the response letters and decided on the name Betty Crocker. Blanche Ingersoll, a Washburn Crosby employee, became the voice of Betty Crocker on the radio in 1924. Since that time there have been at least eight different images of Betty Crocker. The most recent, introduced in 1996, was a multicultural composite of the features of 75 women of varying ethnicities.

Depression and war: Changing roles

The Great Depression and World War II left indelible marks on American society, and Rosie the Riveter and other ad icons of the time left their marks on advertising. Through the 1930s, ad copy continued to portray women primarily as homemakers or objects of sexual desire. In 1931, a magazine ad for Listerine deodorant featured a photograph of a nude woman's back and the side of her breast. Woodbury soap featured what is thought to be advertising's first full-figure b&w photograph of a nude woman (shot by Edward Steichen) in 1936.

The conflict between women's actual role in society and the ways in which advertisers portrayed that role came to the forefront during World War II. While wartime propaganda encouraged women to labor for country and family, advertisers urged female factory workers to remain glamorous and keep the home running smoothly.

Many advertisers portrayed women in their newly expanded roles. For instance, Eureka showed three women in its vacuum cleaner ads-one in a military uniform, one in pants and another in typical housewifely garb.

By late 1944, however, women were being prepared, often through strategically placed advertising, to give up their jobs when the soldiers returned home. At the end of the war, advertisers began once again to show women at home, sometimes going so far as to suggest that a working mother was not a good mother. In an advertisement by Adel Precision Products Corp., a young child asked, "Mother, when will you stay home again?"

Return to the home: The '50s

During the 1950s, most advertisers portrayed women as wives and mothers. As more women entered the workforce, however, another kind of advertising made use of them as a means for selling goods and services. Those ads showed women as clerks, telephone operators and secretaries using the latest office equipment and office furniture.

Women in the ads are generally employees not bosses, followers rather than leaders; ultimately, the ads reminded readers that a woman's job was a means for finding a man and that the primary purpose for women at work was to help men succeed.

Another approach to the portrayal of women in advertising involved scantily clad females in alluring poses; those images most often appeared in ads for products used by men.

Feminism and the '60s

One of the chief targets of the revitalized women's movement in the 1960s was the representation of women in all mass media. Advertising, although a target, also became an ally, as the industry provided a variety of venues and activities for the single, self-supporting woman.

Advertisers came under severe scrutiny from feminist groups, women's organizations and students of mass communications. As the debate over women's images in advertising intensified, the National Organization for Women, founded in 1966, sought to eliminate gender-based stereotypes in the mass media.

During the '60s, emphasis began to be placed on the independent woman who, although married, drove her own car, had a fulfilling job and participated in or made major purchasing decisions.

This era culminated in a December 1969 protest outside Macy's Department Store in New York. The protest, which may have been the first organized demonstration against the image of women in advertising, was staged against Mattel Toys in reaction to an ad the company had placed in Life to promote its Christmas toy line.

Criticism and change

In March 1970, NOW created the Barefoot & Pregnant Awards of the Week; the group distributing thousands of stickers that proclaimed: "This ad insults women."

Ad executives were re-evaluating their portrayals of women's roles in society. A classic ad from that period came from the Polaroid camera campaign featuring actors James Garner and Mariette Hartley. Ms. Hartley was shown in a distinctly non-traditional role-fixing a car.

One of the turning points in advertising's portrayal of women came with a landmark campaign from Revlon in 1973. The Charlie perfume campaign featured confident young women in tailored pantsuits pursuing traditionally male-oriented activities. Grey Advertising created the first Charlie ads.

In 1975, a new agency, Advertising to Women, was founded. Its intent was to reach the contemporary, confident, career-oriented woman who was not inhibited by her sexuality. Market research conducted by the agency showed that women were responsible for most household purchases, 60% of all vacation destination choices and nearly 30% of new car selections.

The superwoman

Advertising in the 1980s portrayed career-minded women as "supermoms," and the industry began to grapple with integrating the traditional and contemporary roles of women. One classic ad from the period was one for Enjoli perfume, which depicted a sexy but capable woman who could "bring home the bacon, fry it up in a pan and never let you forget you're a man."

Women Against Pornography, a U.S. lobbying group, was concerned about the sexual images of women portrayed in advertising and the influence of such images on sexual violence against women. The group founded an annual awards program to applaud and censure ads on the basis of presence or absence of sexist overtones.

In 1983, Jockey, a company known primarily for its line of men's underwear, introduced the "Jockey for Her" campaign (from Minneapolis-based Campbell Mithun), which featured real women representing a range of professions, ages and body types. The brand became an instant success; within five years, it was the most popular U.S. brand of women's underwear, commanding a 40% share of the market.

Emerging images

By the 1990s, dramatic changes had occurred in the depiction of women in advertising. One groundbreaking ads was for Maidenform, which pictured some of the objects representing slang terms for woman-a fox, a tomato, a doll and a chick. The text accompanying the ad read, "While images used to describe women are simple and obvious, women themselves rarely are. Just something we like to keep in mind when designing our lingerie."

Other advertisers also abandoned traditional strategies that had been used to depict women. During this decade, advertisers of traditionally male-targeted products-such as athletic shoes, cars and beer-began to focus on female consumers.

A new genre of advertisements came to the forefront, signaling a new attitude: "reverse sexism." Advertisers used the liberated woman's "I don't need a man" mindset to create new ads portraying women.

Bodyslimmer Lingerie showed a woman from the neck down wearing a one-piece undergarment with copy that read, "While you don't necessarily dress for men, it doesn't hurt, on occasion, to see one drool like the pathetic dog that he is."

A breakthrough for women of color occurred in 1992 when Tyra Banks, an African-American model, signed a contract to represent Cover Girl in its ads; she was the first non-white woman used in major cosmetics advertising.

Research that showed a definitive correlation between eating disorders and advertising gained prominence in the 1990s. Because many female models were extremely thin-often two to three sizes smaller than the average American woman-psychologists, nutritionists and activists focused on advertising as contributing to the growing numbers of girls and women suffering from bulimia or anorexia nervosa.

By the turn of the 21st century, many key positions in advertising were occupied by women, enabling them to exert a major influence on ad campaigns. Some critics of the portrayal of women in advertising hoped this situation would give rise to more positive images of women.

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Although women are depicted in various roles and statuses in advertising-ranging from homemaker to business executive and from sex object to superwoman-it is only since the mid-20th century that women have been shown in roles other than purchaser of domestic products.

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10 Female Photographers Redefining Contemporary Femininity

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When someone talks about well-known women in art, many people imagine not an artist but a subject of art. What does it mean to be a Women of Art today? Next 10 female photographers can bring you a clue to Contemporary Femininity in Art.

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- Some photographers and some artists who deal with other media types.

- not all deal with issues surrounding contemporary images of women and the female identity, but do hint at or play with the idea of gender and sexuality.

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We are going to start this list with one of the biggest names on the contemporary art scene.

Marina Abramović is a New York based performance artist whose work explores the relationship between the performer and the audience, limitations of the body and the vast possibilities of the mind.

With a highly lucrative career, which spans over four decades, Abramović has been rightfully described as the pioneer of performance art.

In 2010, the Museum of Modern Art held a major retrospective and performance recreation of her work, which stands as the biggest exhibition of performance art in the history of MoMA. During the exhibition, Abramović performed The Artist is Present, a 736-hour and 30-minute static, silent piece, in which she sat immobile in the atrium of the museum while audience members were invited to take turns sitting opposite her.

Cindy Sherman - Highly Provocative

Cindy Sherman (Cynthia Morris Sherman) is a renowned American contemporary artist, photographer and film director, best known for her conceptual portraits that raise challenging questions about the role and representation of women in modern society.

Sherman broke globally in the early 1980s when her series of 69 black and white photographs, titled Untitled Film Stills achieved international recognition as the gems of feminist photography. The series consisted of photographs showing the artist posing in different roles and settings, resulting in images so powerfully reminiscent of film stills typical of Italian neorealism or American film noir.

Sherman's highly provocative work wonderfully incorporates various influences of feminism, performance art, as well as cultural criticism, and the body and identity politics.

Vanessa Beecroft is a Los Angeles based Italian contemporary female artist, internationally recognized for her large scale performance art that addresses conceptual and aesthetic concerns, and often involves nude female models.

Beecroft's performances stand as existential encounters between the models and audience, which are successfully turned into separate, self sufficient pieces as Beecroft takes photographs and video recordings of her live performances. Each of Beecroft's performances is created for a specific location and usually references the political, historical, or social associations of the place where it is held.

Deceptively simple in its execution, the art of Vanessa Beecroft provokes questions around identity politics and voyeurism in the complex relationship between the viewer, model and the context.

American conceptual artist Barbara Kruger, considered to be part of the Pictures Generation, is widely known for her work consisting of monochrome photographs overlaid with slogans that deal with cultural constructions of power, identity and sexuality.

Kruger initially started working as a designer and later moved on to work as a picture editor in several different publications. In her early years as a visual artist, she crocheted, sewed and painted bright-hued and erotically suggestive objects, but later shifted her focus toward working with her own architectural photographs.

Using the techniques of advertising and mass communication, Barbara Kruger addresses issues of language and signs, all in order to explore universal subjects of gender and identity.

Yayoi Kusama is a renowned Japanese artist and writer, internationally famous for her pattern art and repetition-based psychedelic art she creates using a wide array of media that includes painting, collage sculpture, installations and performance art.

With an extraordinary career, spanning over seven decades, Yayoi Kusama is considered as a precursor of the pop art, minimalist and feminist art movements, whose works greatly influenced contemporary artists such as Andy Warhol and Claes Oldenburg.

Although she has been almost completely forgotten after departing the New York art scene in the early 1970s, Kusama is today widely acknowledged as one of the most important Japanese contemporary artists, and an important voice of the avant-garde.

Tracey Emin is a contemporary artist and one of the most prominent members of the Young British Artists group that creates deeply sensual artworks inspired by their own emotions and experiences.

During her education at the Royal College of Art in London, Tracey Emin created a great number of paintings inspired by works of Egon Schiele and Edvard Munch, which she later destroyed in a burst of fury.

Emin successfully broke to fame in the late 1990s, when she gained a considerable media coverage for her installation My Bed, consisting of her own unmade bed, littered with used condoms and blood stained underwear. Since then, she has been creating drawings and neon installations that tell artist's intimate stories of love, desire and rejection.

Nancy Nan Goldin is an internationally acclaimed American contemporary artist from New York, famed for her exceptional work in photography.

Since her first gallery exhibition in 1973, Goldin has been steadily gaining attention for her intensely personal and spontaneous photographs that deal with subjects of sexuality and gender. Following her graduation at the Boston/Tufts University in the late 1970s, she moved to NYC where she started documenting the new wave music scene and the city's vibrant gay and transsexual subculture.

This is seen in her most famous series of photographs titled The Ballad of Sexual Dependency, which depicts drug use, violent couples, as well as autobiographical moments. Since the mid-1990s, Nan Goldin's photographs shifted toward a wider array of subjects, including captivating NYC's skylines, uncanny landscapes and intimate snapshots of her private life.

Isa Genzken is a contemporary German artist from Berlin, widely known for her sculptures and installation art which employ various different materials, including bric-a-brac, concrete, wood, plaster and textile. She is also recognized for her works in photography, video, film and collage.

Born in 1948 in Bad Oldesloe, Genzken studied fine arts and art history, before completing her studies at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in the late 1970s, during which she was greatly influenced by Constructivism and Minimalism, styles and philosophies still seen in her works today.

As part of her profound interest, which is deeply grounded in urban space, Isa Genzken arranges complex installations featuring mannequins, dolls, photographs, and a wide array of found objects.

Shirin Neshat is an Iranian female artist, and one of the best known Persian artists in the Western world, widely recognized for her work which includes photography, film and video.

Born to a wealthy family from the Iranian town of Qazvin, Neshat soon left for the United States to get her art education, eventually completing her BA, MA and MFA at UC Berkeley and moving to NYC. Her extraordinary work, especially her photographs, combined with Persian poetry and calligraphy, were quickly noticed.

These mesmerizing photographs, as well as Neshat's engaged films, offer a unique glimpse at the cultural, religious and political circumstances that influence the identities of Muslim women worldwide.

The work of Kara Walker, a contemporary African-American artist from NY, explores sensitive subjects like identity, gender, sexuality, violence, race and slavery.

Born in California and raised in Atlanta, Kara Walker studied at the Atlanta College of Art and later obtained her master degree at the Rhode Island School of Art. Walker is working with different mediums, such as ochre gouaches, video animation, shadow puppets and 'magic lantern' projections. She is, however, most famous for her room-size graphic representations of black paper cut-out silhouettes, which boldly raise identity and gender issues of African American women.

Walker's 2014 large scale public project, which drew a lot of attention, titled A Subtlety, commissioned and presented by Creative Time, is showing a massive sugar covered sphinx-like sculpture which reflects on the troubled history of sugar.
All images used for illustrative purposes only.

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We are going to start this list with one of the biggest names on the contemporary art scene. Marina Abramović is a New York based performance artist whose work explores the relationship between the performer and the audience, limitations of the body and the vast possibilities of the mind.

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- focus on body image and the attempt by many people and artists to equalize women of all sizes in the media. This extends to the modeling industry too, where the plus sized model is a relatively new concept being embraced more and more.
- this body positivity focus is being taken to artistic levels by many photographers, including whole instagram accounts dedicated to the topic.

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When you don't have enough clout to get into the @prada show even though you were just featured on @vogue 💀 #nyfw Surround yourself with friends who are altruistic and support you 💞 video @babychickpeaches (my girl is also looking for some models who are interested in getting microblading SO hit her up!)

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- Consider looking at older women with wrinkles and untouched faces instead of just young models. This is a more accurate reflection and truer portrayal of real women, which is often shied away from as a subject matter.

- Also potentially exploring the more intimate issue that are usually ‘hidden’ from the public.

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- ‘Me Too’ and our project both bring forth previously hidden issues or highlight different sides of women today that were previously covered up.

- We want to highlight artists who comment visually on the sides of women and femininity that are often hidden and overlooked. Like ‘Me Too’, showing women in photographs in a true light, in their true form to

- A hugely relevant issue in contemporary culture is the ‘Me Too’ Movement. While is deals mostly with sexual harassment, it’s relevant to our project topic because it almost entirely focuses on one of the many issues women face today. It uncoveres a previously hidden side of society that women were at the mercy of.

- In relationship to the sexual harassment cases, many people used to and continue to place blame on these women for looking and acting in certain ways, or ‘wearing the wrong things’. While our project doesn’t focus on sexual harassment, is will focus on other vital and very real issues faced by women today.

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Two girls, Fat and thin

Wise explore the interwoven paths that constrution and desire take towards identity formation
Commercial, gastronomical and sexual pleasures desired by people(women).
https://www.chloewise.com/2269711-pissing-schmoozing-and-looking-away

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Exhibition of feminist images

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Main image: Image 1 - Valie Export Tapp und Tastkino, 1968© Valie Export/ VG Bildkunst, Bonn 2015 Courtesy of Galerie Charim, Vienna / SAMMLUNG VERBUND, Vienna. All images courtesy The Photographer's Gallery

October sees the launch of Feminist Avant-Garde of the 1970s, a 12-week exhibition at The Photographer's Gallery in Central London. BJP sat down with curators Gabriele Schor and Anna Dannemann to discuss a collection that celebrates seeks to challenge 'accepted social conventions, including the mechanisms and male dominance of the art industry.'

Two phrases almost certain to send the average Daily Mail reader into a bout of apoplectic confusion are 'Feminist' and 'avant-garde'.

All the more reason perhaps, that the Photographer's Gallery is dedicating two floors to this area throughout the coming months. It's a multimedia exploration taken from the Verbund Collection in Vienna - an arts foundation funded by the Austrian electricity giant, and will feature over 40 arts practitioners - from leading lights of the movement such as Valie Export, Cindy Sherman and Francesca Woodman, to less-known artists from as far afield as Serbia, Turkey and Peru.

Says curator Anna Dannemann: 'I think a lot of the artists have been overlooked, such as Sanja Iveković. It's really impressive work - She was part of the New Art Practice in Yugoslavia, [and] you wouldn't necessarily think of Yugoslavia when you think of feminist art.

'Her work looks at political systems and women's rights, and she uses photo montage and video sculpture. [It's] is definitely overlooked, often because of the focus on American or UK artists.'

That previous focus may well be justified. As America gears up to elect its first female political leader, and Britain resides under its second, the possibility of three of the G8 states being led by women is surely a sign of progress - progress for which movements such as this can take credit?

Continues Dannemann: 'It reflects on where we are at this point, but it's a shame that there is still a discourse to be had in regard to the glass ceiling and equal pay and all that [...] so there's plenty to be getting on with.

'Maybe what they [Clinton, May & Merkel] are depicting is more radical than naked bodies!'

Gabriele Schor, who heads up the Verbund Collection in the Austrian capital agrees that much of the work has been neglected: 'I called up Renate Eisenegger and asked if she still had the work, and she said "Oh, I have to look because for 40 years nobody has asked me about it - I don't know!"

'So I called the next day and she said "Everything is fine and wrapped", so I made a studio visit. She didn't know a price [...] all the work is so underrated! It's a little bit unfair because art historians need to look at this work.'

Aside from photos, the exhibition focuses on collage works, performances, films and videos produced throughout the 1970s, and is intended to reflect 'a moment during which practices of emancipation, gender equality and civil rights protest movements became part of public discourse.'

Schor considers this to be a central part of the Verbund Collection's mission: 'I wanted to find a special focus, so I went a step back to find something which was not yet published; They were shown in the 1970s, [but] the arts scene forgot them, and now we are ready to look at them in a fresh way.

'For me, it was also important to call [the exhibition] avant-garde because the phrase indicates pioneers and these women were pioneers.'

It's hard to understate the critical role of female artists in driving public discussion on gender roles. The work is often radical, poetic, ironic and provocative, but the purpose is undeniably one of engagement.

Bra-burning aside, this is a collection that seeks to drive a meaningful conversation beyond pure symbolism - questioning feminine identity and sexual politics through modes that must have been incredibly original to 1970s audiences.

It's a collection that still attempts to challenge accepted social conventions, including the mechanisms and male dominance of the art industry thorough artists who sought to redefine the prevailing iconography of 'woman' as passive muse surrendering to the male gaze. In that regard, both curators consider the artists' characteristics to be central to the works' longevity.

Concludes Danemann: '[During the] 1970s it was also focused on personalities and personal style, and alternative movements of how to live and behave, so the personal became more political.'
Feminist Avant-Garde of the 1970s is showing at The Photographer's Gallery, 16 - 18 Ramillies St, London W1F 7LW from 7th October - 8th January 2017. For more info visit here.

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Images of the Feminist avant-garde in the 1970s shine a light on an artistic movement too long overlooked

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October sees the launch of Feminist Avant-Garde of the 1970s, a 12-week exhibition at The Photographer's Gallery in Central London. BJP sat down with curators Gabriele Schor and Anna Dannemann to discuss a collection that celebrates seeks to challenge 'accepted social conventions, including the mech

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Muholi’s development as a photographer is deeply intertwined with her advocacy on behalf of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) community in South Africa and beyond

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Yogo Putting on Powder, Second Trip, Bangkok, 1992

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Lydia Lunch at the Russian baths, New York, 1985

ClampArt

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Her work explores ways in which female identity is constructed in current cultural context, as well as processes of socialization of girls and women.