| The pivotal exhibition, “Global Feminisms: New Directions in Contemporary Art” at the Brooklyn Museum, is a major show that powerfully extends the notion of transnational feminisms today, showcasing more than 80 international women artists. In its catalogue, preeminent art historian Linda Nochlin provides a masterfully direct, state-of-the-art statement, in which she looks at the past in order to illuminate the present. This is an action necessary today, in this time so often termed “post-feminist.” |  |
Global Feminisms – Jovana Stokic
The pivotal exhibition, “Global Feminisms: New Directions in Contemporary Art” at the Brooklyn Museum, is a major show that powerfully extends the notion of transnational feminisms today, showcasing more than 80 international women artists. In its catalogue, preeminent art historian Linda Nochlin provides a masterfully direct, state-of-the-art statement, in which she looks at the past in order to illuminate the present. This is an action necessary today, in this time so often termed “post-feminist.” Nochlin ties the problems of the historic feminist artists of the 70s with a critique of their belated reception by the museum world (in 2007, on the other hand, parallel with the Brooklyn show, a huge survey of feminist art of the 70s—“WACK!: Art and Feminist Revolution,” is on view at the Los Angeles MOCA). Nochlin also effectively argues how women artists are capable of subverting traditions and visual regimes in many different ways, only to claim for themselves a representational sphere of their own. Finally, she posits all of this as real progress, since women artists have never been more prominent—they are leaders in many media and they have also opened up new means of representation. Thus, “Global Feminisms” took on the role of displaying this progress. Nochlin’s co-curator Maura Reily explained the generational shift in the show: “We are looking at a young generation of artists who are exploring feminism from a kind of third-wave perspective, and who are part of that generation that takes feminism for granted. So, this is precisely the type of audience that could really make a change.”
By bringing together 88 artists from across the globe, and out of whom more than half have never shown in New York, the show explores different visual formations of femininity that can regulate our standardized (and standardizing) viewpoint. The insights provided are purposefully off-center and definitely transnational. Although artists have always been drawn to centers, the margin is often perceived merely as a “nice place to come from.” The best works in this show provide a more complex relationship between center and margin, and this exploration of boundaries has great significance within global culture. Often, women artists are self-positioned on borders while constructing contemporary feminine identities within their particular culture. Thus, exploring their art practice brings attention to the existence of manifold differences between feminine representations within the global context.
My choice of the outstanding works in Brooklyn is motivated by a personal investment. As national identity is pre-ordained and, therefore, not chosen by the individual, my writing attempts to prove that it is not the deciding factor in one’s formation of an identity. At the same time, I cannot escape being inspired most by the works that hit close to (my) home. The striking video, I am Milica Tomic by Serbian artist Milica Tomic is a point of departure in rethinking means of representing the arbitrary nature of national identity. And, in my view, it possesses a transnational quality. By questioning the nature of national identity, the video reflects the traumas of Serbia’s nationalistic euphoria in the 90s. Tomic is clad in a white dress, thus symbolically linked to purity and to religious ceremonies. Her striking beauty helps emphasize the profound anxieties that follow feminine representations in contemporary art.
Artists coming from not-so-first world countries are easily exotic-ized. If the artist is using her own, rather spectacular image, this can easily be misread as exploitation. As national identity is so often constructed according to stereotypes, I am Milica Tomic argues precisely against this kind of stereotypical representation of national identity, by exaggerating and relativizing it. In this video, whenever Milica confesses a new identity, she suffers; a new bloody wound opens on her body while she utters: “I am Milica Tomic.” She goes on to claim different identities in 30 different languages. The artist’s goal was, (at least in the realm of representation), to ultimately take control over her national identity, something one does not get to choose by birth.
Then again, I am taken by the works by the following (non-Serbian) artists: Salla Tykka (Finnland), Sissi (Italy), Sam Taylor-Wood (Britain), Shahzia Sikander (Pakistan), Tomoko Sawada (Japan), Pipilotti Rist (Switzerland), Lilibeth Cuenca Rasmussen (Denmark), Amy Cutler (U.S.), Wangechi Mutu (Kenya), Julika Rudelius (Germany), Katarzyna Kozyra (Poland), Anna Gaskell (U.S.), Elke Krystufek (Austria), Tania Bruguera (Cuba), Pillar Albaraccin (Spain), Lee Bul (South Korea), Jenny Saville (Britain) and Patricia Piccinini (Australia).
Carol Armstrong, previewing “Global Feminisms” for Artforum in January 2007, criticized the fact that it focuses on women’s art, eliding the distinction between the categories of “feminist” and “woman”: “The revival of the category ‘feminist art,’ with a global twist and with an emphasis on pluralism, is a good thing,” claims Armstong. She goes on to explain that the equation of feminist and woman’s art is not so good, as if it suggests that only women can be feminists. I believe this is not the most important issue, but it will be great to see feminist works by male artists in this institution.
In the recent criticism of the show, the notion of feminist art was problematized since it is not a style, nor an aesthetic. But, the curators of the show never suggested it is; they opened up the notion of feminine creativity with a decidedly feminist attitude. In order to further the discussion of what feminist art is, it would be helpful to introduce the criticality of “parafeminism,” as understood in Amelia Jones’ terms. Jones provocatively reminds us that a term with the prefix “para” means both “side by side and beyond,” indicating a powerful “conceptual model of critique and exploration that is simultaneously parallel to and building on (in the sense of rethinking and pushing the boundaries of, but nor superseding) earlier feminisms.” For Jones, “arafeminism”is non prescriptive, but open to a multiplicity of cultural expressions. In this fashion, I tend to understand that the forms of feminine presented in “Global Feminisms” are not by any means necessarily “female” subjectivities. They are, “inclusive of work investigating sexuality and/or gender as aspects of identity formation inextricably related to other aspects such as ethnicity, and specific in its insistence on messing up binary structures of sexual difference.” Furthermore, these works do not offer stereotypical feminist critiques of patriarchy or male gaze; nor do they provide positive female models.
The critical interventions into the notions of femininity take their cue from Abigail Solomon-Godeau’s incisive remark: "The notion of femininity seems increasingly unstable a concept, challenged on one hand by a rejection of gender binaries and proliferating categories of sexual identity, challenged on the other for its hopelessly relative and culturalist definitions." The strongest works in this show shed a light on processes of the complex femininity formation—the parafeminist subject—articulated via a multiple and relational feminine subjectivity. I believe that is the place where subversion lies.
