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Exhibition

FEMINISMS!

FEMINISMS! brings together the exhibition "The Feminist Avant-Garde of the 1970s. Works from the VERBUND COLLECTION, Vienna" and "Choreographies of Gender" with an extensive programme of activities to highlight the dialogue, continuities and divergences between the radical feminism of the seventies and today’s various forms of feminism.

The seventies marked a turning point in the feminist movement. A new generation took the public stage, turning the world around and shaking up the established symbolic order by means of multiple practices and cultural representations. The resulting art was ground-breaking, both for its use of languages and forms, and for its defiance of gender constructs, the exercise of women’s right to decide about their bodies and the condemnation of gender violence, and the crucial discovery that the personal is also political.

The explosion of freedom and creativity of feminism in the seventies has been a constant source of inspiration for feminisms today that erupted in unprecedented richness and diversity that also affected many other collective emancipation movements. In the present-day context of the rise of conservatism and the cutting back of rights, the FEMINISMS! project sets out to highlight the crucial contributions of the fight for equality and diversity of feminisms that have definitively changed the way we see the world.

 

"The Feminist Avant-Garde of the 1970s. Works from the VERBUND COLLECTION, Vienna"

The exhibition highlights the milestones of the avant-garde feminism which, in the seventies, rewrote the canon of the history of art. It presents over 200 works by 73 women artists such as Cindy Sherman, Helena Almeida, Ana Mendieta, Judy Chicago, VALIE EXPORT, Birgit Jürgenssen, Ketty La Rocca, ORLAN, Gina Pane, Martha Rosler and Martha Wilson.

By means of languages and techniques such as photography, cinema, video, performance and happenings, these artists deconstructed the repressive cultural and social constraints of the time, as well as the mechanisms and automatisms of oppression of women. For the first time in the history of art, women artists began, as a group, to take the initiative in the “representation of women” by creating a plurality of feminine identities that they determined.

The CCCB has  incorporated eight local artists: Pilar Aymerich, Eugènia Balcells, Mari Chordà, Marisa González, Eulàlia Grau, Fina Miralles, Àngels Ribé and Dorothée Selz.

 

"Choreographies of Gender"

Today’s feminisms are too plural to fit into a single narrative. In the almost fifty years that have gone by since the seventies, the subject of feminism has been opened up and the term “gender” introduced to indicate that sexual difference (men/women, masculine/feminine) is not natural but conditioned by culture, and that possible manifestations go beyond these opposing poles. The feminist movement has also increasingly joined forces with other fights against inequality: sexism cannot be taken apart from other forms of domination such as racism, homophobia and transphobia, speciesism, and disrespect for poor people or people who are considered disabled or foreign.

“Choreographies of Gender” aims to reflect some of the many possible figures and movements in the dance of genders. It is based on thematic focuses that complement and enrich the view of the seventies, from a Catalan and Spanish perspective, with the voice of artists who were not yet present on the artistic scene of the time.

The show presents the work of the artists Cabello/Carceller, Lúa Coderch, Lucía Egaña, Nuria Güell, ideadestroyingmuros, María Llopis, Jesús Martínez Oliva, Julia Montilla, O.R.G.I.A, Daniela Ortiz, Linda Porn, María Ruido, Anna Irina Russell i Txe Roimeser, Mireia Sallarès, Toxic Lesbian and Eulàlia Valldosera.

 

 

A space of documentación

The route ends with a space dedicated to historical documentation and a section on comics and feminism, "The body as a conflict", curated by Marika Vila, with original works by Montse Clavé, Laura Pérez Vernetti Núria Pompeia, Mariel Soria and Marika Vila.

Curators: Gabriele Schor, Marta Segarra

Participants: Mireia Sallarès

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To close the exhibition "Feminisms!" this episode of Soy Cámara looks at some of the social struggles not yet resolved by certain sectors of feminism, much less by the vast majority of our society: providing a concrete response to recognition of care-giving and reproductive work, and taking a plural, broad-based look at the theme of control and exploitation of women’s bodies, in which classism and racism are the underlying ideologies.

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"FEMINISMS!" Exhibition Report

"FEMINISMS!" brings together the exhibition "The Feminist Avant-Garde of the 1970s. Works from the VERBUND COLLECTION, Vienna" and "Choreographies of Gender" with an extensive programme of activities to highlight the dialogue, continuities and divergences between the radical feminism of the ...

Watch the video

Exhibition images

Previous activities

«FEMINISMS!» with your family

Exhibition commentated visit

Conversation between Fina Birulés and Marta Segarra

Equality and Freedom

The exhibition as seen by...

Eloy Fernández Porta, Bel Olid, Najat El Hachmi, Miquel Missé and Tania Adam

Pretty Tired Faces

Community art project

Show more

GRRRLS!!!

20th And 21st Century Feminist Manifestos

Lecture by Chantal Maillard

Anger

Conversation with Jeanette Winterson

«FEMINISMS» in sign language

Guided tour with interpretation service in sign language

«FEMINISMS!» for blind people or with low vision

Visit adapted

Lecture by Mari Luz Esteban

FEM!

Today’s feminist creators

Lecture by Carolin Emcke

Silence and Emancipation

Raise your hands, these dirty hands

Recital of works by poets from the 1970s and now

Conversation with Siri Hustvedt

Cosa/Cos. La bellesa subvertida

A creation by Les Impuxibles and Judit Colomer Mascaró

A morning with Marta Segarra

What does it mean to be a feminist today?

Indòmites

A play by Xamfrà and Las Anónimas

The Flipside of Tourism in Barcelona

Action with the group Las Kellys

Irreducible

Feminist performances

Quimera Rosa

Participative BioArt performance

Las muertes chiquitas

Screening and conversation between Mireia Sallarès and Marta Segarra

Feminist Avant-Gardes

Inaugural Debate of «Feminisms!»

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Collaborators