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The attached image, the Portrait of two Javanese Girls -- a Boehm's Soap advertisement,-- inspired our 'Big Idea'. It prompted us to learn about Dutch Colonialism, the roles women had in colonial Indonesia, and become more aware of the European "colonial gaze" in the making of on artwork, its display and the terminology used to describe it.
We managed to build a substantial "starting collection" for our project, from which we selected six pieces for focused research.
We decided not to include this one in our exhibition because we did not feel comfortable with the interpretation we were making of it.

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Before we finalised our 'Big Idea' we had a collection of pieces we wanted to include in our exhibition. With a clearly defined 'Big Idea', we went through it and selected the ones we thought fit the best with it, finding the less pieces we had -- while still showing some media variety -- the more focused our interpretative text could be.

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Here we all are, discussing  the final draft of our 'Big Idea'. We found it relieving and easier to carry on with our project once were happy with it and sure of its effectiveness.

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If we keep coming back to the same thing(s), it's because there's something about it (or them) that needs more attention from us, right?

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An extra look through the Rijksstudio gave us more material to work with. What surprised us was the European factor we found in most of it: the pieces were made either by or for Europeans.

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The museum chosen for our group was the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. Its name literally translates to "national museum", and the museum holds artworks relating to Dutch history from 1200 onwards.

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The Rijksmuseum is the national museum of the Netherlands. We tell the story of 800 years of Dutch history, from 1200 to now. In addition, we organize several exhibitions per year from our own collection and with (inter) national loans.

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The Rijksmuseum is the national museum of the Netherlands. We tell the story of 800 years of Dutch history, from 1200 to now. In addition, we organize several exhibitions per year from our own collection and with (inter) national loans.

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The museum stores over 1,000,000 artworks, with over 700,000 of them digitised and available on their "Rijksstudio" website, which works according to the Creative Commons License.

With so many pieces available, how could we work together to narrow down on a topic?

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Rijksmuseum, het museum van Nederland, in Amsterdam. Kunst en geschiedenis van de Middeleeuwen tot Mondriaan.

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In our first meeting together, we tried to look through the Rijksstudio together, but the increasing number artworks available (more pieces and collections kept appearing as we scrolled down the Rijksstudio page), we decided to look at the Rijksmuseum's collection individually. We agreed to prepare topics or pieces to present to the group, and meet at a later date to discuss our findings.
Being able to make our own collections ("studios") on the website certainly helped us organising our ideas, and later eased our access to the pieces we wanted to use.

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The most popular representations of Dutch colonial women were photographs showing craft-making or in either painted or photographed portraits.

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BIG IDEA - Representation of Women

Subject - Women from the Dutch Colonies c19th Century.

Action - Discussion of representation in circulated imagery, primarily in Rijksmuseum.

Consequence - Raising awareness of cultural differences & encouraging respect.   How does this compare to our current situation? 'What have you seen?' Providing a platform for discussion

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Upon presenting different topics, each of us spoke in turn, others would sometimes give a short comment on the findings, and we discussed all the topics together at the end. This became our approach to all the tasks we set ourselves for the project:
- talk about what we already had;
- evaluate our progress and Big Idea (we constantly referred to our Big Idea to ensure our exhibition was cohesive);
- identify what needed to be done;
- divide tasks amongst us;
- set a deadline as a future meeting (we met twice to three times a week on average);
- work on our tasks individually;
- present our progress;
- edit it and fit it into what we currently had;
- and repeat the process.

This allowed each of us to work on the skills we wanted to develop with the project, and learn to trust our team members from the beginning, as we all worked on different parts of the project and only got a proper look at the progress during the meetings.

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Our first topic of conversation -- after a brief introduction of each one of us -- was about our individual goals for the project (relating to skills we wanted to develop with the project) and what skills we were already most comfortable using.
For example, I wanted to develop my presentation skills, which started with working on editing material, both text and design. This allowed me to pay close attention to details in relation to the general outcome and to learn how to work with an exhibition's textual and visual contents, while building confidence for the launching presentation of our exhibition by building my knowledge of it along the way. The group supported it, giving me most of the editing tasks -- which I had more of during the final stages of our project.

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In order for us to properly define the 'Action' for our 'Big Idea', we decided to research our "Top 6" (shown above) -- their subjects, maker, context, etc. We realised the connection between all of them while discussing our findings: firstly, so much more is known about the artists who created the pictures rather than the women who modelled for them; secondly, textile craftsmanship may not be a woman's main responsibility, but it is the most recorded.
The first element made us more aware of the anonymity given to the women modelling for the artists, which prompted us to re-evaluate both our 'Big Idea' and the interpretative texts we had already been discussing. Noticing the missing information helped us to question "who speaks" in and through the pictures, which guided us for the remainder of our project.

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Not all pictures from our "Top 6" were made in Indonesia, the location we were focusing on at first. Therefore we needed to edit our subject so they could make sense all together.

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The portrait of a 12-year-old girl named Isabella, painted by Simon Marris, became our most important piece, after we decided to discard the Portrait of two Javanese Girls. I found her portrait while exploring the Rijksstudio, and further research on her brought about some interesting information: Isabella and Maris knew each other (he would play "tea parties" with her in his studio); Maris made several sketches and portraits, and took many photographs of Isabella; there are also quite a few references to Isabella in Maris's letters to some of his close friends. It was the latter aspect that helped the Rijksmuseum finding the Portrait of a Young Girl model's name. This particular event made Isabella a key piece for our exhibition, as we were looking at the representation of women and who may have authority over it: since the portrait was first exhibited, in 1908, it was given six different titles. The last one -- Isabella -- was given after some years of research by the Rijksmuseum to find the name of the girl from the painting they had named Portrait of a Young Girl as a way of erasing colonial terminology from their museum.
Isabella's title history made us aware of the ultimate power the museum (as an institution) had in the representation of an individual: the display context and design may already affect the way a portrait is perceived, but the title given to it will have the most influence.

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Isabella's story and history related well with our action: neither her nor the artist had had any agency power in her public perception, which was highly influenced by the titles the museum had given to Isabella's portrait.
Also, Isabella was most likely a descendant of immigrants, which already influenced colonials' perception of her at the time. And the museum's institution seemed to not allow her representation as a fine young lady to serve as an empowering image, objectifying her as simply "Portrait" or dehumanising her as "East Indies Type".

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Considering how all the models' non-European background subjected them to some degree of anonymity, our 'Subject' became: Representation of non-European in the Rijksmuseum.

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Upon identifying the little representational authority the models had and the impact the artists and/or the museum had on the public's perception of each image, we turned our 'Action' into a question: What is the balance of power between the women, the artist and the audience?

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Big Idea - How do we restore & make visible suppressed, destroyed, or underrepresented (hi)stories

Subject – Representations of non-European women in the Rijksmuseum

Action – What is the balance of power between the women, the artist and the audience?

Consequence – What is happening in Leeds, the Rijksmuseum and Indonesia to retell the story?

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While we discussed which pieces we could use for our exhibition, we discovered sub-themes for two sections: "Women at Work" and "Portraits". A good deal of our pieces corresponded to one of those topics, which allowed us to explore women's representation in each.
We also decided to make a single section for Isabella: we found so much information about the portrait's history, along with details about the artist-model relationship that we considered quite special. It was such a powerful piece when it comes to talking about the representation of women because of the little information that could be found on the model (first name and age) and for the title changes it had since its first exhibition.
We also wanted to include a section on a female Indonesian artist addressing the problems we were highlighting in our exhibition, another section on a link with Leeds, and another for audience participation.
In the end, we had eight sections structuring our online exhibition.

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Becoming acquainted with Omeka was something we thought of and got to do at different times (due to access complications to our website). Once we nearly finalised the selection of pieces for our exhibition, we had a group video-call to work on the upload of their images onto our Omeka database. This way we could help each other understanding tools and settings on the website. Although each of us did something different in the technical side of the website, we all tried everything, as some would notice details others wouldn't. For example, one of us found out how to change items between collections, I worked out how to change font style and size, and another how to positioned the images so their dimensions would be balanced with the text.

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With our 'Big Idea' more defined and a clear structure for our exhibition's pieces, we started drafting our interpretative text.

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At the time we started drafting the labels for our exhibition, we also still had to find a link to Leeds for our audience, as well as still needing a contemporary artist addressing the issue we identified.
In order to have it all done with enough time for people we contacted to answer (we wanted to include an interview with the West Yorkshire-West Java group based in Leeds, which proved impossible), for one of us to research on an Indonesian artist, and for us to edit our labels before they'd be evaluated by our tutors, we divided the tasks among the group members: three of drafted the labels, Gemma researched Indonesian artists whose work we could use in our exhibition, and Vanesa collected information about the West Java West Yorkshire Coop Movement). We then had a video-chat to look at the labels drafted -- shared with the group beforehand, all put in the same document -- so we could all edit them, and discussed the possible contemporary artist's work from whom we could have a "loaned piece".

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Identifying sub-topics in the exhibition's subject helped us dividing all the pieces and the information in more manageable chunks for our audience. It also proved to ease the general website's design process, as it gave us a structure to work with.
As for the colour scheme, working with earthy and grey tones was the best option, as they contrasted well with all the pieces. The image attached (one of the first drafts of our 'Home' page) shows this, as it features a detail from one of the photographs from our exhibition as the banner's background for both continuity throughout the exhibition -- quite a few of our pieces were black and white photographs -- and to decrease the "white space problem" we had at the beginning in our website's layout.

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Our exhibition's title was possibly the last element we decided on in the project.
"Whose Image?" came up because of our discussions around the voice and purpose of a picture: although they all show women, most are not agents in the audience-artwork relationship. That was something we felt was defined by either the artist who made the pieces and/or by the museum's curator(s). Because of this, we often asked ourselves who was truly being represented in the pictures and what was the impact such representation had in the audience. We often asked "Who was the audience?" as that also will affect the way someone relates to an image.
Using "whose" instead of "who's" played phonetically with the ideas of relatability (as in "referring to") and ownership, while still drawing focus to what -- ideas, power, or names -- was being represented.

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Finally with a title, we could start preparing our marketing strategy, which started with drafting two articles for our School's Website Manager to give us feedback on so we'd learn how to write effectively to inspire an audience to visit our exhibition.

(Attached is the Event Article posted on the School's website)

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Whose Image? is an online exhibition of the images of Indonesian women during the Dutch colonial period.

Most pieces in this exhibition are from the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, including paintings and photographs, and it features a contemporary sculpture from the National Gallery of Indonesia.

These artworks will show different perspectives from both European and Indonesian artists of Indonesian women rather than a genuine reflection of their lives. The exhibition explores how women are represented and classified according to colonial views. At the same time, we would like to build the communication between these art works and modern life.

By observing the images of women in a series of art works (most are women at work and portraits), this exhibition hope to discuss how the female is represented under the colonial background, and how women gradually regain their voice in the process of social development. Through this review, we can join in the action of women regaining the right to speak. The aim of the exhibition is to provide a space for the public to communicate and discuss.

Visit the online exhibition

Whose image? is curated by MA Art Gallery and Museum Studies and MA Arts Management and Heritage Studies students from the University of Leeds.

It is part of a wider series of exhibitions as part of an Interpretations course module.
The exhibition will run from 7 December 2020 to 1 March 2021 and will be presented on the OMEKA platform.
Image

Isabella, c1906. Photographer - Simon Maris. Rijksmuseum.

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Whose Image? - Representation of Non-European Women in the Rijksmuseum

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Most pieces in this exhibition are from the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, including paintings and photographs, and it features a contemporary sculpture from the National Gallery of Indonesia. These artworks will show different perspectives from both European and Indonesian artists of Indonesian women rather than a genuine reflection of their lives.

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Unfortunately, it wasn't posted, but we were glad to still go through the experience of writing it.

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Complementing the support we would have from the School, we chose to mark our presence on social media. As University of Leeds students were our target audience, we agreed on have an Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter page to raise awareness for our project.

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(The link works)

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An interesting aspect about our project that was pointed out in our last feedback session with our tutors was that we had two consequences instead of the usual one: what was already being done (Dolorosa Sinaga and the WJWY Coop Movement) and the participation element. The first one allowed for contemporary artistic and local connections to our project: diversity and women representation are current popular issues in and on museums; and textile production and design can often be an overlooked but very common factor between cultures. The second one stressed the ease and contemporary importance of representing ourselves and building our identity in images: more people now have agency over how they can be perceived than was available around 1900.

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One thing we suddenly discovered using One Drive as the "Track Changes" setting, which we have no idea how it was activated, but  (for a while) came to accept: it was good to still see what we had before and what it had become, but it was hard to ignore the track marks when we were looking through the documents again.

Here's a peak from our News Article:

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Knowing the presentation of our exhibition would happen over Zoom, we decided to split the sections of our exhibition among us, as it was to follow the model of a museum guided tour. By doing this, we could all share in the presentation of our project, something we felt proud of. We also agreed it would make it more engaging, as there would be many voices (and faces) delivering the guided tour.
The time constraints lead us to write a scrip, thus also aiding us to focus on what we wanted to draw our audience's attention to.

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Our second greatest challenge in this project was making our exhibition relevant for University of Leeds students (the first one was coming up with a title). We had to find a connection both with them and with Leeds for more success.

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The first thing that came to us was the importance social media has nowadays, which led to a conversation about selfies. Realising how much agency we currently have to represent ourselves in contrast with how many people actually had it before proved to be the connector we needed with university students: self-representation on social media is such a big thing that no one wants to give up the power to chose what image best shows them.
Because of this, the demand for diversity being more present and respectful in museums has sparked debates (and action) in today's society. For example, the Rijksmuseum started a campaign in 2015 to eliminate all colonial terminology from their titles and interpretative texts -- Isabella is a popular piece on this matter.
Thus, from Social Media we found a reason why it was relevant for students at university. But we still needed a connection with Leeds.

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The West Java West Yorkshire Coop Movement

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The West Java West Yorkshire Coop Movement

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An artistic collaboration between Leeds and Jatiwangi to promote cross-cultural, artistic communication through video: both cities hold an annual festival around video. By the by, we remembered the shared textile heritages between Leeds and Indonesia, thus finding our local cultural link.

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At first, the link between University of Leeds students, the Rijksmuseum, and our exhibition and its relevance may not be clear, but after some research and debate we found it: there's a lot of action happening local and internationally to address issues about representation and shared cultural aspects. We combined all this in the question "What is happening in Leeds, the Rijksmuseum and Indonesia to retell the story?" for our 'Consequence'.

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The most common comment we had on our exhibition, especially by tutors and professionals was how powerful and effective showing Isabella's title progress was. This felt particularly good to us, because of all the work we had to do to ensure we could keep it in our exhibition.

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The second most frequent piece of feedback we had was how cohesive, understandable and engaging the exhibition was. All of our peer reviewers showed great satisfaction with the ease they had when navigating through our exhibition's website. The questions we included in our interpretative labels also provided them with a deeper level of engagement with the exhibition.

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The whole group wanted to include a participatory element in the exhibition as a way to maximise its engagement with and impact in the audience.
The first strategy we designed was ask questions about specific pieces to prompt deeper reflections about the making and display processes behind the pieces, the reasons why we knew little about the models, and how different self-representation agency can be nowadays from what it was then.
The second one was inspired by our discussions about social media: invite our audience to create an image that would represent themselves to celebrate our power to influence others' perception of us, as well as our agency in choosing what to share and how to do it.
Although the one that proved the most effective was the first method, we still included both because, as our peers told us, they were equally effective in making them aware of how much representation is affected by its maker and/or displayer and of how much power we have nowadays to influence it ourselves.