International Women’s Day is celebrated on March 8, when we are welcome to focus on gender equity on a global scale. It’s a dangerous question. Naturally, each nation is ruled by its context so there are setbacks and progress to both, and space for criticism. You will be amazed to know that it has become a day to test the overall definition of womanhood, and what criteria interpret and tie these billions of individuals.
Sadly, the jury on that is eternally out. But, it seems like a uniting bread is rising to put an effort of being acted upon by systems of power. Unfortunately last year, the U.S. Supreme Court banned Americans from their constitutional right to an abortion. Fortunately, women in Iran are now fearlessly claiming the basest human dignity.
Artists are always fond of the complexities of womanhood and they want to introduce womanhood by using their platform. They try to educate the world with as much diversity of experiences as possible.
Today we are going to share a few shows on view during Women’s History Month that formulate the subject with elegance.
Alina Bliumis at Situations
SITUATIONS hosts Alina Bliumis’s first solo exhibition with the gallery, named “Plant Parenthood”.Bliumis represents flowers that have been used to induce abortion in several countries throughout history. Bliumis portrays the flowers as sexualized gestures as subtle odes to reproductive organs. He takes the medium of watercolor and watercolor pencil on wood panels. This painting is a reflection of the fact that the removal of legal, safe, medical abortions does not stop the will of women to find ways to reconstruct control of their bodies.
Each of the flowers painted in this series is widely used in several folk medicines to block pregnancies. The peacock flower appears as a form of anti-slavery resistance in 17th century Suriname by enslaved women “who used it to abort offspring who would otherwise be born into bondage. This quote is written by historian Londa Schiebinger in her monograph Plants and Empire. Asarum, for example, deploys alongside numerous other abortifacients in the 12th-century medical writings of the sainted German nun Hildegard von Bingen, who teaches abortions herself. The whole series indicates long and tenuous histories of the abortion background.
Nancy Spero at Galerie Lelong & Co.
Galerie Lelong & Co., New York is hosting a solo exhibition of works by the late artist Nancy Spero. The show’s name is “Woman as Protagonist”.Nancy is famous for his exceptional tackling of the interconnected issues of sexism, racism, and classism through installations, and paintings. These pieces show her ceaseless outrage at history’s treatment of women.
The works on display at Galerie Lelong were made between the mid-1990s and the early 2000s, the last two decades of Nancy’s life. You will be amazed to know Spero often referenced historical atrocities though her subject matter is pretty dark and deep. She chose to work on a light color palette and liberated brushstrokes.
Rummana Hussain at the Institute of Arab & Islamic Art
Rummana Hussain(1952-1999) is celebrated as the pioneer of India’s conceptual and performance scene. She is referred to as a fierce political activist. She was excellent in different fields as a woman in a patriarchal society and a Muslim in a Hindu country that is dominated by spasms of violent nationalism. By using her art, The Institute of Arab & Islamic Art has begun its new space in Manhattan’s West Village.
.She implemented exceptionally in her art, well how personal and political history assembled in her body. Her topic is referred to as one of the complex installations and assemblages in art.
The AIAI has restaged “The Tomb of Begum Hazrat Mahal ”, a 1997 installation. It portrays the historical figure of Begum Hazrat Mahal who are the second wife of Nawab of Awadh Wajid Ali Shah and the regent of Awadh, as its protagonist. Begum is celebrated for her bravery against the British East India Company in 1857. Now the gallery offers as a letter of Hussain to fill her fealty in the form of heavy iron materials, dead roses, dives mounted in the string, and pale papaya halves scattered open like limbs. You will be amazed to see myth and memory ingle without appreciable boundaries.
Sanja Iveković at Kunsthalle Wien
If you go to Vienna you can check what Kunsthalle Wien has up with the installation of “Works of Heart (1974-2022). This is a survey of Sanja Ivekovic who is one of the first in the country’s artistic history to specify his practice in feminist terms. She is celebrated as one of the most influential Croatian multimedia artists. Her art distributes into installation, photography, sculpture, and performance and contributes to a political investigation into the construction and weaponization of history. The whole investigation circles around the relationship between mass media and ideology. The main focus is centered around how-where is the female identity formed. She stressed somewhere innate and untouchable rather than an unreliable image spread by unknown motivations. She always opts for the latter one.
Wangechi Mutu at the New Museum
The Kenyan-born artist Wangechi Mutu practices mysterious forms that combine the feminine, animal, and fantastical which made her popular. She stressed the relationship between gender, race, and personal and political history by using complex and extraordinary videos, collages, paintings, and sculptures. You will be amazed to know decades’ worth of her artwork has been accumulated in New York for “Intertwined,” her survey at the New Museum.
One of the important pieces is Crocodylys(2020), a reptile female containing 13-square -feet on the gallery floor. It is like a humanoid silhouette made with clay from the soil in Nairobi. It is referred to as a meditative display, conveying the conscious and unconscious influences that make us into often faceless forms.
We wish to give you some rays about the top 5 shows you cannot miss seeing women’s complexity through art. Wish you a great journey and embrace yourself to the complexities of womanhood. Please share your views on these.
Source: https://www.artnews.com/list/art-news/artists/womens-history-month-art-shows-1234660208/nancy-spero-at-galerie-lelong-co/