Contemporary women artists today still have a lot to address in today’s society, specifically in the world of women. Unfortunately, but not so shockingly, women are still living in a patriarchal society where they must adhere to the roles we see and have been seeing through women artists of the past. As said by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, who is a novelist and also a feminist:
“We teach girls to shrink themselves, to make themselves smaller. We say to girls, you can have ambition, but not too much. You should aim to be successful, but not too successful. Otherwise, you would threaten the man. Because I am female, I am expected to aspire to marriage. I am expected to make my life choices always keeping in mind that marriage is the most important…”
Adichie speaks out about the whole aspect of what the female experience has been all about, yesterday and today but hopefully not tomorrow. Starting from a young age, girls are taught that they should be thin, to watch their figure and if they didn’t, they would be body shamed. Girls are taught to be submissive and obedient because if they step outside of the box that society has confined them in, they are simply crazy, or she is rebellious. It is never that she is just expressing herself in her own way, but rather because she is not adhering to society’s rules, she must not be normal. To illustrate this theme of oppression of women, I have chosen five contemporary women who make themselves heard through their art that pushes against these patriarchal values that have been embedded in our society for decades.
Anna Jonsson is a Sweden-born, living and working in Spain, artist who focuses her work on the female roles in society. One interesting work that she created was in 2010, Perdón, meaning I’m sorry in Spanish. Perdón is a 5 minute long video of a woman constantly asking for forgiveness. Anna Jonsson works with a performer to bring her art to life. In the video, the performer repeatedly says “perdón, perdón, perdón…” without stopping. In the screenshot of the video below, we can see the performer paints on a weary makeup look to portray how fatigued she is of saying sorry all the time. Anna Jonsson’s message deeply resonates with something many women can relate to, which is having to apologize for doing something out of the societal norms. Basically, just having to be sorry for being a woman. Because women are so restricted and closely supervised by society, one small wrongdoing can make a woman victim of prejudice. |
| Anna Jonsson, Perdón, 2010 |
Polly Nor is another contemporary artist who mainly focuses on digital illustration to create her works. She is best known for her drawings of women and their “demons”. Based in North West London, Polly Nor has created many of these satirical images that portray women who take off their skins at the end of the day and lounging around as their inner demons. In the particular illustration below, Polly created Long Days & Short Nights to represent a woman’s agency when she is freely being herself. These two “demons”, or women, shown in the illustration are seen in their bikinis, beers in one hand and cigarettes and a phone on the other. They seem to be posing in ways that society might deem “unlady-like”. The woman sitting on the chair is posing with her legs in a 4-figure, resting one foot over the thigh of the other, which is something that we see only men doing in society. But who’s to say that it’s a “man” thing, when it’s simply just a sitting position? When we look at the woman laying on the beach towel, we can see that she is not wearing a bikini top and is letting her breasts be exposed to the audience. She even faces us and smiles widely as if unapologetic about herself. After all, it is her body! Polly Nor demonstrates the bright and fun side of living comfortably in a woman’s own skin, rather than the skin that society has built for her.
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| Polly Nor, Long Days & Short Nights, 2017 |
Tatyana Fazlalizadeh is a painter and illustrator based in Brooklyn, who we came across earlier in the semester. She is most known for her project, Stop Telling Women to Smile, where she addresses issues of street harassment through drawn portraits of actual women who tell their story to Fazlalizadeh about their experience with street harassment. She hangs these portraits in many neighborhoods to speak out against this issue that many women face just walking down the street. Tatyana makes every poster personal, but at the same time making it relatable to every woman experiencing the same thing. Her work empowers these women and allows their voices to be heard rather than keeping quiet about the issue.
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| Tatyana Fazlalizadeh, Stop Telling Women to Smile |
Another contemporary woman artist that creates work to portray a woman’s experience of oppression by society is Frances Goodman. Frances is a South American based artist who works a lot with materials used in the beauty industry. She has created many sculptures made by fake nails used at nail salons to put together pieces that all together look mystical and something that came out of a book. One particular work, Medusa, which she made in 2013-14 is put together by different colored acrylic nails, which seem to represent the ancient Greek mythology of Medusa, who is known to have locks of hair that is made up of snakes. Frances Goodman’s use of the story behind Medusa can be used to represent the ways in which women are often met with double standards. The tale of Medusa is that, who once a beautiful woman, was punished by Athena and given snakes for hair because she was raped by Poseidon in Athena’s temple to which she became a hideous monster. Although she was the one who was raped by her male counterpart, she is still the one being crucified. Many women can relate to this, maybe not in the same way, but in implicit ways. As seen in Tatyana Fazlalizadeh’s work, men feel like women owe them something in return for their compliments (which no one asked for). When they don’t say thank you, they are called a bitch. If they willingly give themselves into the man, they’re easy. Often, if not all the time, society blames the women, the victims. Rather than pointing to her perpetrator, society blindly turns their eye and blames the woman because it’s easier because she is seen as weak.
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| Frances Goodman, Medusa, 2013-14 |
Works Cited
“About.” Frances Goodman, www.francesgoodman.com/about.
“About.” POLLY NOR, www.pollynor.com/About.
“Biography.” AnnaJonsson, annajonsson.weebly.com/biography.html.
Garcia, Brittany. “Medusa.” Ancient History Encyclopedia, Ancient History Encyclopedia, 28 Apr. 2019, www.ancient.eu/Medusa/.
Stop Telling Women To Smile, stoptellingwomentosmile.com/.
TheSupervioleta. Perdón, YouTube, 5 Sept. 2010, www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMIgVoQSaKE.
“About.” Frances Goodman, www.francesgoodman.com/about.
“About.” POLLY NOR, www.pollynor.com/About.
“Biography.” AnnaJonsson, annajonsson.weebly.com/biography.html.
Garcia, Brittany. “Medusa.” Ancient History Encyclopedia, Ancient History Encyclopedia, 28 Apr. 2019, www.ancient.eu/Medusa/.
“Stop Telling Women To Smile.” Stop Telling Women To Smile, stoptellingwomentosmile.com/.
TheSupervioleta. YouTube, YouTube, 5 Sept. 2010, www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMIgVoQSaKE.
“About.” Frances Goodman, www.francesgoodman.com/about.
“About.” POLLY NOR, www.pollynor.com/About.
“Biography.” AnnaJonsson, annajonsson.weebly.com/biography.html.
Garcia, Brittany. “Medusa.” Ancient History Encyclopedia, Ancient History Encyclopedia, 28 Apr. 2019, www.ancient.eu/Medusa/.
“Stop Telling Women To Smile.” Stop Telling Women To Smile, stoptellingwomentosmile.com/.
TheSupervioleta. YouTube, YouTube, 5 Sept. 2010, www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMIgVoQSaKE.
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